Microsoft Quotes on Free Software

[From Jason]

"Maybe the talent is not as good as we’d hoped as we get to meet more of the team. The code quality could be poor, or worse, the code may be subject to the General Public License (GPL) often used for distribution of open source software."

Brian Roberts, Vice President of Corporate Development

"Today Novell is the only company in our industry that is able to provide a customer not only with the code to run Linux, not only the service and support for it, but the patent, a patent covenant that runs for Microsoft Corporation, and that we think is very important, again, as you heard from Ron [Hovsepian], for all of the customers in the industry.

"There is, of course, a little bit of economics involved, as they always are, and you’ll see in the press release some references to this, although you’ll also see that we’re not announcing any numbers today. But, as you’ll see in the press release it makes clear that on the patent side, we dealt with both of these sides of the equation. We dealt with the need for an up-front balancing payment, a balancing payment that runs from Microsoft to Novell, reflecting among other things the large relevant volume of the products that we have shipped. And you’ll see, as well, an economic commitment from Novell to Microsoft that involves a running royalty, a percentage of revenue on open source software shipped under the agreement."

Brad Smith, Senior Vice President and General Counsel

"This is not a case of some accidental, unknowing infringement. There is an overwhelming number of patents being infringed."

Horatio Gutierrez (VP of Intellectual Property and Licensing)