It is very unfortunate that a campaign on the name of novell is being carried out against the conference which is also going out of proportion. These kinds of attempts just harm the movement and will be of no good. Hence i am coming out with facts. The sole contention should be to keep the freedom flag waving.
There would be none who would not be criticising the collaboration of Novell with Microsoft. However confining the attention of the entire community to one issue would undermine the importance and success of the conference which is historic for the free software movement.
This protest doesn't appear to be the one against novell rather to be against an important confernce of a high magnitude in the history of the movement. This was a conference which was well attended by 1500+ participants that includes industry, students, academia, Vice Chancellors, Policy makers and many others from all walks of life. There were 30 seminars, 17 workshops, 18 open fora, exhibition and many other kinds of activities.There were good number of declarations made and initiatives taken up. At a time when there is a back door entry of software patents an initiative on behalf of the lawyer community to take on the patents in the legal battles was announced. An agreement for collaboration between eight universities to conduct research on and based on free software and to implement it was made. There are many in these lines which have been an outcome of this conference. There was huge number of academia representing this conference.
Any protest organised, will generally be made in front of the office of novell or in the presence of the representative of the novell. However this protest was not called when the novell representative was there on the dias as a speaker on which me and nagarjuna were also present. The community has never seen any protest in front of the novell offices or the other conferences supported by novell accross india. The situp was organised infront of the main hall, the posters were being put at all parts of the campus. The actions thus appear to the community that they were just not against novell but against the conference. This is not the first time that such issues are being created by the same people. They were trying to create hurdles, divert the attention and subvert it even during the preparations of the conference. There are many conferences that are happenning in the country which are organised by many others, we as FSF India will be attending them and try to ensure to get the best benefit for the movement. The main organiser was CUSAT(Cochin University of Science and Technology), there is an LDF govt. which supports free software hence the conference could get support externally. These kind of conferences are in the interest of Free Software Movement. We in the movement are trying to rally the support of all political parties. Tomorrow even other political parties also will be forced to support us, the movement will have to be built accordingly. Why should we a part of the community get involved in killing initiatives and attributing them to the events of political parties. Attributing such things would not help the movement to grow. The community watching these kind of developments will be forced to beleive that these people only want to subvert the conference. The university authorities will act in their own discipline if there is some problem that creeps in the course of the conference. Any man handling is condemned without any second thought.
This conference was not organised by novel or was it the sole sponsorer. It was one among the many sponsorers. Taking up a campaign which is not in the top list of FSF campaigns and calling for the boycott novell protest on the second day of the conference when the entire delegation was seriously debating the issues concerning just undermines the conference. This hue and cry rather than helping the movement just undermines the conference and the movement. This is absolutely not doing good to the movement. The continuous row on whatever levels(either personal or official) and spilling over words will just harm the movement.
The energy of the community that should be focussing on more important issues is being dragged into such debates which will not help in attending to important issues confronting the movement.
Let us march to the international conference with the spirit of the conferences held and concentrate more on the priority issues like patents which is an immediate necessity.
--Kiran Chandra