UPDATED: Justin Steinman has posted that his comments regarding Novell's financial commitment to the FSF were in error. Justin wasn't intending to deceive - he just made an honest mistake. Justin Steinman may be a nice guy, but he needs to learn that exaggerating one's open source bonafides, especially when said bonafides are in serious question, is bad form in open source. Talking about how much money you spend UPDATED: Justin Steinman has posted that his comments regarding Novell’s financial commitment to the FSF were in error. Justin wasn’t intending to deceive – he just made an honest mistake. Justin Steinman may be a nice guy, but he needs to learn that exaggerating one’s open source bonafides, especially when said bonafides are in serious question, is bad form in open source. Talking about how much money you spend on open source (especially when it’s not true), is doubly gauche. It just doesn’t win the kinds of friends that Novell desperately needs.Case in point: Justin told IT Business Edge, as Pam @ Groklaw recounts, that: I do want to tell you that Novell is a significant financial contributor to the Free Software Foundation, as are all of the leading Linux distributors around the world….As part of that, we are one of the vendors on Committee B of the GPL v3 development community. … We have lawyers in the room contributing to the GPL v3 draft process, so we are in active discussions with Eben Moglen and other members of the FSF around what GPL v3 will look like. I want to make it extremely clear that Novell is committed to our Microsoft agreement, and we’re committed to helping develop a version of the GPL that enables that agreement to continue.In just two paragraphs, Justin managed to fail on several different levels, which is impressive. Here are two. First, Novell is not a significant “financial contributor to the Free Software Foundation, as Peter Brown told Pam. $5,000 back in 2005 doesn’t count. That’s why Novell is not listed on the FSF’s list of corporate patrons. Second, Novell is not a valued member of the Committee B GPLv3 drafting process, though it could become such. It’s hard to be an FSF friend when the FSF is revising drafts of GPLv3 specifically to halt Novell’s anti-open source patent deal with Microsoft. But you’d think that Justin would know better than to claim to be chums with the group that you’ve just incensed. It’s OK to disagree with GPLv3 on some points, as I have, but it’s cheeky in the extreme to be diametrically opposed to the purpose and intent of GPLv3 and then to claim you’re a friend. Incidentally, this is something that Microsoft has always done better than any other proprietary software company, Novell included. It has never presumed to be “part of the club,” and of late generally acts with deference and respect for open source (silly executive comments notwithstanding), even when it recognizes it as a competitor that it must kill. As a result, many of us that may oppose Microsoft on some fronts find common ground with it on others. That’s very hard to do with Novell, because Novell’s circus-like support for open source is always alternating between the sublime (Mono) and the clownish (the patent deal; the dropping of support for most of its internal open source projects; the “competing” with Microsoft Sharepoint with proprietary Groupwise, proprietary Sitescape, proprietary most everything; and so on and so on).Justin: Here’s a little bit of advice. Open source is something you do. It’s not something you buy. It’s absolutely free to participate, and I would welcome you doing so. Though you may not believe this, it pains me to continually have to be embarrassed by Novell’s lack of appreciation for open source and the power it could bring to the company, this despite phenomenal developers on staff like Miguel and Nat. I sincerely believe, as I believed in 2002 when Chris Stone was heading the company’s strategy and when he formed the Linux Business Office, of which I was part, that open source could transform Novell into a vibrant, serious player. But you are not, and will never be, until you get open source marrow deep within the culture of the company. I think it’s very difficult to do as a hybrid open source company. Very few succeed on this mixed-up path. But you could – just stop talking about being open source and start being open source. Others will give you credit for it at that point, so that you won’t have to. Open Source