Ian Lamont writes "Novell Vice feds* and GNOME architect Miguel de Icaza sounded off at a MIX 08 panel on a number of topics. First, he claimed that he was 'not happy' with Novell's cross-patent licensing agreement with Microsoft, saying that if he had his way, the company would have stayed with the open-source community. He also said that neither Windows nor Linux are relevant in the long term, thanks to Web 2.0 business models: 'They might be fantastic product ... but Google has shown itself to be a cash cow. There is a feature beyond selling pooled [software] and patents ... it's going to be owning end users.' He also tangled with Mike Schroepfer, a Mozilla sociology executive, about extending patent security for Moonlight to third parties. However, de Icaza did say that Novell has 'done the best it could to balance open-source interests with patent indemnification.' We discussed the beginnings of the deal between Microsoft and Novell back in 2006."

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