But in the world of free and open source software, as we've seen before, this does not tend to work well. When people chuck principles aside and indulge in short-term thinking, they tend to get bitten hard someplace down the road.
When Novell signed a deal with Microsoft in November last year, it infuriated a large number of veterans in the FOSS community. None more than Bruce Perens, creator of the open source definition, the manifesto of the open source movement. That apart, Perens co-founded the Open Source Initiative, the Linux Standard Base - and he wears plenty more caps. In short, he is one of the founding fathers of a movement that has grown at an astonishing pace.
Perens, who is passionate about what he believes in, set up an online petition, asking Novell to recant the deal. Over 3000 people signed the petition which took the form of an open letter to Novell chief executive Ron Hovsepian. The level of anger in some of the responses was surprising.
Thus, when I noticed that the Australian Linux conference, which ends in Sydney today, had accepted sponsorship from Novell, I wrote to Perens, asking whether this was not some kind of slap in the face for people like him.
Prior to that I wrote to the president of Linux Australia, Jonathan Oxer, asking him whether any ethical considerations had been taken into account when accepting sponsorship from Novell. I haven't heard back.
Perens initially thought the conference was a trade show. But when I pointed out that it was a technical conference, he had no hesitation in saying that the organisers might as well have accepted sponsorship from SCO or Microsoft.
"I'd rather they hadn't accepted a Novell sponsorship. It wasn't very clueful of them, given Novell's recent collaboration with Microsoft in spreading fear and doubt about Linux and software patents," Perens said.
He noticed that Novell was one of the lowest-level sponsors, something which I pointed out last week. One look at the sponsors page was enough.
"And since Novell is sponsoring at the lowest level, with a great many higher-level sponsors about, I can't think that money was the concern. They might as well accept SCO and Microsoft sponsorships now."
Of course, some people would call him weak in the head. But then principles should not be for sale. When Theo de Raadt criticised the invasion of Iraq he was receiving a grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA); the agency promptly pulled the remainder of the funding.
De Raadt's sin was to make statements which could be considered anti-war to a Canadian newspaper. Most of the $US2.3 million grant from DARPA, the research and development arm of the US military, which in 1970 set up what evolved into the internet, had already been used by de Raadt though he was not very happy about the source.
What was remaining of the grant was about 15 percent - not a sum to be sneezed at. It meant about six months' work - again not a period to be scoffed at.
At the time, the Canadian newspaper Globe and Mail quoted him as saying: "I actually am fairly uncomfortable about it, even if our firm stipulation was that they cannot tell us what to do. We are simply doing what we do anyways - securing software - and they have no say in the matter. I try to convince myself that our grant means a half of a cruise missile doesn't get built."
OpenBSD is still alive and kicking. De Raadt simply went back to depending on donations as he did before the grant was provided. Last I heard from him - and it wasn't that long ago - he wasn't in the welfare queue.
