While Open Source is stepping up in leading innovation of software technology, things could very well start to get even harder than they are in the near future to gain further market share for true Free Software.
In the last months, Oracle has stepped away from the open software community, focusing more on short-term monetizing of the open source products they have acquired from Sun Microsystems. There are speculations that Red Hat might have sold out the wider Open Source community in favor of its own customers in a sealed patent infringement settlement, which might have a similar effect as Novell's deal with Microsoft which has let to calls to boycott Novell.
Now, Novell has been acquired by Attachmate, apparently backed by Microsoft, with the side-effect that at least 882 of Novell's patents will be transferred to a Microsoft backed consortium.
What does this all mean for the individual Open Source contributor?