Black Duck Software, the leading global provider of software governance solutions, today announced that its President and CEO Douglas Levin will moderate the panel session titled “Is the Novell-Microsoft deal good for open source?” at the Open Source Business Conference (OSBC) in San Francisco, Calif., on Wednesday, May 23 at 1 p.m.

Mr. Levin, who is highly regarded throughout the IT industry as an expert on software development and intellectual property (IP) issues, will moderate a lively discussion among representatives from Novell and Microsoft, leaders of the open source community and enterprise Linux customers. The discussion will address the impact of the landmark agreement between Microsoft and Novell, in which the two companies agreed to collaborate to improve interoperability between Windows and SUSE Linux Enterprise. 

As part of the deal – which included Microsoft purchasing certificates for SUSE Linux Enterprise maintenance support subscriptions and creating a joint sales and marketing team – the two companies also signed an agreement in which they promised not to sue each other's customers for patent infringement. While Microsoft has sold more than 40,000 certificates for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, the intellectual property component of the deal has been very controversial in the open source community.  

The format will allow for a debate on the ramifications of the agreement. The panelists participating in this session will be LWN.net Executive Editor Jonathan Corbet, Microsoft Director of Platform Technology Strategy Sam Ramji, O’Reilly Media Open Source Evangelist Allison Randal and Novell Director of Marketing for Linux & Open Source Platform Solutions Justin Steinman.

Mr. Levin is in a unique position to moderate this panel: He worked for Microsoft from 1986-1995, for the past eight years he has been CEO of three companies that utilized open source software, and most recently he was the visionary and operational executive who established Black Duck as the leader in the software governance space. During his professional career he has bridged proprietary and open source software worlds, and the software development and business worlds. His technology and business interests, as demonstrated on his blog http://bduck1.blogspot.com/, include software re-use, distributed development, copyrights and software IP and licenses, and more.

“Novell and Microsoft conceived this panel as a way to have an open dialogue with the community.  I'm honored that they asked me to moderate,” said Levin.  “Both companies believe it's important to discuss their relationship so the software industry and enterprises can understand the implications of their licensing arrangement. I look forward to a lively discussion, further clarifications by all parties, and active audience participation.”

About Black Duck Software
Black Duck Software™ is the leading provider of software compliance management solutions that help companies govern how software assets are created and managed. Black Duck’s offerings help businesses take maximum advantage of open source software while at the same time ensure that they satisfy the obligations associated with the code they use. Black Duck’s customer base includes enterprises, product developers, outsourcers, law firms and other organizations worldwide that are concerned with protection of software intellectual property. For more information about Black Duck, visit www.blackducksoftware.com.