Novell is the company stuck in an open source malaise, not Sun Microsystems, at least according to Simon Phipps, chief open source officer for Sun. While talking with IT Business Edge, Phipps responded to comments Novell CEO Ron Hovsepian made regarding the future of Sun and OpenSolaris during a recent Linux Foundation podcast. Phipps said that Hovsepian quoted inaccurate download numbers for OpenSolaris while criticizing Sun's open source strategy.

"I think that what Mr. Hovsepian is doing here is 'whistling in the dark,' as they say." stated Phipps. "I think he's worried about  the resurgence of a new, fast, innovative OpenSolaris."

Phipps noted that many open source vendors offer commercial and free versions, with support available only for the commercial offering. In response to Hovsepian's suggestion that Sun's strategy for balancing open source and commercial interests isn't right, Phipps said, "Novell's got a big problem. What they're doing is trying to sell open source software as if it was proprietary software. The comment that Mr. Hovsepian made seems to be projecting Novell's malaise onto Sun, but we don't have that malaise. We ship a completely free piece of software that anyone can download and use without any restrictions."