Discussions on the WIPO Development Agenda, an effort to make WIPO comply with its UN mission and focus on development, have dragged on for quite a while now without making much headway. No one doubts that this is due to opposition from developed countries, who are the ones profiting from the grossly imbalanced global system of intellectual monopoly powers.

Yet a confidential report that IP Watch is writing about shows that the obstructionism is more organised than what you might have expected. The report is from a meeting of developed countries that took place in September 2006, on the day before WIPO's General Assembly.

It's all there: Keeping appearances up, using supposedly neutral countries as a smokescreen, and throttling fundamental reform by pushing for the smallest possible outcome:

The chair highlighted the political side of the development agenda
talks. While the continuation of an open, rolling discussion would not
be acceptable, “there was also a view that we could not stop the
process of the PCDA [Provisional Committee on proposals related to a
Development Agenda] because it is politically important that Group B+
can certainly not be seen to be unfriendly.” 

So the plan was to seek to define the mandate of the continued committee 
with the inclusion of proposals made by the secretariat and by Kyrgyzstan 
(which made a developed-country friendly proposal earlier this year that 
has been kept alive), and push for feasible, short-term gains. 

These developed countries will be seeking to break the ranks of developing nations by  targeting those perceived as the weakest ones:

“[W]e will need to talk to the contacts we have in the Africa Group,
Asia Group - GRULAC [Group of Latin American and Caribbean countries]
is more difficult for most of us - to see where and when there are
opportunities to move that general debate into some short-term
practical solutions,” the chair summarised, according to the report. 

Of course, it could be argued that this is just the way diplomacy works. True. Aint pretty, is all. 

Much has been written already about the deal between Microsoft and Novell, and I don't need to replicate it here. Just now, Andrew Orlowski posted a piece on The Register (yes, I know, don't worry: some day I'll get back to citing other sources again) that describes how this tie-up logically follows precisely that "open source" path which the Free Software community keeps refusing to set foot on.

 Free Software advocates have always insisted that "free" and "open"
were two movements loosely aligned, and that the Johnny Come Lately
"open source" term was just a media-friendly marketing moniker. The
"open source" lobby replied with some annoyance that this was an
unimportant semantic issue.

Now, however, that distinction is painfully apparent, and Microsoft
is exploiting it to the full.

The money that Microsoft is paying to Novell will likely turn out to have been a clever investment:

Microsoft wanted this agreement so badly it's agreed to pay an
unspecified sum to Novell for the Covenant. This might strike you as
odd - and you'd be right. Companies that license intellectual property
do so in the expectation that they receive a royalty, rather than dish
one out. But the downstream benefits to Redmond are enormous. Novell
has handed it a priceless legal filip, and as it begins to collect
royalties from other businesses that use Linux, it'll doubtless see it
as a worthwhile down payment.

SuSe GNU/Linux, anyone?

Further reading: 

Groklaw: Novell sells out

Groklaw: MS FUDs like SCO, Red Hat Responds, and Novell/MS Transcript Available

Dana Gardner, ZDNet blogs: Microsoft and Novell: Fox marries chicken, both move into henhouse

Bruce Perens: Novell-Microsoft: What They Aren't Telling You

...and so on...