HI, Myself one of the protestors of boycottnovell protest happened in kerala. I would like to summarize some points here.

The event was not organized by the Communist Party. Communist Party is promotting Free Software on several occasions and they have a good stand on Free Software. The event organizers are as seen here at the event site http://nfm2008.atps.in./ Some of the organizers were not having enough exposure to the Free Software world. That actually led to the situation of Novell being the platinum sponsor of the event. The whole problem is because of the igorance of the organizers on the subject. The organizers mishandled the subject without realizing the issue, as they have little knowledge about the issue raised by us.

Our concern was about Novell, and we wanted the general public to know the truth. For that we raised the posters telling them the reasons of boycott Novell. We didnot boycott the event. We did participate the event and tried to correct the organizers and tried to pass the correct information to the public. The organizers didnt realize this and they took their position with Novell due to their ignorance. and this mishandling of this issue caused the problems.

Anyway the organizers (CP(I)M is not among the organizers ) owe an appology to free software community regarding this.
I think the way slashdot presented the issue is misleading. This is not an issue between Communist party and Free Software people.
On behalf of the protestors
Shyam K