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Let us take a look at the recent topic of a Madwifi vulnerability affecting certain wifi users in Linux.

Julien Tinnes reported it at 13:48:00 EST on December 7, 2006.

At 14:17:50 on the same day the patch was available in the main source code repository.

A little while later at 17:08:26 the vulnerability is officially confirmed by Madwifi and advisories had been prepared.

Looking downstream, the response times for an official fixes/advisories by distribution specific security teams were:
Gentoo: December 10
SUSE: Confirmed December 8, Fixed December 11
Ubuntu: January 9

There is certainly some room for improvement here with distribution specific fixes, but that also includes time spent testing the changes to the driver. To be fair to Microsoft (actually, I'm just being overly optimistic), they probably had a patch ready within 30 minutes of the initial vulnerability report as was the case with Madwifi. But instead of giving the customer the option of trying the "beta" patch so they can test it themselves, it is kept private. Days tick by at Microsoft HQ and nothing appears to happen. Eventually, a patch is released on the patch Tuesday of the next month (or the month after that). System administrators get no choice and no chance to test it themselves.

Hi: I'm a PR guy at Novell. I've posted Novell's explanation of this situation on our blog here: http://www.novell.com/prblogs/?p=318 Thanks. - Bruce

AppArmor does much the same thing as protected processes. It just does it right.

Is OpenOffice planning to include OOXML translator anytime soon. It is required, as more and more people are now using Office 2007 (and they are sharing their documents with us Linux users).

I would recommend trying Kubuntu, OpenSUSE (or SUSE even, although that would involve supporting that damn Microsoft-Novell patent deal), Mandriva, or Linspire/Freespire. These distributions use KDE (K Desktop Environment), which in my opinion (and even Linus himself along with many, many others) is far more usable, customisable, and useful than GNOME, the default desktop environment for many other distributions such as Ubuntu. Although GNOME tends to look cleaner than KDE, its usability is quite, well, limited. I don't understand the circle jerk going on between most distributions and their need to use GNOME by default, but I do know that a lot of people's complaints in regards to the GUI on Linux are GNOME-specific and are not a problem with KDE.

It's entirely clear how to pronounce it - just like the guy in the video "German Air Traffic Control" does.

http://www.novell.com/video/ (Sixth video down)

Scroll down and check out the "adspoofs" video from Brainshare 2003. They're a hoot -- especially the "instant message" one. Clickies: MPG or OGG.

Scroll down and check out the "adspoofs" video from Brainshare 2003. They're a hoot -- especially the "instant message" one. Clickies: MPG or OGG.

• Video 1
• Video 2
• Video 3

• Video 1
• Video 2
• Video 3

• Video 1
• Video 2
• Video 3

• Video 1
• Video 2
• Video 3

Conveniently located on Novell.com instead of some crappy Flash video. Now available in MPEG and Ogg!

As a paying customer, do I benefit from Novell working on the OpenSLP project? Of course I do. You do to. Or you will, once your network gets large enough that TCP/IP based services ought to be auto-discoverable instead of hand-worked.

My point is that yes, Novell is a commercial venture, and I'm one of those customers. If Novell can issue a press release that tells my CIO that the path he allowed us to travel (we have implemented 25+ Suse servers in a year and a quarter) is a good path, then I win. Obviously, the Ziff-Davis reporter is pandering to the "lets hate Linux and affirm our love of Microsoft crowd". But in the real world, if my CIO hears that the vendor he already is working with is gaining market share, that makes my position more solid.

I'm not a Novell shareholder, but I do have a lot of Novell product knowledge that I don't want it trivialized. If Novell improves the code you and I use, that's good for me. If Novell tells people they are winning customers, that's good for me.

You just don't want to hear that, because it doesn't fit your bias.

Collaber,Lucane, or Virtual Office.

Well, the reason why they want to wait for approval is because some big names are participating such as IBM and Novell. I really don't think they're too interested in a patent battle with Microsoft when Microsoft seems to have the upper hand. IBM, for one, does not like to lose in court.

I don't believe the agreement's publicly available, but from the Novell press release about it:

"As part of this agreement, Microsoft will provide a covenant not to assert its patent rights against customers who have purchased SUSE Linux Enterprise Server or other covered products from Novell, and Novell will provide an identical covenant to customers who have a licensed version of Windows or other covered products from Microsoft."

Now, why would Microsoft have to offer any protection from suit to users of anything that they didn't believe contained any of their patents?

Let's take indemnification; this should be a topic every company should suddenly be looking very closely at. Microsoft just got nailed with a whopping $1.53 Billion, that's with a "B", judgment for the use of a common music standard. They did this because they indemnified Dell and Gateway, the companies initially targeted. If they had used Linux instead of Windows, it would be Dell and Gateway hit with some fraction of this judgment (and even a fraction of $1.52B is a big number). So where is the coverage? Don't you think it should be a hot topic right now, so where is the chatter?

It's fascinating how slashdot still prefers opinions to facts.

I downloaded the odfconverter-1.0.0-2.oxt file and tried to install into OpenOffice.org 2.1.0 for Windows (as downloaded from openoffice.org web site, not the Novell version).

I had to use Tools -> Extension manager (not Package manager), and when installing, had several pop-ups stating "This media-type is not supported: application/octet-stream". OKing these showed the odfconverter installed into "My extensions". And "Microsoft Word 2007 Document (.docx)" was added to the list of files in File -> Open.

But trying to open a .docx file (the Windows Vista Product Guide failed, with nothing happening or displayed.

Anyone want to try the other options of Linux, OO.o 2.0.4, Novel OO.o 2.0.4 and report back?

This will do squat for putting any nails in anything.

Microsoft wanted this. Infact, Microsoft helped Novel do this: http://www.novell.com/ctoblog/?p=43
And the Microsoft Open XML developers were more than helpful to advertise this: http://blogs.msdn.com/brian_jones/archive/2007/03/ 02/openoffice-support-for-the-openxml-formats.aspx

This is a GOOD THING for everyone. OpenOffice.org users get interopability with MS Office. MS Office meets many government required interopability and open XML format requirements. Win-win.

Let's keep the absurd commentary out of the summary and in the modded down comments, please?

I considered running a separate machine with Evolution on a Linux distro.

strongly believe that doing it the baby steps way is good because it allows me to smoothly transition from MS to linux instead of sitting in front of the computer with a huge question mark over my head trying to not only figure out how the OS works but not even knowing how to do a simple "hello world" page, let alone a complete web site.

Whilst this doesn't suite the impatience of most /. readers (we expect you to spend five minutes switching away from Microsoft, for you to be productive immediately, and a to write a nice note here telling all the people that replied to your question how wonderful they are) it does seem like a very sensible policy.

There are a couple of things you need to know about Mono and Ubuntu in general:

• The Mono Project is developed by Novell, they have a patent cross-license agreement with The Evil Empire. This has resulted in a lot of FUD and sabre-rattling, which could have a some effect (I am not a lawyer, so don't know what that effect might be) on the Mono project.
• When you want to download mono etc. don't think like a Windows user and get it directly from the Web site. Open up 'Synaptic Package Manager' and install from there. It's in the Sytem menu (I believe, am not a GNOME user :) )
• Mono has a small webserver that comes with it. This will be good to get you started and for testing, but for production applications you should use the 'mod_mono' module for Apache. Again, all this juicy goodness can be found by searching in Synaptic.
• All configuration files for this stuff can be found in the /etc directory--making changes without a GUI might seem strange at first, but believe me it makes much, much more sense than GUI + Registry. For a start think how easy it is to backup settings, or even clone your server configuration.

Hope this helps.

"The covenant applies to end customers of Novell products."

This does not say it applies to Novell itself, nor does it say it applies to these end users customers. The parent post you disputed said the following.

"Oh FFS, this is the 3rd time in 3 posts I have had to state that the agreement in question covers Novell customers and not Novell directly."

If I were keeping score I'd say that made it JPriest 1, mysticgoat 0.

http://www.novell.com/company/blogs/cmo/ You don't have to be a carpenter to know that it's a lot harder to fix a mistake once the cut has been made. Hence true craftsman know all to well that proper due dilgence up front can save a lot of heartache down the road. And so it is with reacting - or over reacting - to every story, rumor, or misrepresentation about the direction of GPL3 - the work in process update to the GNU General Public License version 2 that governs the use and distribution of some open source software. As GPLv3 is a work in process, we don't speculate on its outcome. Others do, however, including a Reuters report yesterday that intimated dire consequences for Novell - citing Eben Moglen, the Free Softwware Foundation's general counsel as the source of this conclusion. Within hours, Mr. Moglen himself, in an email interview with Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols of Linux-Watch, clarified his position and the Reuter's story stating, "The actual quote he prints is entirely accurate, but his lede destroys the context and is making unnecessary waves." In fact Mr. Vaughan-Nichols has a number of balanced views and articles on this topic that provide a fuller context for many of us to "measure twice and cut once" on this issue. On his site you'll also find an interesting guest post by Bill Weinberg, a long time evangalist on open source licensing to business users, that's worth a read. On this issue as with so many others, it's a good idea to take out your tape measure and use a pencil. John Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments

I just got a Sony Vaio with an NVidia card. I added the optional NVidia drivers and it works really well with Xgl snazzy 3D effects. So if Vista's not working for you, give SLED 10 a go maybe? Or if you've got lots of time and anger, try the legal route instead...

Nothing... they already did.

You CAN do exactly the same thing with Linux!! Automated install, remote config and management, automated patching. In fact it's a fraction of the cost of doing with Windows. Everything you need to do it can be found at http://www.novell.com/

Ever tried opengroupware?

It has shared calendar, resource scheduling, email&contacts etc, it even syncs with your palm.

But if you need something more professional, just take out your wallet and go for groupwise

Linux works just fine in corporate networks. It's exchange, outlook and their nonstandard quirks which are causing the problems.
Just replace those and you're golden.

Microsoft could sue you, you could get into a costly lawsuit, your company could go broke.
Switch to Linux, the open source operating system.

Get Linux today!

* Red Hat Enterprise Linux - http://www.redhat.com/
* SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 - http://www.novell.com/linux/

It offers a complete solution for your mission-critical needs!

I agree - Linux is a viable alternative to Vista. I'm downloading a freshly bought copy of SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 as I read your post. It only cost $50, and does what I need. No M$ Vista's gonna spoil this Windows XP Sony Vaio anytime soon.

Novell Open Audio plans to release an audio interview with Jim Zemlin about the merger at http://www.novell.com/feeds/openaudio/?p=127. --Ted Haeger

It's not an API.

It's an instruction book.

When dealing with my parents, its much easier to tell them to turn to the chapter on CD burning, which has page-by-page pictures of how to use K3B, rather than to tell them to use the online Windows XP/Vista help.

Of course, the SuSE manuals are also included in searchable form, in the SuSE help utility, and in the KDE manual utility, as well as extensively revised man pages.

My point is that you get both with SuSE, and the manuals are nice to have, especially with older people, because they are used to things in book form.

Also, there reason there are 4 is because of the subjects:
1. Install Manual. This one, obviously, should be in paper form. What happens if the install borks? Repair instructions are included, rather than the XP use the automated repair utility and pray. Of course, SuSE also includes an automated repair utility.
2. Admin Manual. This is for system maintenance. Tells you how to run setup automated updates and the like. Explains each process in detail, in easy to understand verbage.
3. Usage Manual. This documents all the software that comes with SuSE, including OpenOffice, Gimp, K3B, various photo utilities, etc.
4. Quick startup guide. This one is akin to the XP 8 page leaflet, but is more along the lines of 20-30 pages, and it covers correct shutdown procedure (don't just pull the plug, go to shutdown), where to go for the internet, where to go for online help, and how to contact SuSE support if you need telephone assistance.

Here's a sample: http://www.novell.com/documentation/suse101/pdfdoc /application_en/application_en.pdf
Take a look. It really is different.

A conflict with the video card? That seems like it would be relatively easy to fix, since the Intel chipset is one of the few with a decent Free driver. Anyway, I did a little search and found this, which makes it seem like the problem could be already fixed.

Yes. "India can live without Microsoft packages and even progress but Microsoft will find it tough without a huge country like India buying their software packages," But can they live without Novell Enterprise? http://www.novell.com/linux/ There is no wolf in sheep's clothing. There is no wolf in sheep's clothing. There is no wolf in sheeps clothing...

This is SUSE

It comes in the box or downloadable from Novell SLED

$50.00 Gets you a year of updates, patches etc. This also includes phone support for install.

As to hardware... As others have said, RAM is the biggest issue, get as much as your budget allows. Make sure the video card you get has linux drivers as well as the mulit-media system.

The install is pretty painless and the defaults are pretty solid and have security uppermost in the priority list.

This answer shows why the question is nonsensical on its face. No one can tell you what distro is best for you. Everyone has a different personality. For me, Slackware is the ideal distro for a newbie. But then, I like to read up on any product before I use it. So I thought it was easy to install and now it is very easy to administrate. It has lower overhead from all of the bells and whistles that some of the other distros have included. There is no dependency hell that can be so frustrating to a newbie. If you stay away from the auto updaters and read the changelogs, you will never have a broken system. If you are like a lot of the Windows users that come over to Linux, however, you will probably be better served by one of the other distros. The majority of them want to run the installer CD and then just have everything be set up and work. Of course some of them become so frustrated the first time they run into a problem and have no idea on how to fix it, they run back to Windows. But good luck to you.

Which distro to adopt if you are a newbie really depends on what you want to achieve or learn by installing Linux. If you want an alternate desktop system you could go for Ubuntu, Linspire, Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop distro where you get lots of user friendly GUI tools to solve your configuration problems. If your ambition is to become a corporate Linux admin or a developer and you want to build a server system to cut your teeth on I would recommend something like Centos because it is a free-of-charge binary 'clone' of Red Hat ES/AS which along with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is the standard for anybody who runs enterprise quality software including the ubiquitous Oracle Databases. Slackware on the other hand is only for you if you are a for true nerd, developer, comp-sci/engineering student or some such eccentric who want to find out the old fashioned way how a modern *NIX system is put together. Basically I'd say that if you are a complete Linux newbie, say... an experienced Windows XP user, you should definitely start with one of the ultra user friendly Linux desktop distributions and proceed from there. If you want to become a professional Linux admin you should also get over any fear you may have of command-line interfaces and doubly so if you have any ambition to do any serious development on a Linux system.

Yet another reason to use GroupWise

GroupWise is completely modular. You can have many PO's and MTA's in a single World Wide Domain all interconnected across the the internet. It is proven tech, its clusterable, its rock solid and has no real limitations with the exception of the amount of disk space you can throw at it, which in native NetWare w/the Novell Storage System is pretty much as huge a RAID as you can buy. Couple that with either NAS or iSCSI and you have a pretty much unstopable solution.

Not only that its completely cross platform so regardless of the fact that you might be an OSX or Linux or Windows shop, you will have a GroupWise client for your machine. Now admitedly, they are currently a bit behind in getting all the other platforms on par with the feature set of the windows client, but this is shortly to be remedied.

Web Access? again built right in, it come with the software, a complete J2EE implentation on Tomcat & Apache. Use any browser from anywhere in the world to access your e-mail, complete with attachment viewing, no Active-X required, no requirement for the machine to have anything installed.

Wireless Access? You betcha it supports damn near every PDA and cellphone out there.

Now if that wasn't enough, there is no way for a e-mail trojan or virus to start working its way through your system just because it hapened to land in your in-box. GroupWise has purposefully never built an interface to allow code to run in its underlying structure, unlike some other E-Mail programs we all know about.

Remote mail boxes, caching mail boxes, yep we got those as well, and guess what, I really hope you have a BIG hard drive on your laptop, because I have seen caching DB's on laptops in excess of 20 gigs and that is not an exageration.

Evidence chain? Discovery chains? all there. backups and restores? Yes to the user level, while the system is on-line!

Standards... Yup GroupWise is fully complient with the RFC's for SMTP, POP3, IMAPI, SSL etc. Mailbomb Protection built in. ORDB, Spamhause etc. IP checking, built in.

Classes of Service? You bet, again built right in. You only want some of your users sending internet mail, you got it. You want some of your user to have limited visibility? Built in.

If you haven't checked out GroupWise in a while or you never have, I suggest you have a looksee at it and give it an honest evaluation.

Ohh yeah, I forgot to mention that it runs on NetWare, Linux & Windows servers. The entire GroupWise system is x-platform. Who knows they might even be building it for X-Servers too!

I neither know nor care what [Microsoft] were thinking this time because it frankly doesn't matter.

And once again the missing word is "because".

Unlike you, I've given plenty of reasons in previous postings.

Well, if you think there is a post elsewhere in which you express yourself particularly well, feel free to link to it. I do sometimes look up a correspondent's posts on a subject if they seem have something interesting to say, but somehow, I doubt many people will leap to that conclusion based on what I've read so far. By way of example, here is the start of what I thought was quite a productive discussion on this topic.

I do find it a bit odd that you apparently expect me to look up your other posts, but can't be bothered to do do the same thing yourself. Never mind; in the interests of moving the debate forward, let's examine these pearls of wisdom.

There was this one where you said

In the end, Microsoft ends up giving several hundred million dollars to Novell. All the taking is "virtual"--a small face saver for Microsoft that has no real significance.

No sentiment there you haven't expressed in this one, Spending hundreds of millions of dollars as a face saving exercise does not sound at all like the Microsoft I've come to know and loathe. Can you offer any support for the notion? Oh, wait, maybe it's expressed on one of your other posts.

We'll see.

Your next offering at least had a little substance to it:

MS won't sue anybody for patent infringement because they know it's pointless. I mean, who are they going to sue? You? Me? RedHat? Fedora? My cat?

So we're all supposed to rely on Microsoft's lack-of-imagination being equal to your own? How reassuring.

Even if they have a valid and enforceable patent, it will be worked around within a day of them filing any lawsuit.

mmmm... just because we can fix buffer overrun exploits inside 24 hours, that doesn't imply we can get the same turnaround for patent issues. The exploits are often fixable in a handful of lines. A patent violation would require changing how something was done, which would mean a redesign, followed by coding and testing until we again had stable software.

The other thing is that patent litigation is expensive; just ask RIM. It's a game that favours those with deep pockets, and who has deeper pockets than Microsoft?

Furthermore, the Microsoft/Novell deal doesn't protect Novell or its customers: if there actually were a patent infringement lawsuit, everybody would effectively have to stop using the software until the infringing code has been removed.

As Kevin Renner might have put it, "that turns out not to be the case". This is from Novell's press release (I'll use bold face to distinguish third party quotations from your own contributions).

The two companies also announced an agreement to provide each other's customers with patent coverage for their respective products.

So, people who have bought a copy of SUSE from Novell are quite explicitly exempt from any litigation Microsoft might bring. The point is expanded upon in their Joint letter to the Open Source Community

Novell and Microsoft are providing covenants to each other's customers, therefore releasing each company from the other's patent portfolio.

So it seems that Novell could continue to sell contested software, even while the case was bein

I neither know nor care what [Microsoft] were thinking this time because it frankly doesn't matter.

And once again the missing word is "because".

Unlike you, I've given plenty of reasons in previous postings.

Well, if you think there is a post elsewhere in which you express yourself particularly well, feel free to link to it. I do sometimes look up a correspondent's posts on a subject if they seem have something interesting to say, but somehow, I doubt many people will leap to that conclusion based on what I've read so far. By way of example, here is the start of what I thought was quite a productive discussion on this topic.

I do find it a bit odd that you apparently expect me to look up your other posts, but can't be bothered to do do the same thing yourself. Never mind; in the interests of moving the debate forward, let's examine these pearls of wisdom.

There was this one where you said

In the end, Microsoft ends up giving several hundred million dollars to Novell. All the taking is "virtual"--a small face saver for Microsoft that has no real significance.

No sentiment there you haven't expressed in this one, Spending hundreds of millions of dollars as a face saving exercise does not sound at all like the Microsoft I've come to know and loathe. Can you offer any support for the notion? Oh, wait, maybe it's expressed on one of your other posts.

We'll see.

Your next offering at least had a little substance to it:

MS won't sue anybody for patent infringement because they know it's pointless. I mean, who are they going to sue? You? Me? RedHat? Fedora? My cat?

So we're all supposed to rely on Microsoft's lack-of-imagination being equal to your own? How reassuring.

Even if they have a valid and enforceable patent, it will be worked around within a day of them filing any lawsuit.

mmmm... just because we can fix buffer overrun exploits inside 24 hours, that doesn't imply we can get the same turnaround for patent issues. The exploits are often fixable in a handful of lines. A patent violation would require changing how something was done, which would mean a redesign, followed by coding and testing until we again had stable software.

The other thing is that patent litigation is expensive; just ask RIM. It's a game that favours those with deep pockets, and who has deeper pockets than Microsoft?

Furthermore, the Microsoft/Novell deal doesn't protect Novell or its customers: if there actually were a patent infringement lawsuit, everybody would effectively have to stop using the software until the infringing code has been removed.

As Kevin Renner might have put it, "that turns out not to be the case". This is from Novell's press release (I'll use bold face to distinguish third party quotations from your own contributions).

The two companies also announced an agreement to provide each other's customers with patent coverage for their respective products.

So, people who have bought a copy of SUSE from Novell are quite explicitly exempt from any litigation Microsoft might bring. The point is expanded upon in their Joint letter to the Open Source Community

Novell and Microsoft are providing covenants to each other's customers, therefore releasing each company from the other's patent portfolio.

So it seems that Novell could continue to sell contested software, even while the case was bein

I prefer windows because I get notified in a uniform manner when hardware is added. I prefer windows because there aren't fifty ways to access the same device. I prefer windows because it's easier to develop software for. Have you ever written dynamic hardware detection software for Linux/Solaris?

Don't need to. We have HAL/D-Bus now.

If you have to recompile the god damn kernel just to see your storage it's not user friendly.

Most distros provide kernels pre-compiled with everything available as modules. D-Bus auto-loads modules as needed when new hardware is detected.

Windows is like a Honda Accord, not very exciting, but it works, Linux is like a Ferrari...that's mailed to you in pieces over the course of a year, each piece comes with a manual of how it works and what it does, but gives no instruction on how to use it with other components.

There're these new-fangled things called "desktop distributions." They're mail-order Ferraris that cost less than a Honda Accord (most even free) that come pre-assembled with a dashboard computer that asks you your name when you first get in and helps you tailor itself to your needs. You can even fix the engine yourself if you're so inclined - unlike that Honda that comes with non-standard, esoteric parts that amaze you that it works every time you think you've figured out how it's put together; and you'll be threatened with a lawsuit or jail time if you try to change anything under the hood.

So I guess this article on how to configure Ubuntu to authentic through Active Directory is a figment of my imagination since Active Directory is 100% only available to Windows?

You do realize that Active Directory is based on LDAP right? Microsoft's ADSI API's can also be used to connect to LDAP stores as well as Active Directory. I don't think a solution would be hard to work on - a little time consuming, but I don't see Microsoft locking out everyone else 100%.

Nick,
thanks for your reply. My response is, I hope, rational and non-inflammatory. I'm not an MS apologist but am, amongst other things, a SuSE user and a believer in facts before assumptions.
Whilst I can accept that Novell may be percieved as being niaive for entering any covanent with MS they do have, as quite a few people have pointed out, past experience so may be a little better prepared than they are being given credit for. I would like to think so and am prepared to wait a while before condemning or exonerating their actions and would hope that a few others may do so too.

... no outside the company has actually seen the full text.
So there has to be an element of conjecture about the contents of that agreement? This allows the formulation of any number of scenarios that can arise from the agreement - none of which are provable either way.
The press release is just that - a public relations announcement. Nowhere in it does it say that Novell are granting MS rights to use their patents (or vice versa), it does say that Novell will not litigate against MS customers for infringement of Novell patents and MS makes the same covenant towards Novell Enterprise customers. Both retain the right to sue each other for patent infringement.

Whilst I found PJ's original mission (coverage and collation of details of the SCO vs IBM case) admirable, informative and enlightening, I do not take as fact her musings on what may be in a document that she has not seen or upon the thoughts of Eben Moglen. Bear in mind that Moglen said that the covanent doesn't breach GPLv2 but v3 will be written so that it would breach that.
The removal of the page may have something to do with the fact that this one http://www.novell.com/linux/microsoft/faq_opensour ce.html replaced it.

So back to, Really?

Actually, PJ did not use quotation marks around the word "Fork", she either doesn't know what the term means or, if she does, she used it cynically. The contributor to /. who submitted the story used the "fork" notation to try and indicate that it wasn't.
The plug-in has been on the OOo list of things to do, is an active project on SourceForge and has now been submitted for acceptance.
You may like to read this to get the official repudiation of PJ's Groklaw FUD http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2006/Dec-04.html at least this is written by someone in a position to actually know about the plug-in.
The main comment of note, from the documents on Groklaw, are about .Net and Mono where MS say that they are not going to open the source of .Net to the OSS community but the community is free to use Mono if they wish. The mixed message being that there is some .Net infringing code in Mono and Novell SuSE customers would, alone, be exempted from any litigation that MS may institute - I would, again, take that as a FUD item as Mono was built without any MS involvement and can only benefit Microsoft as it enables .Net usage by the *nix community and thus extends their premier delivery medium.

On your final points, we can agree. Microsoft's past dealings should leave nobody in any doubt of what they can do and deeply wary of their current motives but, to a large extent, this reinforces my point. Microsoft are past masters at generating FUD and they are fully aware that any dealings that they have with the (F)OSS community will generate a high level of conversation (to say the least) and, you will accept, that there is always a readiness within certain groups (on /. - never :)) to fire off verbal canonnades with accompanying fireworks display at anyone and anything that is suspected of consorting with the "devil". They have got a pretty cheap but highly visible a

Really? Just where in the agreement is that?

The two companies also announced an agreement to provide each other's customers with patent coverage for their respective products.

Novell will use its patent portfolio to protect open source products against potential third-party patent challenges, meaning that Novell is prepared to asserts its patents against such third parties.

I can't think of any reason to go to the trouble of removing that page, unless it should turn out that they no longer intend to keep the promise. In combination with the patent coverage deal, I find I have great difficulty imagining Novell emerging as the Defender of Open Source.

So, yeah. "Really".

A plug-in isn't a fork! This is a plug-in development that can be found on SourceForge

MS & Novell Pact:
Good Guys/Bad Guys: Uncertain.
Caught in between: SuSE developers.
Suspicious: Just about anyone caught in the latest paranoid/conspiracy spotlights.
Losers: Novell.
Outright FUD winners: MS and and roving conspiracy theorist(s).

I think there's a little room in the spectrum between... "Novell Enthusiast" let's say, and "Conspiracy Theorist". Room for a little healthy scepticism, perhaps? After all, there are one or two indications that Microsoft may have hatched the odd conspiracy here and there in the past. Given that history, it's hardly irrational to consider that this may be the start of a new one.

Download the patch here!

This service is offered to you by Novell, your new Microsoft partner!

Everything I've read by Novell in responce to the criticism from the OS community tells me that this article means nothing. Had this article came out when the deal first happened it would be different but now that Novell has communicated that they didnt' want the IP clauses in it and they actually want to make MS and Linux easier to work together I don't believe this article. It just fuels the fud factories. Novell wanted to get MS to actually allow the Visual Studios and Office on a Linux platform. Stuff like that. This deal is to form a bridge between 2 companies that really should work together instead of figthing. Imagine a world where MS and Linux worked even 25% together than they do now. Here is an open letter to the community by Novell. And other releases.

Everything I've read by Novell in responce to the criticism from the OS community tells me that this article means nothing. Had this article came out when the deal first happened it would be different but now that Novell has communicated that they didnt' want the IP clauses in it and they actually want to make MS and Linux easier to work together I don't believe this article. It just fuels the fud factories. Novell wanted to get MS to actually allow the Visual Studios and Office on a Linux platform. Stuff like that. This deal is to form a bridge between 2 companies that really should work together instead of figthing. Imagine a world where MS and Linux worked even 25% together than they do now. Here is an open letter to the community by Novell. And other releases.

if shipping a package with an unaccepted patch is considered "forking", then how the fuck is this news?

SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop is the first fully supported enterprise desktop to deliver OpenOffice.org 2.0, the leading open source office suite. OpenOffice includes a powerful spreadsheet program, business presentations tool and word processor. The Novell® edition of OpenOffice.org will support many Visual Basic macros, closing one of the chief compatibility gaps between OpenOffice.org and Microsoft Office. OpenOffice.org 2.0 can save and open documents created in Microsoft Office formats including Excel pivot tables, and it is the only office suite available today that fully supports the OpenDocument file format, the new public standard for document files. Because OpenDocument is a public standard maintained by the open source community, it eliminates vendor lock-in by ensuring information saved in spreadsheets, documents and presentations is freely accessible to any OpenDocument-supporting application.

if shipping a package with an unaccepted patch is considered "forking", then how the fuck is this news?

SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop is the first fully supported enterprise desktop to deliver OpenOffice.org 2.0, the leading open source office suite. OpenOffice includes a powerful spreadsheet program, business presentations tool and word processor. The Novell® edition of OpenOffice.org will support many Visual Basic macros, closing one of the chief compatibility gaps between OpenOffice.org and Microsoft Office. OpenOffice.org 2.0 can save and open documents created in Microsoft Office formats including Excel pivot tables, and it is the only office suite available today that fully supports the OpenDocument file format, the new public standard for document files. Because OpenDocument is a public standard maintained by the open source community, it eliminates vendor lock-in by ensuring information saved in spreadsheets, documents and presentations is freely accessible to any OpenDocument-supporting application.

Personally, I'm wondering if Cohen's departure has anything to do with his position on the Novell/Microsoft deal? (look at the section labeled "Good for the Open Source Community")

While I enjoy imaginations of Linus giving Stuart Cohen the metaphorical/physical boot, I think the realistic interpretation of "leaving to pursue other open source opportunities" means "huge bed of cash to land on from Novell/Microsoft deal". After all, work with Novell is still considered "open source" in letter if not spirit. Perhaps he has a new job coinciding with Novell's plan to add support for Microsoft's OpenXML document type to Open Office?

Something about it smells fishy to me...