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Bruce Perens had a petition running for a while that listed thousands of disgusted and angry linux advocates when novell signed the microsoft pact (see http://www.techp.org/ - note: offline at the moment).

As far as I'm concerned, Novell stabbed the community in the back. I don't use Novell products and neither should you.

Thanks

Bruce

- More than 3000 people/companies have moved away from SuSE, OpenSuSE and Novell products [0]
- Novell is going to incorporate GPL3 [1]
- Vista still sucks

[0] - http://techp.org/p/1
[1] - http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS3755005405.html

Those of you who would like to tell Xandros what you think may do so here. You may also tell Novell here. - Bruce

Those of you who would like to tell Xandros what you think may do so here. You may also tell Novell here. - Bruce

If Novell is looking to undo the situation they've found themselves in, they should have done it when the Protest the Microsoft-Novell Patent Agreement* petition came out. They had lots of time to rethink their decision. For all I know, Novell's intentions with the EFF may not be as noble as suggested.

[*] - http://techp.org/p/1

When Jeremy Allison resigned from Novell, the fact of his resignation was known by the public for some weeks before his last official day as a Novell employee. Jeremy had to refrain from doing or saying certain things until he was actually off the payroll - for example he did not sign the petition until then. Love is probably in the same situation right now: known to have resigned, but still to some degree responsible to the company.

We might not get to know how Love feels about the Novell-Microsoft agreement for some time, and should not make assumptions. It may well be that his strongest feelings are about wanting to continue to develop a great desktop, and that Novell might not be such a great place to do that any longer. That's all he mentioned in his blog.

That said, the agreement is a big honkin' elephant in Novell's living room that is not going away. It's unfair to ask people not to speculate, we just have to make it clear that such speculations are vapors until Love himself comments.

Bruce

I know a lot of people in the linux community (as well as being a LUG pres.) and I've only run across one person in the last 15 years that was a complete asshole about using Linux and nothing else. Actually, he didn't limit that idealism to just linux - it was basically whatever he was doing was the right way, and everyone else was wrong. That's a pretty small percentage of nut jobs. Take a good look through Bruce Peren's petition*, you'll see the exact opposite of what Opes is talking about. This is also something that has upset and angered a lot of people, but the vast majority of signees (3000+) have kept their comments reasonable. This seems to be more in line with the Linux community I know of.

[*] - http://techp.org/p/1

http://techp.org/
http://techp.org/p/1

http://techp.org/
http://techp.org/p/1

Depending on the legitimacy of this chart

--
Ron, we smell poniez: http://www.techp.org/

Yes, I stopped reading it after that. As far as I'm concerned, in principle, SuSE is no longer OSS. Sign the petition. http://www.techp.org/

They are just pissing away money fighting an unbeatable battle. The only way they can lock down the content is by not using it.

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Novell petition: http://www.techp.org/

A nice way to test-drive a distro before installing it. Check out distrowatch.com. Since your inclined to torment yourself with Advanced Math, you might be interested in Scientific Linux.

1) Debian == Knoppix, Ubuntu
2) Redhat == CentOS, Fedora, Mandriva, Scientific Linux
3) Slackware == Slax, Vector Linux
4) SuSE == Microsoft (see: techp.org )

Q: And where have we heard that name before?
A: http://www.google.com/search?as_q=sco+Deutsche+Ban k

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Ron we smell ponies: http://www.techp.org/

Please sign the Open Letter to Novell. I'd like to get that over 3000 signatures at least today. It's at about 2950 now.

Thanks

Bruce

Hate would indicate mostly emotion. There is plenty of emotion that drives my negativity towards Microsoft, but there is also just as much logic as well as principle. I started disliking Microsoft from the first week I typed win at a dos prompt. Many of the programs I had written in DOS did not run. My 386 would endlessly grind away trying to run "win", and oftentimes when something did happen on the screen, it was not a positive experience. There were many inconsistencies in both useability and performance. I was running Stacker at the time as well. A friend of mine used to work for them and mentioned one day how Microsoft had stole Stac's code and put it in DOS 6 and tried to get away with it. Stac won the court case, but the litigation expenses were tremendous. I never saw Stacker again. I thought that was pretty crummy that a company could do that to another.

Meanwhile Windows 95 came out and everyone was saying how it was going to fix all the problems with windows 3.1. Everyone threw money into upgrades but 95 failed to deliver. Things were actually worse, only faster. One day, someone mentioned how Microsoft was trying to kill off Netscape and force people to use Internet explorer. I never saw (the) Netscape again. I thought that was pretty crummy that a company could get away with something like that.

Meanwhile, windows 98 was in the works and everyone was saying how it was going to fix all the problemws with windows 95. Everyone threw money into upgrades but 98 failed to deliver. Things were actually worse, only faster. About this time, Microsoft was in an Anti-Trust trial for all their marketing activities. I figured this was the end of all this product killing nonsense, but the judge in the case "accidentally" said some stuff to the media that he wasn't supposed to and a lot of evidence had to be thrown out of court.

This cycle of fixed-in-the-next-update repeats itself every few years (and on patch tuesday) like clockwork. Fortunately, for Microsoft, there are plenty of people in the world that keep buying into the marketing hype and pretty wrappers and promises of a better product. Microsoft's success is simply a result of a well tuned marketing engine being passed off as a technological innovator and leader; it's complete hogwash but people are suckers for things that look nice.

The icing on the cake is that Microsoft is now financially wealthy enough to buy or litigate-to-death whatever opposition they encounter in order to keep their insanely dreadful products on the top (only?) shelf. With the advent of Vista and DRM (presented under the guise of a Good Thing (tm)) Microsoft will maintain their overbearing,unprincipled,hated success while keeping any alternatives completely off the hardware which are not sanctioned by Microsoft. All of the above is evidence that Microsoft is unable to compete in the market fairly. They need to resort to corporate level sucker-punches and knees-to-the-crotch in order to stay afloat. It's how they built their business, and it's how they stay in business and it's why so many people "hate" them.

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*Ron we smell poniez: http://www.techp.org/petition/show/1

I wouldn't have said "heretic". Aside from a slightly belligerent initial exchange, I've always found your position to be rational and sensible. We differ a little on how active the community should be when it comes to supplying Novell with feedback regarding their dealings with MS, that's all. In any case, I don't really consider myself a follower of St iGNUtious; I'm more a "linus" than I am a "richard" or an "eric"

Also, I must apologise if I mischaracterised your position. The intention wasn't so much to put words in your mouth as it was to clarify your position - but then I got carried away bashing one of my least favourite memes.

Certainly, any improvement in communications is always welcome, and I suppose realistically, if we sit around waiting for business to build a universal translator, we may be waiting for some time.

I would suggest that the FSF could provide that service, the legal side is there but, to date, the PR side is not.

Not sure about the FSF in that role. They strike me as just a bit too political and a bit too anti-corporate to gain much credibility in business circles. I'd have though it was a better fit for the OSI. But then again, opensource.org doesn't have any news since July 2005 when they announced Michael Tiemann as interim president. So maybe not.

Of course, Bruce Perens has been doing this sort of thing off his own bat for a while now. Have you seen his petition, by the way? It's rational, polite, and fulfils most of your criteria for a community statement. It isn't as clear as some of Mr. Perens' writings, perhaps, but it gets the point across. And it has going on three thousand names to back the point, many of whom have some interesting points of their own to add.

Then there's the Samba team's open letter, which I think does a much better job of laying out the FOSS position and why we find Novell's actions so objectionable. Sadly, Novell have already read and dismissed this one. In fact, Novell's response across the board so far has been "you might think that, but this is why you're wrong". It makes a fellow wonder just how we can demonstrate how seriously we take this issue, except by voting with our feet.

I suppose... I think part of the problem is that Novell suffers from that disease which leads organisations to believe they can solve problems by altering the perceptions of others rather than by amending behaviour in themselves. Once a company starts to think like that, it becomes almost impossible to hold any meaningful dialogue with them, because any unwelcome opinions get routinely passed to PR as problems to solve, without any requirement that they pass through the brains of the people making the decisions.

It also tends not to work very well with the FOSS community. One of the first things you learn as a developer is to watch out for who can walk the walk, and who's just talking the talk.

Incidentally, speaking of the Samba Team, if you haven't seen it, check out Jeremy Allison's column in the latest Linux User and Developer. He goes to some pains to point out that as a Novell employee, he can't really criticise them in public, then points out that the Samba team is under no such prohibition, and provides a link to the Letter To Novell. He also finds some interesting parallels with the RedHat/Oracle dustup as well.

In all other respects I agree completely with you and must say that I've enjoyed the discussion. In fact I don't think it unreasonable to say that this the sort of discussion that should be taking place between the FOSS community, FSF and corporate world now.

Actually, even though you've been modded down, you bring up an excellent point and an interesting case study. In high school, the only computer available to me was an Apple IIe. I was absolutely fascinated with it. It had very little software for it but my curiosity eventually led me into BASIC programming. While a program was loaded, you could break out of it and actually see the code that ran it. I enrolled in a visual arts class so I could get more time working with it. Today, I program in Java, C, Perl, Shell and (years ago) Assembly. I also work with embedded Linux development on the ARM architecture. I am quite fluent in Linux and Solaris administration on the workstation and enterprise platforms as well. I have had two consulting companies and a Celluar phone company offer me positions this year (They came looking for me through mutual friends, I was not looking). My point is, this all started with a little bit of curiosity about how things work and a little bit of initiative to figure it out. If the Apple IIe would have come with everything already made for it, locked down with DRM and god knows what else, I would have already been beaten by the machine before even getting started. Having a somewhat open system allowed me the freedom to form theories and then prove them out. Linux still gives me that opportunity today. The opportunities of an open system are priceless.

*Ron - We smell poniez: http://www.techp.org/

FTFA: ".. will create a schism in the open source community and fork Linux."

What's the big problem with a fork? So you have Microvell Linux and the real Linux.

Microvell Lizard Linux is going to be a pregnant toad injected full of politics, DRM and Microsoft IP. Microsoft will have the option that way of killing it then with litigation, or letting it stick around to sell to Windows people that think they are smart switching to (MLL) Linux.

The real Linux will still be around, minus whatever Microsoft pays the courts to tell everyone they can't use anymore. The inevitability of all this is approaching like a garbage truck, so what is the problem with forking? M$ has been preparing for this for a long time buying up patents and everything else. Beginning over with a forked code base may be the only alternative. Either that, or put all your computer gear in front of the garbage truck and let it have it's way.

Novell, we smell poniez: http://techp.org/

In short: by dividing the community into protected and unprotected parts. By saying: "our customers" are protected, instead of making a deal for the entire Linux community. By taking code written by countless programmers and not giving them or their users any of that protection they deem necessary for their customers. By technically and legally staying inside the GPLv2, but morally and ethically being in another galaxy.

Bruce Perens' petition: http://techp.org/petition/show/1
Groklaw article on GPLv3 & Novell/MS deal: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200611161 03031303

Ron seems to have completely forgotten about Microsoft's track record with "collaboration"..psst Ron..it sucks.

*Ron, we smell poniez: http://techp.org/

I don't think there's anything illegal about Novell dropping its support for the Hula project, but it's another sign that they've welshed out on their former friends for money. About the best we could do in response would be to continue the project and get it deployed in the enterprise.

Bruce

I know fork is a dirty word in this game, but why?. Why not just download the openSuSE 10.x source code and start rebuilding? call it openESuS or something. This seems like a perfectly reasonable opportunity to excersize that right under the GPL.

Btw - if you want to let novell know how you feel, Bruce Perens has setup an open letter to Ron Hovsepian. If you agree, and want to sign, it would reflect best on the OSS community if you keep the comments professional. ergo: "Fuck you" can be put as "Decided to abandon your product based on principle and merit". The choice is yours however, as is everything with OSS. http://techp.org/

Do me a favor. Take your anger here for a moment and help me out, if you haven't done so yet. But no F-words there, please, it would detract from the document. Even if Novell tosses it off, it's point is already made to a lot of Novell users and VARs and investors and the press. They've been calling me.

Bruce

Bruce

Protest the Novell-Microsoft Patent Agreement.

My open letter to Novell is still available for you to sign. There are 2245 signatures from angry people as I write this. That is an unprecedented number for anything like this, and shows a tremendous depth of anger in the Free Software community over this deal.

Bruce

There's more at stake with the Patent Agreement than just some money changing hands. From what I understand, under the MS/Novell agreement, there would be a potential opportunity for maliciously inserting copyrighted material into the codebase of whatever OSS projects Novell is working on. The codebase could find it's way into other projects too, creating an unintentional derived work off proprietary code. This is why everyone is getting so pissy about the whole thing. There's an Open Letter to Novell on Bruce Peren's website filled with a bunch of sigs of people telling Novell they want nothing to do with them because of this. I posted this link in another comment yesterday. I'm not affiliated, I just think it's worth knowing about, and signing if it suits you. http://techp.org/petition/show/1

The patent system in the US is a complete mess. When a monopoly can be recognized by the legal system, and still allowed to fill it's war chest unquestioned, something needs an overhaul. I too challenge microsoft, just as sco was challenged, to come forward with their disagreement. This is pointless because in all probability, microsofts intent is not based on resolving a patent issue. Their intent is to kill the competition. They will drag this FUD out for as long as possible. Novell is just a pawn (or paw0n3d rather) in the whole thing. In the meantime, you can

let Novell know how you feel here: http://techp.org/

Let's be truthful about software patents: there can be no non-trivial computer program, either proprietary or Free, that does not use methods that are claimed in software patents currently in force and unlicensed for use in that program. There are simply enough patents, on enough fundamental principles, to make this so. If all software patents were enforced fully, the software industry would grind to a halt.

Much of TFA seems to be written from the petition, or vice-versa. It addresses the issues of alienating the FOSS community the way that Novell is planning on doing, and how much of the codebase Novell relies on, will be unavailable to them should GPL3 be rolled out soon.

http://techp.org/petition/show/1

There's an open petition to Novell's CEO by Bruce Perens protesting the Microsoft-Novell deal, signing requires registering with your name and email address.

To those who care go http://techp.org/petition/show/1

There is Bruce Perens' Global Technology Policy Institute, I thought that might be relevant in this context.

It's there allready! It's called the Global Technology Policy Institute and is headed by Bruce Perens.

There are actually multiple lobbies for tech related issues. Some are just starting out, though most have some efforts occuring right now.

The first that has to be mentioned -- even if some moderator is hostile to it -- is the grandaddy Free Software Foundation, though there are others if that one is somehow not to your liking;

Bruce Perens has 3 efforts at the Global Technology Policy Institute.

The folks at The Linux Show often promote two efforts; GeekPac and American Open Technology Consortium

...and I'm sure that is not a complete list. If you can't support one, support one of the others.