Novell Vice Chairman on Ximian, SCO

dotnothing writes "microsoft-watch.com has an interview with Chris Stone, who is the Vice Chairman of Novell. Stone says that Novell will be introducing a Linux distribution with Novell products and the Ximian desktop, but that they are not out to compete with Microsoft. He also expressed some gratitude to Red Hat for countersuing SCO."

Comments

not to compete with M$?

[gurisees]

but that they are not out to compete with Microsoft


so, will they install Ximian on XP?

Don't buy SCO.

[nuggz]

Don't buy out SCO, it is a bad investment.

To buy SCO you would need a reason why this is a good use of money, to make them go away is probaly not a good use of corporate funds.

Those millions could do a lot of legal fighting, or development, or even advertising. All with a better ROI then removing SCO.

Fund

[ultrabot]

"He also expressed some gratitude to Red Hat for countersuing SCO."

He knows what to do, with the fund and all.

This is why Mono is such a bad idea

[FreeUser]

Microsoft Watch: What's the future of Mono, Ximian's implementation of .Net on Linux?

Stone: We are going to continue to push it. .Net on Linux is a great idea. We just hope Microsoft isn't against the idea.

And therein lies the fatal flaw in pushing a Microsoft-controlled (and possibly patented) standard on a free platform ... it puts you in the position of looking over your shoulder for as long as it is deployed. Indeed, were the GNU/Linux desktop and server implimentations to fully embrace it, Linux servers and desktops could well put themselves in the position of existing solely at the pleasure of Microsoft ... which would be a fleeting thing at best.

It isn't about 'sucking up valuable developer time and effort' (plenty of things suck up valuable developer time and effort, indeed, that is the very essence of free software and the freedom for people to explore solutions wherever they lead) ... it is about ceding authority to an avowed enemy of software freedom ("Linux is Unamerican" Microsoft may or may not be inherently evil, but that they are an enemy of free software is indisputable), be it authority in unilaterally defining a standard or, worse, authority in having the legal clout via patent (and perhaps copyright) law to kill a free project dead ... perhaps an entire genre of free projects if said project provides critical underlying infrastructure.

We dismiss such concerns at our own, rather substantial, risk.

Re:This is why Mono is such a bad idea

[alienw]

Why don't you people get a clue first? No underlying Mono infrastructure is threatened by patents, since ECMA requires that all patents be licensed at no charge, and .Net is standardized with them. There are a few pieces which could potentially be patented, but their removal would not significantly harm Mono. If Microsoft still hasn't sued the Wine project, there's a very slim chance they could sue Mono.

Your other side of the argument is basically the "not invented here" thing. If Microsoft invented it, it must be bad for free software. It's not like Microsoft can force Mono to change its ways, so I fail to see your point. Mono is not a Wine clone, it's a development framework for Linux, one that could potentially be very useful for writing portable software.

I don't see anyone here bitching about Java, even though it's also a similar, proprietary technology controlled by one party -- Sun. Hell, I would say that Linux is more of a threat to Sun than Microsoft. So why isn't Java a threat to Linux?

Re:This is why Mono is such a bad idea

[alienw]

OS/2 ran Win3.1 apps natively, so nobody wrote OS/2 apps, but Win3.1 apps.

If OS/2 hadn't run Windows apps, nobody would have ever used it. The reason it died was the high price and poor hardware support (it didn't run on non-IBM machines without a lot of tweaking). Stop using that example, for fuck's sake.

The lesson is that as soon as you support somebody else's standard, then nobody has any reason to use your standard.

Does linux have anything remotely resembling .Net? Other than mono, of course.

Re:This is why Mono is such a bad idea

[Malcontent]

Interesting that the PRO MS posts on this thread are all modded up the wazoo even when they are factually incorrect.

1) ECMA requires RAND not "free and clear"
2) MS controls patents on ado.net and forms and many other parts of .NET
3) MS has publicly said that they will enforce their property rights when it comes to .NET.
4) MS sues businesses all the time.
5) Giving away .0001% of your income does not make you good and neither does it undo all the evil things you have done in the past. Especially if you got the money in an evil way in the first place.

Re:Oh yeah, they'll go for that.

[IamTheRealMike]

They've allowed Wine. Why? Because they have no choice in the matter.

Great exposure for Linux

[lrandall]

This can only be a good thing. Despite what a lot of people say, Novell has lots of customers, and most are really commited to Novell products. Thus with them starting to move to Linux, and push it to their customers, we will see a lot of corporate Novell users switching to Linux. Novell has great tools for Windows, and if they port them to Linux (seems like they plan too), it will make convincing people to use Linux that much easier. PHB's still love to pay for software, let them pay for Novell Linux

Re:Bet they hadn't thought of this

[Lord_Slepnir]

There are three ways to get around that.

(a) have some software layer that can use windows .dlls in linux, just like Wine. Software will be significantly slower, however.

(b) have something that can compile .Net code the way .Net does, but uses Linux libraries instead. You'll get things to run a bit faster than option a, but it's going to be quite an undertaking to rewrite every microsoft library to be completly compatable with linux, especially the DirectX stuff. Wine has already done a lot of that, but thier windows libraries don't function exactly like the native windows ones.

(c) Microsoft decides to open-source thier libraries, embraces linux. Then I'll be able to port my copy of Duke Nukem Forever to Linux. This will be the second largest article on slashdot that week, right behind the second coming of Christ.

Re:Red Hat/SCO legal docs

[RevMike]

Compilers don't always produce the same binary from the smae source.

Besides the obvious issues - which compiler/linker, precisely what version, what patches, which static libraries, what versions, etc - there is also the issue of alignment. I've worked with compilers/linkers that would not zero out empty space within the created images. Therefore the binary image would contain random gibberish that happened to be in memory when the compile ran. Thus, the "same" binary could generate different checksums.

IBM?

[Erwos]

You know, Stone's little talk reminds me of what I've heard coming out of IBM lately. I can't help but wonder if Novell took a look at IBM, decided that they've done quite well for themselves with Linux, and decided to jump ALL the way onboard too.

Evolution-Groupwise by itself is enough for this merger to produce some great things.

-Erwos

Chris Stone and Novell Linux Distributions

[alistair]

Chris Stone is an excellent guy for Novell to have as a VP, as well as being a well respected chair of the Open Group he also used to be base player for the band that became Aerosmith (he left 6 months before they had their first big hit).

However, I have to wonder about the wisdom of producing yet another Linux distribution, particularly one aimed at the desktop arena. Although you may not know it from the figures, many internaional companies have already standardised on SuSE or Red Hat for their Linux vendors and the name Novell still has some bad connertations in the Corporate world.

Much of Novells strategy today seems to be selling very high value (expensive) products based around XML and Web Services (see their Silverstream aquisition) to Fortune 500 / FTSE 100 companies. I know as an implemetor for their excellent DirXML Meta Directory in a 100,000 employee company.

To my mind they would be better forming an alliance of the sort that SuSE and Sun announced yeterday, where Sun support and Distribute SuSE Linux and SuSE use Sun's Java in all their distributions. Novell could add their tools to SuSE and Red Hat, such as Directory Clients and Xen Works clients, concentrate on selling their servers on the SuSE and Red Hat platforms they already support and bundle SuSE and RedHat desktops for Netware customers. This would give them client penetration and server sales opportunities without having to compete with the Linux vendors. They could also leverage the relationship these vendors have with Sun and IBM who would be happy as the Novell server components also run on Solaris and (I think) AIX. Thoughts?

Ah, would you negotiate with terrorists?

[dido]

Wouldn't buying out SCO be just like negotiating with terrorists? Make no mistake: they want to be bought out! McBride and his cronies get themselves a golden parachute, SCO disappears, and the lawsuit disappears, and everyone is happy. Until one fine day a new piddly-ass failing SCO wannabe corporation with some semi-valuable "intellectual property" tries to do the same. There will be no end to it then.

IBM and RedHat and everyone concerned should do their utmost to grind SCO into the dust, so as to give a clear message that this sort of "terrorism" will never be tolerated.