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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."
RedHat didn't purchase Ximian?
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Free your mind.
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.
I cannot imagine a world in which Microsoft would even consider allowing such a thing to happen.
Still this looks like a good thing overall.
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NSFWWell, I work for a small company running Netware 5.1 and Win98 desktops. I'm looking into doing an LTSP+Mosix type setup, because we only use about 4 applications on older PII hardware.
I'd hate to give up my Netware box, file permissions alone (Inherited rights/filters) are enough to keep me on it. Getting a seemless login (legally - I have an awesome NDS Pam module from France ;) from a Linux box would be awesome.
So, no. In my case, they're not competing with MS, because MS isn't being considered.
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
I don't see why they could be against this idea. One thing that keeps many people away from switching to linux is that there are a lot of products you can't get for linux that you can get for windows. By making .Net for linux, software makers can easily port products from windows to linux. If done right, it would just be a matter of compiling it on a linux version of .Net and including a .run file with the distribution CD.
They aren't going to destroy Evolution AND they're going to make it work with GroupWise. Ahh... for those of us running Novell/Linux in the academic world who are getting rather tired of Microsoft's mafia-esque licensing tactics (software assurance, anyone?), this is great news. One less major hurdle between now and a Linux desktop rollout. Yay Novell!
These VPs can ham it up all they want, but if they worked for me, I wouldn't let them out of the executive wash room. I'm sorry, but Novell's copyright stunt embarassed them at least as much as it did SCO. To allude to it ominously like the preview of a summer reality show is just tacky.
It's a bad idea.
Remember OS/2? No? See? Nobody remembers OS/2 (Bill Gates quote!).
OS/2 ran Win3.1 apps natively, so nobody wrote OS/2 apps, but Win3.1 apps.
The lesson is that as soon as you support somebody else's standard, then nobody has any reason to use your standard.
So what did Novell actually purchase ?
there are many answers to this question (of which i know none), but the one that forks in my mind is the actual 'control' of the future 'direction'. This will be used for Novell, and their purposes (which happens to be 'making money'). That in itself should be worth the dollars that were spent...
We're like rats, in some experiment! -- George Costanza
Novell didn't fail because the market wasn't ripe, Novell failed because they bungled the whole thing.
Don't forget, the market was also rigged. Even if they had made nothing but perfect decisions, they still would have failed.
- Hail to our fearless misleader! Fool speed ahead!
Who marked this insightful, when it is wrong?
ECMA only requires RAND, which means almost nothing in real terms.
In some cases, Microsoft and others have said "royalty-free", which is still clearly not GPLable and does not seem to extend much beyond a very basic core of C#, which I believe is far less than you get with a Java distribution, for example.
On the reference implementations I find mention of the mplementations being limited to "non-commercial" uses.
I complain about Java's lack of openness all the time, but the one thing Sun has never done (yet, to the best of my knowledge) is threaten third-party Java implementations with patents. Unfortunately, .net is not open, including specific technologies that Mono has said they would try to be compatible.
SCO is guarding their code, because they say it's theirs, but with Linux code is already out in the open. So how do we know WHEN SCO created their code?
SCO has had a pretty extensive version control system for a number of years, which contains code checkin dates, code author, etc. It's easy to forge some dates at a superficial level, but I'm hoping the judge would require a code audit of some of the sources which are harder to forge, such as backup tapes or the institutional memory of some ex-employees (SCO has thousands of bitter, layed-off ex-employees).
However, SCO doesn't have to prove it to you Mr. Slashdot reader, just to the courts. So you and I will probably always remain in the dark unless IBM or RedHat let us know more.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
To those who wish that IBM or whoever would simply buy out SCO, consider the following:
1) America is rampant with frivolous lawsuits. Hell, we invented the term, along with nuiscience suit. What big company doesn't have one or more?
2)There will be more to follow. Count on it. When you get big enough, you get sued. If you're intimidated now(or your manager is), then you might as well drop Linux because this won't be the last. This lawsuit is as full of s*** as they come, and if we as a community concede to their desire for a buyout under these circumstances, we have no chance of surviving.
3)The only thing which gives this lawsuit any legitimacy is the fact that SCO bought some UNIX licenses in the past. Everything else about it is made up of lies and contradictions:
4)The only thing that matters is what is done in court. "Cease and desist" letters, random claims of ownership of IP, threats to sue anyone and everyone, look pathetic. Despite all the fears of FUD scaring users away, most people understand this. This is why smart companies have a policy of silence during litigation.
5)Be grateful SCO's claims are so outrageous. It's as if I were to send Microsoft a letter claiming they stole some of my IP and therefore the entire company is mine. Or that some MS employee sneaked some SCO code into Windows, and therefore SCO owns all of Windows XP.
The best thing to do is point people to articles like Eric Raymond's and ANUPAM CHANDER's as well as the fact that in the first court challenge by LinuxTag, SCO backed off.