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Novell Gets $348 Million From Microsoft
An anonymous reader writes, "Novell has published additional details about its agreements with Microsoft concerning Windows and Linux interoperability and patents. It seems the company is receiving an up-front payment of $348 million from Microsoft, for SLES subscription certificates and for patent cross-licensing. Microsoft will make an upfront payment to Novell of $240 million for SLES subscription 'certificates' that Microsoft can use, resell, or distribute over the term of the agreement. Regarding the patent cooperation agreement, Microsoft will make an up-front net payment to Novell of $108 million, and Novell will make ongoing payments totaling at least $40 million over five years to Microsoft."
Go for it, guys.
Microsoft Vader: How much is your soul?
Novell Spaceballs Skywalker: $380 million and change, and we'll throw in SuSE.
Microsoft Vader: You fool! We would have paid you 10x as much.
As scary as this initially sounds (Microsoft Linux anyone?), the partnership makes sense. Microsoft gains the capability to run Linux better in a virtualized environment (or vice versa), and Novell gets a ton of much needed cash. For years, it's been obvious that at some point Microsoft would have to start recognizing the fast growth of Linux as an enterprise platform, and it appears that this move is Microsoft's first step.
The only concern I have is that Microsot continues further down the path and begins to create closed source applications or kernel modules specifically to run Microsoft apps. If they can swing this, the potential for degradation of the upward Linux momentum is high. John Dvorak of PC Magazine figures that Microsoft will develop GPL work-arounds, and eventually begin releasing Linux apps.
What then? Mac servers for everyone?
Crack - Free with every butt and set of boobs
is $348 million. How do you call it? Inflation!
Something seems fishy here.
And its not the corporate sushi bar, or koi pond.
Or that nasty intern on the fourth floor.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
Read the press release, it is not a patent deal, that would put them in violation of the GPL. Instead it is a conenant not to sue.
So if I understand correctly. Microsoft is admitting that their software violates some of Novell's patents.
However, instead of protecting themselves and their customers by doing a cross licensing deal with Novell, Microsoft is keeping themselves and their customers at risk by entering into a non binding revocable 'covenant ' instead.
I wonder how well this will sit Microsoft's shareholders knowing that this risk exists and it is not being addressed permanently when such an option exists.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
"Under the patent cooperation agreement, Novell's customers receive directly from Microsoft a covenant not to sue. Novell does not receive a patent license or covenant not to sue from Microsoft, and we have not agreed with Microsoft to any condition that would contradict the conditions of the GPL. Our agreement does not affect the freedom that Novell or anyone else in the open source community, including developers, has under the GPL and does not impose any condition that would contradict the conditions of the GPL. Therefore, the agreement is fully compliant with the GPL,"
If the answer is war, you are asking the wrong question
Bill: "I'm worried, Steve. We're losing more ground to Linux. It's on the verge of becoming a non-nerd OS."
Steve: "I've got an idea. Let's buy another version of Linux."
Bill: "Are you crazy? The SCO gambit didn't fool anybody."
Steve: "No, not like that. Instead of trying to fool a judge, we'll try to fool our customers."
Bill: "So? That's already company policy."
Steve: "Yes, but we'll release our own version. We tell the public that we're joining the Linux bandwagon, and with our marketing clout, it will soon become the dominant version on the market. Then when the public is convinced that MS-Linux IS Linux, we make gradual changes to turn it into an unusable bloated wreck. Linux will be finished!"
Bill: "No way! Remember, Steve, I used to write software. No self-respecting programmer would deliberately wreck an OS. Where are we going to get a bunch of programmers to do that?"
Steve: "We have all the guys who wrote Vista. I think they could do it."
( Steve exits )
( 10 minutes later, Steve returns, slamming the door quickly behind him. He looks like he has seen a ghost )
Bill: "So, how did it go?
Steve: ( shaking his head ) "Bad, bad, bad, bad, b-"
Bill: Get a grip! What happened?
Steve: "They won't do it...I mean they'll do it, but they want to do it well! They won't wreck it."
Bill: "You explained the plan to them?"
Steve: "Yes, very clearly. Twice. But they just started chanting. One word, over and over and over and over and over and ov-
( Bill picks up a chair, bashes Steve over the head with it. )
Steve: "Wh..? Uh..thanks...I needed that."
( Bill puts down the chair, walks to the door )
Steve: "Nooo! Please don't op-"
( Bill opens the door. From down the hall a chorus of voices can be heard. )
Voices: "-ux! Linux! Linux! Linux! Linux! Linux! Lin-"
( Bill slams the door )
Bill: "That's bad."
Steve: "It's worse. They now refuse to work on Vista any more!"
Bill: "That's ok. We aren't going to support it for very long anyway."
Steve: "So what are we going to do?"
Bill: "I think I can still make the plan work. Listen: we'll let them produce a good version of Linux. We'll make it very good for servers."
Steve: "Suse? You mean we'll take over Novell?"
Bill: "Yes. That gives us a big step up to dominate the Linux market like you suggested. But instead of trying to convice the world that Linux is junk, we'll tell them that Linux is only for servers."
Steve: "But it will migrate to the desktop! We have to kill it!"
Bill: "No, we'll let the guys downstairs make it the way they want it. Keep it for nerds. Each update will be more and more technical. Let them gradually turn it into something that only a Linux pro can use."
Steve: "We're gonna pay them to write Gentoo?"
that this includes a deal to not persue much further the SCO case. While the feds may go after MS for their involvement with the shady deal with SCO, this is probably an early payoff to Novell to drop it. I just wonder if this allows Novell to go after Sun or did MS protect them as well?
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
... I guess now we don't like SLES. Shoddy security, I've heard.
Novell is in huge financial trouble. If you read the article, they are trying to negotiate with their major debtors to come to an agreement and continue payments. Wells Fargo and Citibank are calling two of their major loans out against Novell. Also note the rumors of layoffs, investigating other financial mishaps, and the late filings of their earnings. This is what causes many companies to start heading down the tubes. The whole Microsoft agreement is essentially Microsoft cashing in on Novell after they made some financial mistakes and need someone to bail them out of it. Just watch as Microsoft ends up having major influence in the direction of Novell. This isn't a bad thing though. It means there will still be two main players in the Linux Business market. It's Microsoft's way of also creating some feirce competition against Redhat. Not to mention Oracle has their sites on Redhat and are taking shots at them. The whole support agreement with Oracle deal is meant to take out Redhat's major market. With that and a soon to be beefed up financial stability of Novell and push for SLES, Redhat will had some hard roads to go through. It's no surprise that MS sided with Novell when they saw Oracle make their move against Redhat. Interesting times in major Linux vendors are ahead. It should be interesting to see how it all turns out.
Maybe Microsoft thinks that they can gain a significant share of enterprise Linux installations with a distribution they control. Then, they will do their classic embrace and extend to use the leverage to their advantage.
Microsoft knows that no one ever got fired for buying IBM of Microsoft. IBM is pushing Linux and that doesn't help Microsoft. By providing a Microsoft-approved Linux, they can get a slice of the pie and out themselves into a position to do to Linux what they have tried to do with every other standard technology - embrace and extend it.
"The world is a construct of forceful imagination. Those who don't know walk around in the reailties of those who do"
I've advised all the Suse users I know and support to do the same thing, right now.
I will no longer be doing any updates to any of the Suse installations I support via Novell.
I'm actively seeking a replacement distro.
The poisoning of the well is under way, get out now while you still can.
Every time I see a statement like this it pisses me off. Linux is very inter operable with every mainstream OS except Windows. And you know what, Windows isn't inter operable with any other OS that exists. Not only that but the Linux community goes to outrageous efforts to make it inter operable with other OS's (reverse engineering) while Microsoft goes to extreme efforts to ensure no OS can inter operate with Windows.
Also why is it I find Linux far simpler than Windows. You set it up and it works forever. On rare occasions that there are problems you can find a definitive solution unlike Windows where you just reboot and pray because no one including Microsoft knows what's happening with most problems.
Who is John Galt?
Every time I see a statement like this it pisses me off. Linux is very inter operable with every mainstream OS except Windows.
/etc/ memorized, and oh who cares because nobody needs accelerated graphics on Linux because there's no games to play anyway. If the average user (and my install was very average) needs to manually edit config files, then Linux is still failing at being simple to install and use. To your average user these are not small configuration issues, they are glaring *problems* with the software.
I don't think he meant interoperability between operating systems, but rather applications and services. Active Directory integrates seamlessly with Exchange, Group Policy, DNS, all forms of ACLs, and allows easy authentication of Windows users and computers. Exchange connects and works great with Outlook and offers a feature set not yet matched by any open source solution. MS Office applications can simply and quickly communicate and transfer information back and forth. -- The significant thing is that it all just works together.
Also why is it I find Linux far simpler than Windows. You set it up and it works forever.
I know this is Slashdot, and the same discussions are re-hashed in every article about Linux, but this kind of broad sweeping statement needs to DIE.
Linux is not simpler than Windows. You don't simply push a button and suddenly everything works. I just installed Ubuntu on my laptop and had to fight a small war to get accelerated graphics working. I had to change the wireless network stuff so it used ndiswrapper instead of whatever it was the installer wanted to use to prevent it from constantly dropping connections.
I'm tired of giving examples just to have them shot down by people who think everybody is a hardware expert, has the contents of
you just reboot and pray
Funny, but I find myself doing this very thing with Linux (what's broken? Is it GDM, Gnome, Nautilus? Did one of the services break? Which one? Ah, screw it, just reboot.)
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
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Interesting that it involves the exchange of money. This lays the ground work for MS to keep collecting after they sever the agreement with Novell. The agreement runs out in 5 years, but there is a clause in the contract which allows MS to terminate it earlier.
Either way, it tries to fool people into accepting software patents. For the short term, many projects can be moved to European servers, just like when encryption export was illegal in the US. However, in the long term, the US needs to adopt a more common sense approach to patents and revoke any involving intangibles like software, mathematical formulas, and literature. Expression of those is already protected by copyright. What we have now is a broken system which allows restricting ideas.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Yes. Novell is the new SCO.
If you really want to understand what's going on go read groklaw. The headline here is wrong. There is no patent cross licensing, that would violate the GPL. There is a promise which is not a license not to sue. It's a weird thing. There are also some unsaid, unprinted, nobody knows about exception.
So MS promises not to sue novell customers for MS patents with some exceptions. Most likely those exceptions involve some companies (for example google) or some technologies like XML.
MS has promised to sue other companies. Ballmer said that anybody who uses linux from anybody except novell is under a threat of a patent lawsuit from MS.
evil is as evil does
My wife hates it when I debug her computer problems just by telling her to do X, and don't explain why. The sense of being looked down-upon is what most people hate to feel. That's why she will rarely ever come to me for computer help, until she absolutely needs it. Or worse yet, she'll just give up on it entirely. You'd be surprised how common an attitude that is with many users.
As someone who specialized in Usability for my Master's, I can honestly say that it would help tremendously if all software engineers were forced to watch usability studies involving normal computer users interacting with software. Or better yet, participating in such studies and/or tutoring such folks. You will quickly realize how attitudes like yours need to change, lest you continue to alienate people even more and send them running to easier-to-use (but less secure/powerful/etc.) alternatives.
-- jchenx
What you don't consider is that Linux adoption is incredibly low- much lower than it should be. This is largely due, directly and indirectly, to the SCO case. Directly, businesses were pushed away from Linux out of fear of a lawsuit by SCO. Indirectly, because greater adoption of Linux would have spurred greater effort on Desktop Linux, thereby increasing adoption again, and so on- the so-called "critical mass" effect.
If it hadn't been for SCO, Linux would likely rule the world already- but SCO was such a spectacular success for MS that they're doing it again, with likely the same results. Businesses are (rightfully) scared of lawsuits. They were scared of them from SCO, and they'll be terrified of lawsuits from MS.
SCO was never meant to succeed as a company- their sole purpose from 2003 on was to hold back Linux while they fell into bankruptcy kicking and screaming. They did a spectacular job. MS is ready to take Linux on head-on now, armed with a patent portfolio, increasing amounts of TPM, and the IP social conflict setting a good stage for them to take down the last Unix.
On a side note- it appears Stallman was right again. Software Idea Patents have turned out to be a huge threat to FOSS, and it's likely to only get worse now that MS is ready to join the lawsuit game.
groupthink: It's good for self-esteem.
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Actually, Slashdot is really just one big giant AI system. All the so-called "users", including this one, are really just dummy accounts for the AI. You're the only human here.
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The Slashdot Overmind
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.