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Samba Team Urges Novell To Reconsider
hde226868 writes "The team responsible for Samba has just asked Novell to reconsider its recent patent agreement with Microsoft, arguing that the agreement is a divisive agreement, effectively splitting the open source movement into groups with and without commercial status. Samba argues that with this move Novell is disregarding the will of the people who write the software sold by Novell and that Novell has 'no right to make self servicing deals on behalf of others which run contrary to the goals and ideals of the Free Software community'."
It's SCO all over again.
Irina Romanov
just like the samba team, I don't think that this agreement with microsoft will bring good fruits. what I like about the open source movement is that it provides you with software that allow you to go to sleep at night without worry. the software that will result from this agreement will be everything except that.
"Samba argues that with this move Novell is disregarding the will of the people who write the software sold by Novell and that Novell has 'no right to make self servicing deals on behalf of others which run contrary to the goals and ideals of the Free Software community'."
In other news the sun is hot, water is wet, and... wait... yes, I taste spit in my mouth!
Come on now, what part of Microsoft + Patent + Open Source is anywhere close to what "open" source should be?
I keep telling myself I'm not the desperate type.
'no right to make self servicing deals on behalf of others which run contrary to the goals and ideals of the Free Software community'
Actually they have every right to do whatever they like as long as it is within the law. There is nothing specific in the GPL that says they cannot make a deal with Microsoft. The only thing that will stop companies from doing things like this, is if they lose customer support. If you don't like it, don't buy their products.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
Bags of money or making nice which geeks who aren't even on their payroll....
Yeah, sure. I see 'em doing what the samba teams says. Yep. Sure thing. Uh-huh.
Novell has 'no right to make self servicing deals on behalf of others which run contrary to the goals and ideals of the Free Software community'."
Bullshit. First, Novell isn't making deals on behalf of others. Second, Novell have every right to make the deal they made -- if the Samba folks don't like it, they should have said so in their copyright license. They didn't.
Also, from the Samba post: "The goals of the Free Software community and the GNU GPL allow for no such distinctions."
Guess what? It doesn't forbid such distinctions either.
Listen up, folks: nobody cares about your intent. The law is about the wording of the document. That sucks, but that's how it is right now. If you don't want people to do certain things with your code, SAY SO AHEAD OF TIME, IN THE LICENSE.
REM Old programmers don't die. They just GOSUB without RETURN.
So, what's the problem?
The owls are not what they seem
This is just Microsoft trying to get Linus to reconsider and try and move the kernel to the GPLv3.
Move along.
FreeMusicPush If you want to see more Free Music made, listen to Free
This can only be a good thing for Linux.
Maybe now well be able to have proper hardware drivers.
If MSFT wants to sink alot of money into a Linux distro, then all the power to em. If it means ill be able to run Unreal 2007 and halo2 on linux with native support, and autocad and other CAD programs.
I would like to see a unified package system for Linux as well. Its just a pain in the ass having to compile programs from one system to another. especially when working in the server room wher i just want things to work the best they can without fuss.
I'm surprised, actually, that MSFT didn't do something like this earlier. It would sure put a choke hold on Apples Unix dominance with sound/music/video industry.
Although it might just be an early response to Vista. It very well could be the biggest flop that MSFT has released since ME.
..shudders.. I feel dirty for even mentioning ME
..::ALWAYS : watching::..
I think an agreement like this and Red Hat's recent problems indicate that the business model that has been touted for open source isn't sustainable. Ultimately people won't pay you money for something that they get for free elsewhere. If, in fact, Linux becomes more mainstream, all distros will be easier to use and greater customer experience will greatly reduce the need for the kind of hand-holding that Red Hat provides.
At a philosophical level, Novell probably didn't want to sign the agreement with Microsoft either ... heck, Microsoft basically destroyed them as a leading software provider. But they're in an unenviable position of trying to turn a profit. That's the double edged sword of large companies getting in the open source game. On one side, they offer massive resources that can champion and push forward technologies that groups working in their spare time cannot. On the other, they must find a way to recoup some of those expenses, which sometimes lead them down the path that we've all worked hard to stay off (namely, software patents, commercialization, and closed sourcing parts of their product).
Unfortunately I think we'll just have to deal with some closed source Linux programs and some software patents for technologies that required massive investment. The key is to pick our battles - e.g. to ensure that the entire Linux kernel, and all "typical" programs are open source and protected under the GPL (or other similar license).
Crack - Free with every butt and set of boobs
Where's Linus durring al of this? I mean he's vocal as all hell when the GPL3 drafts start floating around, but on this he's silent?!
I know you are asking yourself, self, how could this happen?
Novell executives were asking themselves, "How can a million dollars worth of bad publicity with a small advertising budget?" "That's it! We'll show a profound disregard for the Free Software community."
These must be the same guys who bought WordPerfect.
--
Summary of Bush administration corruption.
You will be exterminated.
Isn't this just the next step in Open Source evolution? I find it hard to believe that no one saw this coming. Imho it was just a matter of time before the community got screwed by commercial interests. It will be interesting to see what the future will bring. Maybe this turns out to be alright (doubtfully) or maybe this is the beginning of a new age of open source development. I for one will be sitting on the edge of my chair and follow the steps of evolution.
http://www.moerks.dk
Do you actually believe the Microsoft marketing drivel that you just spewed? Honestly? Must Microsoft put their "stamp of approval" on everything you use?
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
It's not about it being against the GPL, it's provide MSFT with an excuse, and an attack point with which to target open source developers.
That is 100% pure FUD, completely baseless and ridiculous. MS doesn't have a history of doing this, and it makes no business sense that they would do so in the future.
I don't believe that Novell can just simply "reconsider" they have entered into a contractual agreement and for good or bad have to abide with the terms or breech the contract. From what I have read it will end in five years. Besides, we all know that the patent clause is simply FUD. It may be lame that Novell did it this way, but you have to admit it was a clever way to get MS to fork over ~300 Million for nothing. The flip side is that it will help keep Novell in business which in turn will help Samba since Novell contributes. I have to admit that in the age of FUD, the tone of the Samba press release was rather nice though. Kudos for that.
Microsoft=Virus, rootkit, trojans, adware, spyware, keyloggers and other helpful aids
Linux=few if any virus, rootkits rare, trojans rare, I guess if you really need those and the other helpful Microsoft aids, Microsoft seal of approval is really the way to go.
I don't want Microsoft's stamp of approval on any of my software because that most likely means the software is doing things that help out Microsoft at my expense. That's what it means for all of the software they put their stamp of approval on now.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
"Yes". "Yes". And "it helps, yes". I need all of my software to run together flawlessly. I can't have some hacked together stuff that that may or may not interact well. So yes, it most definitely helps. In my business, I need an OS that lets us do regular stuff (email, web, blah, blah, blah), but that's not really important. Any OS on any computer will do all of that. My IMPORTANT functions, though... accounting, cash registers, etc. all need to work together perfectly. If they don't, we have to close our doors, and I have to fire lots of people. So yes, I would give significantly more weight to a Linux that has MS's stamp of approval.
I am still trying to figure out why I should give a damn what Novell does? So Novell has this nice new agreement with Microsoft. Since I don't use Suse, Netware or anything Novell makes that I signed a legally binding agreement for I am not bound by anything Novell does. Novell's agreement can't trickle back the Linux programmers, because the programmers agreeed to the GPL, not the Novell agreement. If you do use something Novell has, then remove it, and keep your project moving without it. If Novell adds code to your project, and you are under the GPL, then they must agree to the GPL legally. If Microsoft wants to sue "commerical" opensource what was stopping them before this agreement? What stops them after this agreement? Its an agreement between Novell, who does not own a majority of GNU/Linux, and Microsoft, who does not own a majority of GNU/Linux. I didn't sign the agreement, none of the other open-source people signed the agreement, Novell signed the agreement. Let Novell agree to this, tell them to shove this software up their ass, and get another distro. Thats competition.
You are not legally bound by what Microsoft and Novell does.
Selex
Isn't it possible for the author of any GPL'ed software to revoke a distro's ability to include it in said distro? I thought I'd heard this happening before, but can't seem to Google a reference...
If enough authors did this to any one distro in protest...
- Just my $0.02, take with a grain of salt, your mileage may vary.
When one loses sleep worrying about their software, usually they're worried about security or stability, not whether or not they were able to get it running -- they already know if they got it running or not.
Procrastination -- because good things come to those who wait.
"At your expense"? Like, what, exactly? If you wrote any OSS code, and gave it away, then there is no expense for you if it is used by Microsoft or anybody else.
I think reality is, novell wasn't making a penny on linux and suse, in fact most likely losing money hand over fist. They have already replaced some C** folks. I think MS cash infusion was about their only hope.
I don't like what they did, I think it might not even be legal, it is certainly a blow to open source, but once a company is driven by stockholders who demand endless money in perpetuity, and to have that amount actually increase, for their one time "capitalist" investment...this is what happens.
I also don't think (I cannot emphasize this enough really) software as a stand-alone business is going to survive, not in any huge big way really..there is no need. 40 years ago to a few years ago, yes, now..nope.
Software as part of a normal business, sure, in house tweaking and customizing, yep, but stand-alone it is headed the way of the dinosaurs. Open source is about designing,building and *sharing* of tools freely and Freely, whereas USING those tools within another legit business is where the long term cash with software is.
Microsoft is just now getting around to "art of war" type tactics: divide your enemies. "He will win whose army is animated by the same spirit throughout all its ranks." They're trying to divide the open source movement's spirit.
:)
Everything up to this point has been driven by hubris on their part. Now, they're finally serious about fighting open source.
This is gonna be fun.
Actually, they do have a right.
But we have a right to stop using their products.
Personally, I'll wait a little bit to see what the consensus opinion of this deal is. If, after some thought and discussion, the community decides that Novell's actions are harming Linux, then I will take this into account in my career (as a software developer).
Is there any chance do you think that this could lead to Microsoft launching a series of micro-SCO type initiatives now that their investment in SCO didn't work out? What I mean is that I'm curious about just what that money is going toward. Did M$ threaten Novell with any specific patents or vice versa? Sure Microsoft has a few good engineers maybe, but as far as I can tell most of their efforts over the years have been exremely nasty. I find it hard to believe that anything good will come of this, rather I am waiting for the first embrace/extend shoe to drop as Novell starts spouting some ludicrous SCO-like FUD under the guise of supporting the community. Hasn't M$ just bought a bitch to whip who appears a little friendlier to users and developers than SCO did? Maybe Novell will end up writing some cool Vista software but I could care less, I'm staying away from that racket. Novell buying SUSE to sell out to Microsoft is an ultra-cynical move and they deserve to get thoroughly lambasted in every public venue. I'm looking toward hearing about employees jumping ship from Novell as soon as the shit begins to hit the fan. Of course this is a very effective way for Microsoft to get rid of a competitor; it is very good at pulling the rug out from under its friends. I am just wondering if Novell was that dumb or if M$ had some really good FUD to scare their investors with.
Well, it can go either way.
Microsoft: runs our users' mail, Active Directory, several of our internal apps and a number of external clients' apps.
Total servers: 100+.
Initial costs per server: licences
Yearly bill: 5 internal support guys + MS support agreements
Linux: runs about anything else we or our Unix-preferring clients do - Oracle, BEA, Tivoli, etc.
Total servers: 300+.
Initial costs per server: nil
Yearly bill: 7 internal support guys (who also support commercial Unixes I don't mention here as they are a fraction of the total server amount).
Being a kinda service-providing shop support matters to us and this forks out for around (don't have exact figures on hand, but estimating), ~ $1mln / year to MS. Significant part of the apps we run on Linux are not officially supported by the maker either. Yet they run for years without a prob, the only thing required is having decent support guys.
I can only sympathize with you being locked into a MS shop, but I am not that sure this move towards "MS certified" will make life better. What has been a trend for some time, is that "mission-critical" software is being recognized as compatible with Linux O/S. Eg. Oracle certifying Red Hat Linux for its databases, etc. What could happen now, is the trend going the other way - developers waiting for Linux being "made compatible".
This isn't about 'good fruits' as you put it These are large corporations that are in business to make money and increase share worth. Period.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
It wasn't a "childish troll", it's just the state of things. It's really too bad if the truth isn't something that you can handle. However, the fact remains that the pisspoor security practices of Microsoft have leashed entirely new forms of malware upon the world.
A Microsoft OS is something you run not because it is good but because the Lemming effect means that a particular bit of hardware or software is only supported on that platform.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Agree.
Microsoft has changed the computer industry. They have made the largest influences leading to the millions of computers being used by the masses.
Yes, it is a lot of marketing crap. Yes, it is very insecure. Yes, it is a lot of ideas and technology assimilated from other sources. Bottom line - it works enough, cheap enough, easily enough.
Novell has been declared 'dead' so often it is boring. NetWare has some great security features - one being the basis for AD. Over history, Novell has made a lot of industry deals, and many have turned out bad. Search for Caldera - and you'll find more jokes or lawsuit references than to Novell. Few people even remember Word Perfect existed in the time between version 5.1/DOS and when Corel started marketing it. Scarred, yes - but Novell is still standing. Would these deals be any 'smarter' if someone like IBM or MS swallows your company?
Last year, before any 'official' announcement - NetWare began down the open-compatibilty path. Most of their major products [ GroupWise, ZENworks, Nsure identity...] are ported to Windows- and Linux- compatible packages. Most of the server products are moving towards a linux core - especially illustrated with a default choice of a LAMP configuration out-of-the box, while most of the client-side works are Windows-centric. This 'deal' is a logical business step.
Bottom line - MS Windows is on most desktops, and isn't going anywhere. NetWare is a great product with a loyal installed base. Why not find a way to work together and share some profits?
I feel its so much better that it happened now, Fail-Fast is always better. Good to have answers early on.
If we don't want such things to happen, why don't we move to more restrictive licenses? Should we actually expect people (or even worse, corporations) to always act in good faith, even when there is no obligation to do so? Why not put it all down in paper then. IM(H)O, Open Source still has not found a balancing act between pragmatism and staying true to the cause. Which is why we have issue with GPL v2 and v3. The deal (according to Eben Moglin) violates GPL v3, but v2-v3 debate is now more like a 50-50 split.
Lets all go GPL v3, or shut up.
Anyway, it is not that I found something terribly wrong with the deal. Mainly because it changes _nothing_ for existing users. It is just that Novell customers get an additional benefit. Meanwhile the Open Innovation Network still protects Open Source patents,
the Mono team still maintains that the have not violated any patents, good news for getting Open-Office to open Word 2007 XML files (and more compatibility) and some other. But on the other hand, it does create a division and give Novell somewhat an unfair advantage.
Life is just a conviction.
It wasn't a "childish troll", it's just the state of things.
I'm sorry you're having trouble with Windows. I haven't run into any of that since the Windows 95/98/ME days, though. It's not even on my radar as a potential issue, quite honestly.
It is impossible to divide the Linux community any further even if you start putting individual members of it through a meat grinder.
Since when?
We have exactly 6 people. We need software that works out of the box, no questions asked. There's little room for error, either as far as time or money goes. Any time spent twiddling with software is money lost. It's that simple.
You obviously have a stupidly high perception of the quality of commercial software. Sure, in some cases it might be better than some young open source project, but the big name open source projects may well have many more eyes on the code. Maybe if you show such a strong preference, you would prefer to be stuck with the frankly shady NETBUI instead of TCP/IP. You would be SOL when Micrsoft pulled the plug on it.
What about Exchange server? Stuck into a complete upgrade and redeployment every 6 months? instead of sticking with the pretty solid SendMail etc.
As another poster mentioned, you need to select a solution on it's merits. One of the merits of Open Source is access to the source code and the freedom to stick with a particular release if it's business critical. With closed source, you are screwed if MS push a critical update and the older software is 'broken'.
Novell should not be allowed to act as a Trojan Horse to destroy the GPL.
"There is nothing we won't do or say to convince people that our way is the way to go." Bill Gates (paraphrased from memory)
-- "It's not stalking if you're married!" My Wife.
Red Hat users?
http://opensource.sys-con.com/read/298991.htm
Novell Tuesday night outlined the financial terms of its pact with Microsoft in an SEC filing. Then, rather than let the press stumble over it, the company sent around a press release explaining the filing.
Meanwhile, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was in India and told India's Economic Times how he'd love to cut a similar deal "with anyone who distributes Linux software, Red Hat, whoever else."
Microsoft is going to pay Novell $240M upfront for those 350,000 SUSE Linux Enterprise Server subscription vouchers it said it would distribute in the next five years. It could sell them too. CIBC World Market did some back-of-the-envelope calculations and says the number implies an annual ASP per SLES subscription of roughly $685.
Microsoft is also supposed to spend $60M between now and January 1, 2012 marketing Linux-Windows virtualized scenarios and spend another $34M on the dedicated sales force it puts in the field.
For all of Ballmer's talk of a similar deal with Red Hat, it appears that Novell has a three-year exclusive on the virtualization-through-certificate program. Novell notes that IDC projects the market for virtual machine software will be worth $1.8BN by 2009.
Microsoft is also going to pay Novell $108M upfront under their shiny new "patent cooperation agreement" and Novell in turn will pay Microsoft at least $40M over five years - something like $8 million a year - "based on percentages of Novell's Open Platform Solutions and Open Enterprise Server revenues" - OES being Novell's mixed NetWare/Linux package and Open Platform all its Linux stuff.
Novell was at pains to explain that it wasn't paying Microsoft patent protection since the Free Software Foundation (FSF), the keeper of the GPL flame, at the mere mention of a patent agreement last week, started protesting that Novell couldn't - under section 7 of the GPL - distribute Linux if it was acknowledging patent infringement.
Novell claims it doesn't acknowledge that Microsoft has IP in Linux but the way the Microsoft and Novell attorneys sidestep the issue is by having Microsoft promise not to sue the SUSE customer, leaving Novell out of the equation.
Novell spokesman Bruce Lowry declined to explain exactly what Novell is paying Microsoft the $40M for or what Novell patents Microsoft is interested in. It's "just the way the deal was financially structured," he said. Whether that satisfies FSF attorney Eben Moglen remains to be seen. Novell is still negotiating with him, Lowry said.
Novell also posted a new FAQ trying to address the flood of questions it's been getting about the Microsoft deal from the open source community. In it, it says the $40M is "for Microsoft's covenant directly to Novell's customers."
So is Novell paying Microsoft to go out and scare Red Hat users?
In a canned statement, Novell general counsel Joseph LaSala said:
"Many people want to know whether this agreement is compatible with Novell's obligations under the GPL, especially section 7. This was an important consideration for us as well. 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."
There are exceptions to the "won't sue" covenants that aren't spelled out.
Rumor - underscore rumor - has it that Microsoft did the Novell deal because Novell threatened it with IP, which might explain why Microsoft is paying
In either case, all it takes is a quick google search to come up with their full history.
He's a coder, not a lawyer. Which is why I'm glad to listen to him on technical matters, but why I don't really care what he thinks about legal matters like the GPL v3, etc. No offense intended, but I'll get my legal advice from lawyers and my technical advice from technical people. In other words, I think he's right to keep quiet.
That said, hopefully he'll see this as a time to reconsider his stance on the GPL v3. Granted, Linux would have a difficult time converting due to the cut-off he put in Linux by removing the "or later" clause (from what's published, he may not even understand how it works), but this is exactly the sort of loophole v3 is meant to prevent, and Microsoft is obviously looking for a way to take advantage of that. You can't really expect them to pass up any way to screw up the competition, and Linux pretty much _is_ Microsoft's competition.
You don't have to like it, but it takes lawyers to stop lawyers.
With closed source, you are screwed if MS push a critical update and the older software is 'broken'.
I'm equally as screwed with OSS software, since I'm not a programmer and hiring a team of programmers is prohibitively expensive.
but the big name open source projects may well have many more eyes on the code.
That's nice as far as fixing bugs, but it has nothing to do with functionality, which is my primary gripe with Linux at this point.
The current SCO is really Caldera.
Unixware was ATT Unix that was then sold to who? Novell. Novell then "rented" Unixware to original SCO. Original SCO than moved to pretty much supporting nothing by unixware (the old xenix/sco unix was folded into this). Caldera was created by Novell Ray Noorda and a number of Novell folks WHILE they were at Novell. It was too be offered as Novell Linux. But Ray and others felt that they would do better without the Novell issues. So they spun it off from Novell's "permission" along with the DR-dos suit. Caldera then bought everything of SCO (save tarentella). The current SCO was owned by Novell and almost likely the IP will be shown to belong to Novell (in spite of what current SCO says).
So yes, Novell owned "SCO", just not the original.
Under American patent law, if you use a product made by a company that did not have a license to a necessary patent, you can be sued, not just the company.
An implication of the Microsoft-Novell agreement is that Microsoft could sue any Linux (or Samba?) user who did not buy it through Novell. It major lawsuits start happening and Microsoft wins the lawsuits, Linux will disappear from corporations in America, or they'll all go through Novell. If Linux isn't open, there's no point in using it.
Melissa
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
As an example... the software checks back with Microsoft to make sure that Microsoft thinks the software I'm running was paid for. That's not for my benefit at all, it's there for Microsoft. Similarly their media player will try to keep me from making copies of things and give them to my friends. That's also not for my benefit either, it's for Microsoft's.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
> software that works out of the box, no questions asked.
Are you sure you want to do that?
You want it to work right out of the box, WITHOUT FIDDLING, and you're using Microsoft software. If you wanted it to work 'out of the box', at least use a Mac.
Novell destroyed themselves.
The only thing that Microsoft did was release WinNT without the license broadcast that NetWare boxes did. I could use one license and setup 1,000 WinNT boxes on a network. If I used the same license on 2 NetWare boxes on a network, they'd broadcast their license codes, see that they were duplicates and shut both boxes down. "Piracy" gave Microsoft the edge.
After that, it's been 100% Novell fuck ups.
Why buy SuSE when for a LOT less money you can just hire Linux developers to write the code/apps you want? You spent $210 MILLION.
Okay, you own SuSE now, why is it easier to run GroupWise on Windows than on Debian? Microsoft is a bigger threat to your existence than Debian.
Why haven't you ported the look and feel of you NetWare apps (inetcfg, nwconfig, etc) over to SuSE?
Service Pack 6 for NetWare 6.5 is over 800MB. Compressed.
As is every other company out there. McDonald's manages it, yet their costs have got to be higher than cooking healthier food, yourself, at home.
No. The problem is when closed source companies don't bother to understand the Open Source environment and believe they can treat it the same as their closed source products.
Which is exactly what Novell is trying to do.
Instead, Novell should have spent a one tenth of the money they spent on SuSE and paid lots of programmers to port Novell's money-making products (GroupWise, eDirectory, ZENworks, etc) to Linux. Go ahead. Try to get eDirectory running on Ubuntu. It's pretty easy on SuSE, but damn hard on Ubuntu.
Oh really? You mean like Oracle? Their stuff is still closed. Yet they seem pretty happy with running it on Linux.
This message posted with 100% Ubuntu Edgy Eft.
Can't they just inform Novell that they no longer have the right to distribute Samba under the GPL, but instead must either fork it or work out commercial licenses with the Samba code contributors (good luck with working out a deal with each copyright holder)? Other project teams could do the same, and Novell will have a hard choice to make:
1. Fork each project where distribution rights have been and choose to fork, becoming incompatible in the near-to-mid future
2. Reconsider the deal, pull out, and work with Redhat, Canonical, IBM, et al, ensuring compatibility, and create a strong front against Microsoft's monopoly. They could also form clean room reverse engineering teams where binaries are decompiled and notes are taken on the architecture, then hand those notes (but NO decompiled code examples) to the open source developers. This way. legal, clean-room implementations of Samba, wine, etc. can be created WITHOUT tainting of GPL and BSD code by Microsoft.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
They couldn't "divide" them.
...
So they paid hundreds of millions of dollars to the people in one bloc.
Those people then tried to spin the deal in various ways.
Just because Novell was Microsoft's competitor and had purchased SuSE does not mean Novell had any depth in the Open Source community.
They bought their way in and they sold themselves out.
Now if Microsoft can buy Linus or Alan or Samba or Apache or
First, I'm disappointed that this got modded insightful. It speaks to the lack of understanding how Intellectual Property law works in this country.
Second, the whole reason Microsoft started down this path is to narrow the market for Linux distros down to one. The one that microsoft controls through threat of litigation carpet bombing. Microsoft's competitors here are Oracle and Dead Cat. They can, when they are ready, litigate Novell into extinction.
Third, microsoft doesn't actually -want- to sue developers like the RIAA does to individuals. They want Linux dollars flowing to them only. Litigation is a big carrot/stick that will ensure the corporate dollars flow to Microsoft.
Will Microsoft sue individual developers? If their current strategy doesn't work. Yes. They'll identify maybe 10 key contributors and a couple of distros who aren't backed by IBM/Oracle and let the litigation fly. This is your "chilling effect."
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
From your description, you're a prefect client for Microsoft.
/.?
So if there's no time or money to be wasted, and time is money, why are you wasting time on
Instead of wasting time here, you would (more logically) be better off spending time on various Windows tech forums. You'll want to learn MORE about the systems that you use right now than spending time chatting about systems that you aren't going to use. (And you've detailed the reasons that you aren't going to use them.)
Strange how that works.
that should be "self-serving" (as it is on the samba.org page). "Self-servicing" is what you do at the porn sites.
Yet you do 'porn stuff' and your website is down.
Yay for Microsoft indeed....
Ah, you must mean the iCashRegister application suite.
Generally, bash is superior to python in those environments where python is not installed.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
I can't have some hacked together stuff that that may or may not interact well.
If this is the case, then you're definitely using the wrong solution. MS only interacts well with MS (if even then..interoperability in MS solutions isn't universal or without its' own problems), with only a few exceptions. Even those exceptions are usually a result of the work of people outside of MS, reverse engineering things with, at the very least, no help from MS...that is, if MS doesn't actively work through multiple means to impede or halt any such efforts outright.
One of F/OSSs' main strengths is the ability to interoperate without artificial barriers for the sole purpose of increasing corporate profits, lock-in, and marketshare.
There are F/OSS alternatives available already to accomplish everything you've cited. I know, I've done it. A few minutes' googling will usually result in multiple F/OSS apps/systems/OSs, etc to accomplish a given task. That you chose the MS solution is just that; *your* choice.
However, saying that you have no choice in order to stay in business and/or avoid firing employees is disengenuous. There *are* choices, you just *chose* not to avail yourself of them. Citing "peace of mind" and "interoperability" as reasons is facetious, as it has been widely acknowledged that both qualities are present in spades with current non-MS approved/certified F/OSS solutions.
If you're so concerned about the welfare of your employees, perhaps the money you could save using F/OSS solutions could be used to hire more employees or increase benefits/pay rates of current workers.
Just my 0.02
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
I see a lot of negative comments (and seeing that I use Windows based systems exclusively, but am learning Linux just to have second skillset) this does not really affect me, but I am curious (from a business standpoint) if there are any positives that can come from this? Granted, I know people use past performance to dictate their decisions, but until I get a balanced understanding (meaning BOTH pros and cons), one can't just make the arguement all things MS bad, and all things Linux good.
Regards,
MBC1977,
(US Marine, College Student, and Proud Parent!)
Regards,
MBC1977,
and avoid them like hell. Anything done under such debatable license, and anything done in conjunction with microsoft, i would avoid like hell.
Microsoft is not trustable in my opinion, in regard to freedom of anything. This is no 'j00B micro$oft eviLLaZ' type of thought - it is based on practical reasons : microsoft have never been a trustable ally in matters related to openness, freedom, and it is fat chance that they will - with all those shareholders.
So, i would avoid them like hell, and advise all my colleagues to do so always.
Read radical news here
But isn't it true that if there is patent-infringing code in Linux that it won't matter whether Novell has made an agreement to immunize its users?
No and no! First, it's hard to have patent-infringing code that simply implements Unix concepts that were pioneered 30 years ago, regardless of how slow software vendors have been to adopt those improvements. Second, software patents are just as bogus as a patent on gramma's chili ingredients. Third, it matters. A company full of "experts" caving into this obvious extortion lends weight to both software patents and M$'s bogus claim to own concepts implemented in free software.
It's diabolically anti-competitive and should be against the law if in fact is is not. M$ would use "intellectual property" law to steal other people's work. It makes a mockery of everthing patent and copyright laws are supposed to stand for. As Bruce pointed out, they are licensing patents. Those patents are backed only by judicial extortion. The DoJ should gear up the next series of anti-trust cases around this.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Actually, some of the developers may indeed take it back through the courts. That is yet to be decided. But even if they don't take it back, a lot of those developers will go to GPL3 just because of this. Including important stuff like the C library and GCC (which FSF owns). And it's already been made clear that GPL3 will close this loophole.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
You have my highest respect. Tell me.
Gizmos Gagets For Ninjas
So the deal to enhance interoperability ends up alienating the experts in the Samba project who are all about...interoperability?
This dog don't hunt.
I wish someone could salvage opensuse from Novell's [now dirty] hands...
"Not for your benefit" != "at your expense".
http://www.opensolaris.org/os/
... How much did Novell pay for SUSE?....hummmmm ..... let be think ..... maybe I'll Google it....Yep just as I thought!
Microsoft is on the attack and they have a HUGE war chest! So a quick duck out of the way of this impending doom may just be Solaris. Whooo 'da thunk?
Now my memory is a bit vague
Guess Novell is just trying to bail out of a bad decision.... which of course will ruin one of the top distros.
Gizmos Gagets For Ninjas
There's a simple way to make Novell uncompetitive: release your code under the GPL version 3. What's touch and go in version 2 is clarified in version 3.
Novell, most likely, won't be licenced to use your code. You get the additional benefit of community defence against future antisocial and free-riding behaviour.
Wikileaks, no DNS
I don't have any idea of what your business is, but my personal experience points right in the opposite direction.
I work for a design, communication and advertising agency, and we've used Windows for our storage systems before the society was reorganized (putting me in charge of IT).
With windows, we had load of problems:
Since we do webdeveloping aswell, we didn't had much time to lose after the servers administration: once you get them up and running, they shouldn't need to be checked every day for hours.
Windows sadly, was a whiny bitch and constantly asked for some attention.
Since I switched to Fedora Core for all the servers, none of the above problems have surfaced, except an hardware failure on our router (an old WWI Pentium box, that apparently died from exhaustion).
So my conclusion is that half of my problems with windows arise from the fact I do not know how it works in detail, and that I find it harder to find solutions for Windows issues rather than Linux issues onto the net.
This has a precise reason, but I bet you can see it clearly aswell: and from now on, refrain from generically bashing technologies you never tried to use, without giving specific details of what the matter is.
nbody2002:If you can read this you may be addicted to the internet
Likewise, if I donate my time and effort to an open source project, I want that effort to help others who can make honest use of my code (yes, including Microsoft), but I don't want it to be used as a cudgel against others (or, even, against my own efforts!), the way getting entangled with this Novell+MS plan has the potential to do (and given MS's past history, there's absolutely no reason to give them the benefit of the doubt).
fight tomorrow.
It is wonder that Novell has survived this long without distinctive product, and with every other major IT business providing similar solutions. This deal allows Novell to live as company, and perhaps invest this cash into something for the future.
Is Novell business to protect GPL for free, or to profit?
Finally acquisition of SuSE paid off for them. Conspiracy theorists could claim that this was planned from start by Microsoft and Novell.
I would too sell somebody else's property for hundred millions of dollars.
"Liberty is to faction, what air is to fire, an ailment without which it instantly expires." -James Madison
"You're everywhere. You're omnivorous."
Nice recap...
So yes, I would give significantly more weight to a Linux that has MS's stamp of approval.
Right, because ATM's, Point of Sale machines, electronic billboards, fight schedule displays and many other business related machines running on MS software has such a proven track record. There certainly aren't any examples around of them failing.
Why should Novell listen to the Samba team? It's too late, the deal is done, and anyway, by doing the deal, Novell has shown that it doesn't get the whole Open Source/Free Software thing.
Novell is dead. Weep for them and move on.
Stick Men
"We need software that works out of the box, no questions asked. There's little room for error, either as far as time or money goes. Any time spent twiddling with software is money lost. It's that simple."
I hope to god you are not using MS software then.
evil is as evil does
Actually, MS was going to trash Xenix, when a father-son team went looking for something to do. They decided to make an offer to MS for Xenix who said something for nothing is good. It was not an active spin-off from MS.
Novell bought USL (Unix System Labs) long before Caldera came along. They also bought the rights to DR-DOS before Caldera. In fact, when Novell engineers started up with a Linux group, ppl such as Dvorack ripped Novell for even looking at Linux. So the engineers convinced Ray to spin them off and back them. Ray quit Novell and spun off all the Linux and DR-Dos work with a new company called Caldera (which became 2 companies for IPO purposes; but I forget what the name of the embedded one was).
Novell then sold the rights to re-sell Unixware to original SCO. Note, that does not include the IP (supposedly). SCO then merged Unixware and sco unix.
As SCO saw the future, they sold this same Unix rights and the name to Caldera. Caldera kept the Caldera Name for about 1-2 years. Once McBride cut a deal with MS and Sun, they switched back to SCO name and started their infamous Linux crap.
BTW, I used all of these environments at one time, including MS Xenix.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Yes, there is. The expense is the initial work put into it, as well as any ongoing and future efforts. If I toss pennies in a fountain, my expense is the same, no matter what happens to the pennies, but I don't want the mall to just pocket the change, I want it to help some charity. In other words, I wanted a charity to benefit at my expense, not the mall.
You seem unclear on the concept - whatever is done with the pennies after you toss them into the fountain has absolutely zero impact on any expense that you incurred by throwing them into the fountain in the first place. Your "wants" and "desires" about what happens to those pennies afterwards don't have any effect either.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
I don't see why people get so upset about this. The agreement is pretty meaningless as far as open source is concerned. Microsoft probably made it in order (1) to spread FUD, (2) maybe actually get involved a little with Linux, and (3) to get cross licenses for Novell's patents. It's not like it's a huge amount of money for them, but it does help Novell, and Novell has actually contributed positively for the time being.
The initial question was whether someone wants to help MS "at their expense", and one's "wants and desires" most certainly *do* come into play here. If I don't want to help MS at my expense (for example), even if after my contribution has been made, I *still* don't want to see MS benefit. That's the point. Not that it is somehow going to cost me more after the fact.
But there's more than just my past expense, there's my present and future expense. Will I want to further contribute to a project that I now know is going to be used against me? If I see the mall owner scooping change out of the wishing well to pay for a meal at the food court, I'm *definitely* not going to want to ever toss in another cent.
That's not his point. His point is that Suse benefits and is obliged by the GPL. So long as Novell carves out a separate agreement, built on the same GPL base, it will begin to establish a legal fracture in that Novell and MS will have a chance to get courts to uphold their intermingled stack at the expense of others.
Meaning that a non-MS partner can suffer legal scrutiny, penalties, or at least a chilling effect for the same code that is not under family "protection", despite having the same origins, license and legal status. This allows MS to sue companies one day without seeming anti-competitive, b/c folks will have an ostensibly "legal" path out of infringing.
What many are afraid of is that this will create a new "legal" use of Linux (which is already legal to use), or create a regime of extortionist threats (or at the very least, some good FUD) about potential patent suits. Thereby making other distros seem "not legal". This suits Novell, b/c they are losing the Linux war, and of course suits MS which now has Novell inside their walls, and they've already put Novell on their asses before, and want the world back the way it was before Novell tried to revive itself. MS doesn't want Novell to succeed, they want Red Hat and everyone else to fail. Novell wants to survive the onslaught and is willing to create any disruption that will bring them favor.
In actuality, a partnership that was really in the interest of these companies and their customers would be interoperability via APIs and protocols that included patent protections for the codebase, and not the corporate entity. Not misty fictions like "legal" and "not necessarily illegal, until we get a court rulling or two in our favor and sue the crap out of you" deals.
Neither Linux, nor open source needs anything from MS (or from Novell for that matter) to become what is has become or continue. This is a desperate move by a sad shell of a company and their sleazy rich uncle.
"I'm equally as screwed with OSS software, since I'm not a programmer and hiring a team of programmers is prohibitively expensive."
You ever stop to consider this crazy concept we call "test environments", "test servers", etc.? You don't put something like that into production immediately, you test the damn thing till you know it's not gonna screw your business up and then and only then do you implement it on your production machines. This is much cheaper than hiring programmers, and it's completely contrary to what M$ would want you to do(since they would also want you to pay for an additional license for your test machine..not a problem for those of us who use Linux). M$ took down my design company for a week after a critical update went totally wrong, so this scenario isn't hypothetical by any means. It is a matter of "when", not "if".
0x09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
I mean, how many times does Novell have to sit on the brink of bankruptcy before they get it?
Every hour MS spends on WGA, DRM, and the like is an hour they could've spent making my machine run better. Admittedly, it's only the /. prefilter that makes us think MS's development efforts go solely into technological control measures, but the point stands that F/OSS basically never goes near this realm.
Question: without all the control measures that benefit only MS and its partners (Cf. the "content industry") would Vista still require all that processing power?
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
M$ took down my design company for a week after a critical update went totally wrong, so this scenario isn't hypothetical by any means.
Sounds like you need to take your own advice and test the updates before applying them to mission critical systems.
I don't think Microsoft has intentions of being the next SCO. They just want a way to control some foothold of open source deployment. In process Novell is happy to get some solid sales going from their SUSE investment even if they piss off the open source world.
I don't see this as a dividing tactic but just a money making one. It's not as if half of the open source community is going to jump to proprietary software just because of one deal.
There is something repulsive about a company whose value derives from the free contributions of thousands of people turning that value into profit for a few people. There oughta be a law. There probably isn't. And if there is, it's probably on the wrong side.
The initial question was whether someone wants to help MS "at their expense", and one's "wants and desires" most certainly *do* come into play here. If I don't want to help MS at my expense (for example), even if after my contribution has been made, I *still* don't want to see MS benefit. That's the point. Not that it is somehow going to cost me more after the fact.
Then it is clearly up to the person not to give away their efforts in the first place. When you give away code anyone can benefit - nambla, shin-ri-kyo, the pope, or nelson mandela -- anyone. If a person isn't prepared to let everyone use the results of his work, he shouldn't be giving it away in the first place. Just because he may not have thought through the implications beforehand is no excuse.
But there's more than just my past expense, there's my present and future expense. Will I want to further contribute to a project that I now know is going to be used against me?
That's circular reasoning, since there is no additional expense incurred by MS's use, by definition it is not being used against you. MS's benefit is not your loss, it is not a zero-sum game.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
I'm not going to address a essay that hinges on the word "evil". "Evil" is a word that is best left to religion and other fairy tales. Instead of that badly written essay, you should instead go to the source. From lp.org:
Transitional Action: Eliminate all federal grants of monopoly or subsidy to any private companies, such as utilities, airlines, energy companies, agriculture, science, medicine, broadcasting, the arts and sports teams. Repeal all anti-trust laws. All federal agencies whose primary function is to make or guarantee corporate loans must be abolished or privatized.
You don't need some convoluted essay to explain the Libertarian stance. It's very simple: government is bad. Private rights (including property rights) are good. Government interfering with private property ("anti-trust") is very bad.
Yeah well I work for Novell. So what do you have to say about that ?
I can say this statement was agreed upon unanimously by the Team.
Jeremy Allison,
Samba Team.
-- nt --
Wikileaks, no DNS
"meh" with a shrug
Yes, it does. It means at the expense of my ability to give a copies of things to my friends. That ability is pretty important and losing it represents a cost, even it's not a monetary cost.
And, as someone pointed out, it's costing me bandwidth.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Yes, but I feel at least one important factor is missing in it, he failed to mention the red dressed archangle Pamela and her heavenly troops who rose from nowhere to hit SCO's litigation with facts and research.5 0515115448782
http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=200
605413? Yes, it's a prime.
"Novell donates, code to firefox, and now Microsoft can sue the mozilla foundation for patent infringements,"
That's a totally illogical and ignorant statement. Whether or not someone is in violation of a patent has *nothing* to do with who wrote their code. Such an idea totally confuses patents and copyright.
I can't believe the amount of bullshit that's been posted on slashdot since the novell microsoft deal. The deal is something that in no way shape or form puts microsoft in any position to threaten the open source movement (how could it?!), if anything it does the exact opposite. Yet, since it happened slashdot has been filled with fear mongers and bigots who can do nothing but spew shrill and incoherent microsoft bashing, and "deal with the devil" arguments.
The reasons that microsoft has been allying with various opensource companies like Novell and Xensource, and releasing open source software (wtl, wix, etc) are entirely clear and make total business sense. There's no need to construct some legally impossible and nefarious scheme about microsoft trying to sue open source companies, especially considering that part of the legal agreement microsoft made with Novell was to *not sue based on patents*.
If MS promotes a competing, incompatible standard based on my work in order to circumvent my efforts, they *are* using my work against me. MS has done this many times in the past. HTML and java are two examples.
With HTML, MS took an open standard that is intended to promote platform independence, and tweaked it to favor MS products (yes, Netscape did the same, both companies were wrong in what they did). With java, Microsoft attempted the exact same thing, and Sun successfully *sued* MS over the attempt. With Linux, and open source in general, how it will play out is uncertain, but if MS is up to their same tricks (and there's no reason yet to give them the benefit of the doubt here), then it's absolutely *certain* that they will be using other peoples' code against them.
And the legal team (BSF) that represented scox against msft, now has been paid off by msft to represent scox against msft's old business partner, ibm.
We need software that works out of the box, no questions asked. There's little room for error, either as far as time or money goes. Any time spent twiddling with software is money lost. It's that simple.
Tough shit. You can't buy software like that. I'd suggest you try a pencil.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
As an employee of a very successful commercial opensource company I can say that bags of money and making nice with geeks who aren't on our payroll can go hand in hand if you do it right. Novell is just going about it wrong this time.
Not that a small business closing its doors is a non event, especially for those involved ... but you must admit your first example in context was very heavily slanted at describing things as a huge operation, not five people working for you.
Absolutely right. If Samba doesn't want their code to be used like this, then they shouldn't have put it out under a license that *explicitly gives Novell the right to do whatever they want with it*.
If anything the samba post just goes to show that they have little understanding of the GPL and the philosophy behind the free software movement. The samba developers should know that they retain no right whatsoever to tell any company what they can and cannot use their software for, as they have already given them a license for unlimited use.
The fact is, they don't have to like or approve of what novell does with their software, as long as novell follows their legal agreement, they have every right to do whatever they want with it.
He and some top kernel devs were gushing about how GPL2 was good enough. Avoiding comment on this allows them to save face.
I agree, I am not overly worried about Novell Suse and MS destroying OSS, GPL, FSF, GNU, Linux, ....
.... It is do or die time for many software companies including ... will they have something to offer in the future that customers want.
... fraud which is protected by legacy Luddite governments (US, EU, UN ... them) controlled by the special interest plutocrats.
There was a GPL, a GPL-2, soon the GPL-3 will spread to cover OSS. Novel Suse wants more market share from RedHat and others, MS is trying to survive and may become a late-future OSS OSD. MS is evil, but maybe will repent their sins in the far-fetched future or fail/lose market share like IBM, GM, Novell,
Eventually, 3 to 10 years, the international community, US, and UN will demand reasonable IPR laws that protect innovation, private R&D and personal use, commerce, and ownership. Today's IPR are just industrial-age theft of property, exploitation, extortion
Long-winded but accurate objective perspective of US and politics today.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
There are probably enough people who don't like this to start a Novell boycott.
Many people who read slashdot are consultants or know consultants and these people are actually closely connected to those who control the purse strings.
If Novell goes bankrupt over this then we can be assured other companies will notice.
Not legal right.
What a shame SuSE sold out to let itself be destroyed by Novell. .iso I could load a mini boot.iso and then run the install over ftp, downloading only the files I actually needed. Less important now, but when 5.3 was fresh having an ISDN connection with 64kbits was the best of the affordable options and size did matter then.)
I've been with SuSE for a long time, since 5.3, to be precise.
After all, it was a German distro, for once defaults tended to be like I needed them, instead of always US orthodox.
And SuSE had that very comfortable ftp-install option (instead of having to download an entire
And KDE instead of Gnome. A list of European ISPs to choose from when configureing dial-up instead of US providers not available here. etc.
SuSE turned Novell and the first thing that changed was to ami-ify all the defaults and rebrand the thing. Next thing Novell got rid of a good number of key persons who had actually made SuSE. It was then that SuSE projects turned slow, like you could consider yourself lucky if clamAV for SuSE followed to the next version step before clamAV itself did even the next one. Time to explore alternatives for me.
As of now there are just two boxen left running on Suse 9.3 and 10.0, and as soon as updates for those versions get discontinued, they will be moved to either k|x|ubuntu or debian like the other ones.
After going down to Novell SuSE lost most of its sellingpoints for me, making deals with MS makes it even less attractive in my eyes.
605413? Yes, it's a prime.
Have you noticed that Microsoft has purchased 70 000 coupons for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server maintenance and support per year and that Novell has 50000 customers
Check this on:
http://www.novell.com/linux/microsoft/faq.html
http://www.novell.com/news/press/item.jsp?id=1199
Is there an error on these numbers??
I know, that a customer can have more than one license, but some customers don't have purchased the SUSE Server. So... Microsoft has bought a number of licences that is similar to the currently base-installed?
And then you have that Novell will pay Microsoft a royalty fee depending on sales... The movement seems to be more than just a patent issue, don't you think?
Any comments on the Database camp?
My claim is not that it is correct English, but the typical idiomatic usage. Haven't you ever heard someone say, "You don't have the right to tell me what to do!"? Moreover, I don't use it, so get off your high horse, please. Thank you.
I'd imagine that Novell were coerced into this agreement by Microsoft, who adopted a strategy of "Agree to this, or we go after you". They know full well that such an agreement will have massive effect on Novell's reputation within the Open Source community, and $300 million for a big dent in the commercial reputation of Linux is from Microsoft's perspective a good deal. Matt
The Magic of Branding.
It has nothing to do with, well, anything thats going to affect the software that runs your business. But wow it sure makes you Feel Better.
Err - you and I cannot be thinking of the same Microsoft here. I've spent the whole of my professional career supporting Microsoft solutions and just as GNU/Linux have problems so do Microsoft's applications. But on to the next part...
Ah! Now I see what you really like about Microsoft's products - the "tight" integration of their business applications. This is probably the one thing that keeps businesses from switching. I have to admit that having nearly all of their business apps integrate with Office decently is a nice feature. It works most of the time. MS has had more than a few problems though. Overall, I will agree with you that there are many linux applications that aren't tightly integrated and could use a bit of polishing, but there are many, many programs that despite not being a tightly integrated family of apps, they DO get the job done and do it VERY well.
The Novell deal will have no effect on open source developers at all. The 'license' is just not related to open source. It might provide limited coverage to Novell customers, by which I mean limited to Microsoft, but it will do nothing to protect Linux users from claims made by other companies such as the claim by FireStar against Red Hat. In any case, Novell, Red Hat and other companies have stood behind Linux with indemnity for their customers, and so Novell hasn't bought anything of benefit to their customers; only reduced their own risk profile.
Lets stop beating up on Novell; the move was pragmatic - it got them some cash so they could continue to survive. The interesting thing will happen if and when Microsoft attacks another Linux company, because then Novell will be aware of a patent, and then they won't be able to distribute according to the GPL.
Personally I think that the community has vastly over reacted to the move by Novell, and that if we want to be taken more seriously we should perhaps look at ourselves. We were baited by this one, and we took that bait hook, line and sinker.
*ahem*
You mentioned your company has six employees. Microsoft universal support licenses are also prohibitively expensive considered similarly, and also not guaranteed to resolve anything. If you've paid $400 to have someone look into a problem you're having, do you want to hear "Next version/wait for Service Pack/not our fault"?
This is yet another example of why we need GPLv3. The patent clause in GPLv3 would prevent Novell from distributing patented software with patent protection without extending the patent protection to everyone in the community.
One of our local McDonald's drive-through mic/display kiosks had a blue screen on it the other day. The girl at the window said it's been like that for months. They can't fix it and apparently neither can IT.
With regards to patents... let's see.. what has the Samba team or anyone else in the free software movement done to try to eliminate the current US patent system? Answer: NOTHING
Well... there are a few "sit ins" and some (not Samba) have learned to speak Welsh... but those are just simple protests and really haven't had any effect.
Novell sees patents as something current... something with some legal bindings... and low and behold... that's 100% true! You can hate patents, loathe patents, detest patents... but at the end of the day, when you are served notice of patent infringement, what are you going to do? Is it going to magically disappear??
I don't like the Novell+Microsoft deal either. So... I'm guessing that the Samba team (again, who has done NOTHING to effect any change on the patent system) must have a wondrous idea of how solve the problem. Maybe the Samba team has offered to pay the legal fees for any and all software developers working on the Samba project who are doing Samba development or other open source code development? I guess I don't know the answer to that.
Novell really believes they did something good (really). IMHO, "good" and "Microsoft" don't belong in the same sentence. But I do understand why Novell felt it was necessary. Even if we disagree with Novell's "solution" (if it's even a solution), we can at least say that something was attempted to protect individuals (even if it turns out to not be so effective).
Personally, I would love to see it all work out for Novell... but the open source community needed a witch... Microsoft has proven to be inflammable. Time to torch Novell and see if this witch will burn. And... if Novell is the open source witch... I guess we should all celebrate the torching. Fedora flambe anyone? This could be fun. Gives new meaning to ESR's Scorched Earth philosophy.
In GPL V2 we have:
The corresponding section from GPL V3 reads:
Note how "would not permit" has been changed to "prohibits". What the authors of GPL V3 do not seem to realize is, that a patent License does not have to prohibit anything! All "prohibiting" is done by the U.S. code. A patent license can grant some rights while failing to grant other rights. This is not "prohibiting".
The ironic thing is the GPL works the same way. The FSF has been boasting for years that the GPL is not a contract. See:
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200312142 10634851
It grants some rights and fails to grant other rights. This is explicit in the GPL:
You see! The GPL does not prohibit anything! All prohibiting is done by title 17 of the US code. There is no reason that a patent license could not do the same thing with Title 35 of the US code!
The change from "would not permit" to "prohibit" does make sense. If "would not permit" is read as "fails to explicitly allow" then the "for example" statement is not an example! Let us look at the "for example" statement in context:
What if you accept an agreement, which is a patent license, that does not impose any conditions or obligations on you that are inconsistent with GPL? This could happen, for example, if all the patents mentioned were invalid! Or it could happen if you were the recipient a patent license that was a unilateral grant of rights and you never agreed to anything. (Like the GPL). If "would not permit"; is read as "fails to explicitly allow" then the "for example" statement could apply even though the two sentences above it fail to apply. In short you could have an "example" that is not an example of anything!
That is why I believe that "would no
If I understand the agreement correctly, the only thing it affects is virtual machines. You can run SuSE on a Windows based VM and vice versa. Thats it. You would think that deals like this have never existed before. There are TONS of propriatary commercial software that runs on Linux that has a "Only supported on x". For years there was no option other than Red Hat for commercial software on Linux is you wanted support from the software company.
This states that SuSE is the only supported version of Linux running in Windows VM, and that Novell is protected if you are using something like Xen to run Windows on a SuSE box.
Microsoft gets to pick its poison when it comes to Linux running in VMs and Novell gets the antidote.
i think i agree with what ive seen so many others saying lately, boycot all novell crap
There are F/OSS alternatives available already to accomplish everything you've cited. I know, I've done it. A few minutes' googling will usually result in multiple F/OSS apps/systems/OSs, etc to accomplish a given task.
I can head down to my local office supply store and pick up a copy of Quickbooks for $150. There is no FOSS equivalent that has anywhere near the functionality of Quickbooks. You really can't get any more basic than that as far as business software goes. You can Google all day, but you won't find anything that comes remotely close to it.
Come on. Name one. Just one. One that has all of the functionality. Hell, how about 75% of the functionality? Where is this magical software?
I'm not exaggerating. You simply cannot run a viable small business with just Linux, unless you handle your accounting with a bookkeeper that is running Windows or OSX o even DOS.
The really sad part about this story (to me) is that I can't submit the response I originally wrote even as Anonymous.
Let it suffice to say you completely misunderstand both the history and the situation. Novell is the SCO in this remake. The role of weaselling lying lawyer has yet to be cast, but competition for the role is fierce as this starring role gets 100% of Novell's considerable assets and none of its liabilities. The part of Baystar is being played by Wells Fargo. The script has only minor changes. The set is still on location in Utah. Filming will commence concurrently with the final episodes of the original serial drama.
Watching the original was like a slow motion train wreck -- morbidly compelling, but tediously dull at the same time. Hopefully for The Last Remake of FUD Geste they can at least get a Baldwin.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Laugh all you want, then go over to the Apple store and take a look at the point-of-sale displays.
Not sure if they sell it to the public, but "iCashRegister" exists, and it works with the credit card readers, UPC scanners, receipt printers, electronic-pen signature devices, cash drawers and everything else there.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Well the grandparent was +3 too so it looks like things are pretty well balanced.
Honestly, who uses windows when they want things to "just work". Everybody know how much time you have to spend getting things to work and stay working in windows.
evil is as evil does
Thank you.
I shall go and tell the indestructible man that someone plans to murder him.
Learning and teaching Celtic languages is fun anyway, and I don't need an unrelated political cause to get into it.
In Soviet Russia, our new overlords are belong to all your base.
Come on, we are talking about corporation here.
So, next version of GPL will forbid distribute covered product by company? It is that right?
Or I missing here, is there something so very important about FUD and PR, we can't address without change of license?
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
Tell the local McDonalds to contact their POS supplier, who has been moving their POS solutions over to Linux
I don't think MS really dug Apple out of their hole (Zune anyone?), and likely they're not going to tread lightly on Novell either.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
People often say many things which are patently incorrect when they are being irrational and stupid. That's not an idiom dumbass.
Also, I'm not on a high horse (that's an idiom!), I just think you are stupid.
Microsoft is on the attack and they have a HUGE war chest! So a quick duck out of the way of this impending doom may just be Solaris. Whooo 'da thunk?
No man, you got it all wrong.
It's Joerg Schilling and his magentic personality that's going to draw people towards OpenSolaris in their millions!
My scenario is, I think, more plausible than yours.
ha. i had a feeling you were a great guy from podcast appearences, and now I'm certain. kudos.
What happened to all that "free as in speech" freedom that is supposed to go with FLOSS, Linux, and the GPL?
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
The EU, Korea Republic, Australia amongst many others have ruled against MS.
And in case monopolies are something close to your heart what about thieves? Check for Stac Eletronics and their stacker disk compressing disk software.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
MS ~400 000 000
GNOME 0
Now, back to reality.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
All the distros need just to delete it to be on the clear.
Not such good luck for any developpers if they get sued, they can't run away from their cod so easily.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Sorry to be blunt, but frankly you seem to be living in another planet.
You can't just ignore patent and copyright issues. This has nothing to do with mindless zealotry, for many of the folks doing development work, patents are a real issue that can make your life a misery.
If you are in a place where patents are a non issue, good for you, keep coding.
But otherwise is completely childish and idiotic just to keep coding without stop staring at your computer screen and check what is happening around you, and how that could affect you.
If MS would sue for patent infringement regarding Mono (which are blantantly trying to replace functionality only to be found in MS products, you work the likelyhood of this) the lives of the developpers would be hell. They would either have to settle (most likely on their prejudice) or face the 800ton gorilla and their team of lawyers.
The Samaba team are exactly in the same boat because they are aiming to provide an alternative for MS software. If you think MS has not patented stuff regarding their protocols, no matter how trivial those patents are, then you are drinking some very strong Kool-Aid, share some.
Mono is here to stay in SuSe Linux (if, and that is a very big if, Novell has not broken the GPL, then Novell would have no Linux to start with), but as Ballmer made clear, anybody else may be be not so lucky.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
CIFS and FAT have zero to do with native Unix or native Linux
Bullshit. They are both in the Linux kernel. EVERY popular Linux distribution uses these technologies.
CIFS and FAT functionality have been added purely to be able to interoperate with Microsoft. And the right to interoperability has been protected in the courts for half a century now. It's one of the strongest technical legal rights.
More bullshit (no wonder you posted AC). A cite to a case or a statute would be nice, but none exists.
That is sort of interesting. Most of the things I think they might do that are really serious problems aren't things I know they do. I'm very reluctant to bring up any of those without hard evidence. If I were a reverse engineer and had a Windows box to play with, there are a bunch of things I'd be testing carefully.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
I really, really want to hear you defend - logically - what you just said. You know why? Because you can't. At least, you can't without (a) sounding like an idiot because you don't know what you're talking about, or (b) lying, because what you wrote is a flat out lie and you can only defend it by lying further.
Which will it be?
For example, tens of thousands of businesses use Samba internally (Novell, employer of Jeremy Allison, for one). And some contribute back to the project. IBM is another. Red Hat is doing pretty well also. Look at all the internet appliances out there that use Linux and a host of other GPL packages (Cisco-Linksys, Buffalo, Netgear, etc.). They seem to be doing just fine - making money selling products for a profit.
I call your FUD and raise it with Facts.
"A little misunderstanding? Galileo and the Pope had a little misunderstanding."
One of our clients makes POS systems for McD's too. In fact the company was a startup from McD's dollars. They've been bought by a Fortune 500 though and I'm not longer assigned to that client. I'm not sure who owns what and what does what anymore.
he's talking about Microsoft's obvious threat, don't you?
.Net for Linux thing and obviously that was a mistake. I am afraid Mono is dead. It'll twitch for a while but it's dead unless Novell can eliminate the patent infringement fear. Novell has lost loads of credibility because of the deal they cut with Microsoft.
Yeah, a lot of people have bought into the whole
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
I did, that's why I suggested such a thing in the first place.
0x09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
Thanks for the correction on "idiomatic" (the original statement without it still holds, however). Have you ever made a mistake?
If by "functionality" you mean "works out of the box", then that's your view and I'm not gonna beat you with the linux stick cause it took me years to climb the learning curve, and (believe it or not), I hated linux the first time I came across it, I couldn't get X to start. My reaction... "This is a glorified DOS prompt", and proceeded to reinstall Win98. That was in 1999.
BUT, if you don't mean "works out of the box" then functionality in linux is almost unlimited. OK, there are some Windows specific things that don't work the Windows-way on linux, but you can write your own code and have it DO the same job. It's a matter of knowledge of what's out there to be utilized, and not how much is advertised on the outside of the box.
:} but that does not mean it can't do more advanced stuff - I use Ubuntu for my desktop, and 2 webservers), and check out some howto's on setting up server stuff. (HTTP, FTP, SSH, IMAP, etc.) The linux today isn't as rough on the edges as it was in the previous millenium, but it is NOT a "No configuration or understanding needed!" OS. People on the Ubuntu forums will help you out, and if you would like, you can even click on my username and send me an email if you have some questions.
And to be truely fair, it's not either linux is better than windows or the converse. Because both OS's run on x86 architecture, so if you wanted to you could write a completely new OS from scratch that does all the crap windows and linux does, It wouldn't be easy though. And Finally, with Windows, if you know how to make your change in an algorithm, then it's possible to do whatever in windows aswell. THE DIFFERENCE is that linux is opensource, so you understand how part X works and you can write part Y to go in it's place and the system runs with it. Windows is not so open, you kinda have to guess as to what it does and how it works. From a purely, hypothetically, technical view, Windows, Linux, OSX (intel), and the rest of the x86 gang, are all capable of doing the exact same things. You have to reach the upper limits of the hacker stratosphere to know how though. Which I don't, btw.
Maybe one weekend when you have some time, check out Ubuntu Linux (it has noob cushions installed
---FourChannel---
Actually, they do.
☠