IBM Weighs In On Novell — Microsoft Deal

Azul writes "In an interview, Scott Handy, IBM's VP of Worldwide Linux and Open Source, has stated IBM's position on the recent Novell-Microsoft agreement. According to Handy, Novell has been quite clear that they had never agreed that Microsoft had any proof of Microsoft patent violations in Linux." From the article: "'IBM has long supported interoperability between Windows and Linux. As supporters of open source and open standards, we applaud any effort to bridge this gap.' ... Looking ahead, Handy said that despite the outcry in some circles about Novell's deal with Microsoft, IBM will be making 'No change in our partnership with Novell ... IBM has two strategic Linux partners, Red Hat and Novell. This has served us very well for seven-years. Over 90 percent of the Linux server market now belongs to those two companies and the industry has consolidated around those two leaders,' he added."

Comments

At least IBM..

[Anonymous Coward]

.. Isn't falling for the FUD and they're standing next to their partners. Given that announcement and what SCO just went through with IBM, maybe this will make Microsoft think twice before pushing the issue..

IBM is safe

[bcrowell]

IBM can afford to shrug off Microsoft's FUD campaign, because they have enough patents in their own portfolio to defend themselves. It's pretty sad, though, that every company has to build up a stockpile of bogus patents in order to be safe from patent predation by other companies. You also have to wonder how much of a chilling effect this is going to have on efforts like Samba.

Re:IBM is safe

[morgan_greywolf]

Sure. All the developers of the Samba team are just going to pick up and move to another country. Right. Or maybe the Samba team will pick up developers from another country where patents are no big deal. It's not like they need all those senior developers like Tridge and Jeremy Allison, and Andrew Bartlett...nope. They can just come up with a new set of monkeys. After all programmers are interchangeable, right?

Re:IBM is safe

[oohshiny]

IBM can afford to shrug off Microsoft's FUD campaign,

If it really is a "FUD campaign" (and it is), then so can you.

If Deal Offends You, Sign Petition by Bruce Perens

[rubycodez]

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

yes, but define market?

[Blymie]

Over 90% of the Linux Server MARKET, eh? Well, first, define server? Is that only a nice IBM piece of hardware, or some other big player piece of hardware? What about SuperMicro, and the middle ground players?

As well, define market? What part of the marketplace does Debian have? None, really, not if you define marketplace as something you can track via sales.

I believe these specifications are out of whack. 90%? From where I sit, it's 90% _non_ Redhat or SuSE....

Re:yes, but define market?

[93 Escort Wagon]

"I believe these specifications are out of whack. 90%? From where I sit, it's 90% _non_ Redhat or SuSE...."

Look, I don't mean to put anybody down here - but when an IBM exec weights in about Linux's market distribution I'd give it a tiny bit more weight than when some random person on Slashdot does.

The few large server-based businesses of which I have any behind-the-scenes knowledge are all running Red Hat Enterprise Linux. One used to run CentOS ("free" Red Hat), but switched to RHEL after their customers demanded support for the OS itself.

The real business world - the one IBM is concerned with - is quite a bit different than the Go-Daddy / Dreamhost / Fat Cow world of tiny hundred-hits-a-month websites.

Debian is the second largest GNU/Linux distro

[Anonymous Coward]

"Over 90 percent of the Linux server market now belongs to those two companies and the industry has consolidated around those two leaders,' he added."

From the Netcraft's GNU/Linux distribution share stats:
RH - 34%,
Debian - 25%
Suse - 11 %

82% of all statistics is made up.

Re:If Deal Offends You, Sign Petition by Bruce Per

[Bruce Perens]

That means the GPL text. The point is that the entire GPL, and section 7 in particular, binds the community of people who redistribute the software to stand together against a patent aggressor rather than sell out individually and thus weaken the rest of the community against that aggressor. Novell and Microsoft knew clearly what the spirit of the document was, and crafted a legal fiction of covenants to each other's users that has the same effect as the licenses in order to (maybe) sneak within a hair of the letter. In other words, they engineered a loophole to get around Novell's earlier agreement with the many developers of GPL software in their distribution.

In short, we feel that Novell has acted in bad faith.

Bruce

Re:Please, Stop This

[Bruce Perens]

Nat, rather than being at the forefront of the deal, is the person assigned to spin this to the Free Software community. I'm sure his heart is in the right place. But he has a contract, both for his individual employment and one related to the sale of Ximian. I don't believe he has much choice what to do.

There are folks in this same deal who aren't as tightly bound, like Jeremy, who is Samba team leader and also a Novell employee. Jeremy disapproved of the deal in public.

Re:Maybe Not....

[Bruce Perens]

Since Eben Moglen seems to think that changes are needed to GPLv3 in order to "prevent this from happening in the future" ... the GPLv2 must not be adequate. Either you are wrong or he is. Who is it?

I flew to NY to discuss this whole issue with Eben last week. First, the Novell-Microsoft is clearly outside of the spirit of the GPL and thus demonstrates bad faith on Novell's part. Is it within the letter? Novell and Microsoft say so, and obviously took a lot of time to engineer it to just slip within a hair of the letter. I think that Novell and Microsoft would like to drag us into an expensive and ultimately fruitless fight. Rather than take it to court, and spend a lot of money on something that will be ambiguous for years, we will make it very, very clear that this is NOT within either the letter or the spirit of GPL3 and LGPL3. And then a lot of stuff that Novell needs will go under those licenses, and Novell will be stuck with the entire version of maintaining obsolete forks without the help of the community.

Bruce