13 Reasons To Celebrate the New MS-Novell Pact

An anonymous reader writes "The recently announced agreement between Microsoft Corporation and Novell, Inc. has resulted in much concern that it could be harmful for Linux and other free software. However, the agreement itself, as well as its timing and comments made by Microsoft executives about it, may actually be a very good thing — and perhaps even worthy of celebration!"

Comments

Needs More FUD

[eldavojohn]

Whoever wrote this article lives in a fantasy land full of gum drop trees and puppy dog kisses.

Not only are these points weak, they're a stretch. And number four is laughable,

(4) The agreement and accompanying threats are serving as additional bad publicity in the free software community for an increasingly troubled Microsoft, and the effect will be to further motivate developers and users of free software. People do not like to be threatened or bullied, and they can react strongly to it.

That's right, folks, this agreement will make developers so angry that they'll triumph in the face of Microsoft telling them they're all patent infringers. Yep, sound argument to me. Let's see here ... SAMBA developers very happy & OpenSUSE devs happy. In case you couldn't tell, I was being sarcastic.

And also, some of the footnotes are pure comedic genius,

Benefitting Microsoft could be a good thing, even in the eyes of many advocates of free software, if it helps that company to reallocate its massive resources to emphasize developing truly innovative and quality products instead of attempting (increasingly in vain) to protect a doomed monopoly. These resources include its large number of very talented employees, some of whom are our friends and neighbors.

It's so funny because the way I see it, this was the perfect way to hobble Linux & threaten all the application development on it so that the competition for Windows dwindles & therefore they can produce pure crap and we'll have to use it. Please explain yourself, Linux Information Project.