Novell and Microsoft Claim Customer Support

munchola writes "Novell and Microsoft have commissioned a survey to prove that customers love their interoperability and patent deal. According to the survey 'Ninety-five percent approve of the collaboration between Novell and Microsoft,' while 'four out of five believe their organization would consider doing more business with Linux dealers if Linux providers establish an alliance with Microsoft.' As CBRonline notes, however: 'Few people have claimed the deal is bad for Novell or Microsoft's customers. The question has been whether it is good for the open source movement, open source developers, or indeed Novell itself. Those issues do not appear to have been addressed by the survey.'"

Comments

Just one survey?

[faloi]

Or did they commision multiple surveys with different wording and cherry-pick the one they liked most? It is marketing, after all.

Re:Marketing auto-fellatio?

[urbanradar]

The people on Slashdot and other such forums and Novell's paying customers are mostly not the same people.

Re:Marketing auto-fellatio?

[Macthorpe]

Not to spit on the results of your own personal survey here (actually, it really is), but could that possibly be because 'me and my Linux pals' aren't exactly a representative sample of the computing community?

The Actual Survey

[ifchairscouldtalk]

Do you think that the recent interoperability and patent deal between Microsoft and Novel is

A) Good
B) Very Good
C) Not bad at all

Did I miss Casual Friday ?

[Joebert]

How can a survey like this go unnoticed by the Slashdot audience untill after it's been conducted ?
Did anyone here actually participate in this survey ?

Patent infringement

[kernelpanicked]

Careful Novell. I'm almost positive Microsoft has patents that cover these sorts of bullshit surveys.

But some of us are.

[khasim]

I'm running NetWare 6.5, GroupWise 7.01 and ZENworks 6.0 and I am not happy with this "deal".

Nor will I ever recommend Novell products until Novell changes their attitude.

How do you know they "protect" me?

[khasim]

So Novell enter an agreement that protects you from being sued by Microsoft, and as a result you'd recommend not using their products in future? What's your business case for that?

Since the actual wording of their agreement is still a secret, how do you know that they're providing any "protection" at all?

Since they've both stated that this agreement will expire in 5 years, why would I want to risk their products 6 years from now? Migrations are expensive.

When was the last time an end-user (not a distributor/vendor) was sued for patent infringement?

Statistically, if an end-user is being sued by Microsoft, that end-user already has a license agreement with Microsoft.

Microsoft does that all the time. Many of those stories are posted on /. (particularly the ones about schools being sued).

One of the PRIMARY advantages of Open Source for the end-user is the absence of license requirements. I have to spend time/effort/money making sure that the copies of MS-Office we use are licensed and that I have proof of those licenses. And that proof is acceptable to Microsoft should they ever audit us.

Yet I can deploy Linux without any CAL's or anything. And OpenOffice.org without any per seat requirements. And so on.

So, the "business case" is savings TODAY versus a nebulous threat that has never been exercised against any end-user in the past ... combined with the very real and previously documented threat of license audits and lawsuits.