Red Hat CEO on Microsoft-Novell Deal

VE3OGG writes "The Seattle PI is running an interesting blurb from the Red Hat CEO on the current Novell-Microsoft deal that has been so lately lamented. According to Red Hat CEO Matthew Szulik, the deal is 'old news.' 'Those were existing accounts and there is at least one of them that I can speak definitely that is also a Red Hat account,' Szulik said. 'So those were older engagements and we were not involved in competitive situations with those two or three years ago when they became Novell accounts.' The common client that Szulik speaks of would likely be Credit Suisse. The story also makes mention that while Deutsche Bank's chief technology officer, Clemens Jochum, praised the deal, the firm has been an early investor in SUSE from the beginning."

Comments

Novell... who?

[NewToNix]

Didn't they used to be a Linux company?

Re:Novell... who?

[Darundal]

Yeah, and didn't Microsoft used to be a Windows company?

Re:Novell... who?

[Klaidas]

Hmm... But didn't you used to study english grammar?

Re:Novell... who?

[10scjed]

They still are, according to Stafford Masie at the CITI forum. As you can see from the quote, Masie is also adept at inspiring confidence in Novell's closed-source proprietary products:

"...Y'know, we're a Linux company, we do identity management, but we're a Linux company. Identity management, there's so much happening there to open source alot of the APIs, which we've already done, the only thing we haven't open-sourced in the identity world is kinda our directory, and I can tell you what, we probably won't, because again - the same reason alot of proprietary vendors wont take their big software and unwrap it, like I've always said- if you unwrap this baby its ugly, people will run away, ok, there's certain proprietary software that you never want anyone to look at..."

Shouldn't that be '...on Microsoft-Scovell Deal"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Meet the new SCO, same as the old SCO...

Red Hats

[Joebert]

Are all Red Hat employees required to wear red hats, or is that reserved for the Head Honcho ?

Re:Red Hats

[havill]

Actually, you get the official fedora when you're hired. But no, it's not part of the dress code.

makes sense

[Anonymous Coward]

It takes a lot longer than a month for large companies to do the testing and planning needed to roll out an operating system to dozens or hundreds of servers, even from one Linux distro to another. Also, companies like to follow up a deal with a subsequent announcement of "fruits of the deal", which of course were already in hand the day the deal was made.

It's too late to close the barn door

[pair-a-noyd]

Do they really think that we'll all just slap our foreheads and proclaim "OH, I see!", forgive Novell and embrace this new bastard child?

Think again. Linux users have long, deep memories, like elephants, we never forget, never forgive.
Why do they think we switched to Linux in the first place? To get FAR away from M$.
Don't try to force back in bed with our blood enemy.

Re:It's too late to close the barn door

[pembo13]

Well in all fairness, some people went to Linux purely on its tech. strong points. I for sure may have never discovered Linux were it not for the extreme suckness of Windows which drove me to look for something better.

Re:It's too late to close the barn door

[eMbry00s]

No, I do believe it was to get far away from expensive as fuck Unixes. Microsoft's take on those wasn't very successful.

Re:It's too late to close the barn door

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh i see... You guys lambaste companies for not working together and when they do its a trap. All people can say is look at the history of MS. I say so what. Better to have an inkling of working together than nothing. Ideology bites.. Its never grounded in realism and always comes back to bite you in the arse. For an example look at the USA.

Re:It's too late to close the barn door

[Cyno]

Long, deep memories, like elephants? What are you smoking? Don't know about you, but my memory is like a human's who has been psychologically traumatized by their government and corporations for 5 years, and spent a good deal of that time stoned.

I'm a Linux zealot, and I try not to forget, but forgiving is easy. All you have to do is see the light, learn how to coexist, etc. I forgive Sun. GNU software can replace the old commercial way of doing things, but it doesn't have to.

I love feeling the power in simple things like Intellectual Property Rights and Free Speech and these Copyleft Licenses.

This supposed enemy of Free Software is capitalism and it will be more than happy to adopt Free Software when it becomes more profitable than the alternatives. Microsoft knows this. That's why they're shakin in their booties. The only hope they have is to prolong the inevitable.

Re:It's too late to close the barn door

[theshowmecanuck]

Szulik wasn't saying everything is OK now, he was just stating a set of facts. This story doesn't really have to do with the original Novell-Microsoft agreement story. It was about Szulik saying the news about "Microsoft's announcement of three joint customers with Novell this week" is really non-news.

Re:It's too late to close the barn door

[WilliamSChips]

It's not "an inkling of working together" when it violates the GPL.

Re:It's too late to close the barn door

[Anonymous Coward]

Please point to the violation. RMS even said it doesnt violate it. Stop lying.

Re:It's too late to close the barn door

[stebbo]

I was an OS/2 user before I was a Linux user. Make of that what you will :-)

Re:It's too late to close the barn door

[WilliamSChips]

It's not a violation of the letter, but it's a violation of the spirit, and it will be a violation of the letter of GPL3(which is desperately needed despite what companies that want to exploit loopholes in GPLv2 and the Von Braun-like Linus Torvalds say). Oh, and Steve Ballmer has essentially pledged to sue non-Novell customers.

Re:It's too late to close the barn door

[0racle]

Too bad you didn't keep looking and had to settle for a Linux desktop.

:P

Re:It's too late to close the barn door

[slack_prad]

... learn how to coexist, ...

Ok, but only if you are a Gnome user. If you use KDE, TO WAR!!

Re:It's too late to close the barn door

[k1e0x]

Thats right..

Sure if you got money to burn go ahead and get Solaris.. but who does?

If your smart and you wana run on the cheep, IBM + RHEL will do it, all on cheeper hardware. Cant afford that? get this.. I met a large, million customer, comunications industry player that runs critical services on friggen Fedora.. hehe. Others have done it with Debian.

(..and don't try to sell me that TCO nonesence for a Unix shop with Unix staff. Linux *IS* free to them.)

Re:It's too late to close the barn door

[skeeterbug]

i'm wondering if your post was modded "interesting" due to your confusion. msft didn't try and make friends with linux, they claimed ownership. let me draw an analogy... big jim makes friends with your girlfriend. no problem. this ISN'T what msft did. big jim declares OWNERSHIP over your girlfriend and says you must contact him and pay him in order to talk to her. this *IS* what msft did. okay, i've lost 3/4 of slashdot b/c i mentioned "girlfriend," but the other 1/4 get the idea. msft has claimed ownership over parts of linux such that, if their claim is true, YOU WILL EVENTUALLY HAVE TO PAY MICROSOFT FOR EVERY LINUX INSTALL IN THE WORLD. excuse me, but i think the proper response to this claim isn't "can't we all get along?" rather, i think it is time to build up the linux fortress, gentleman, linux is under a full scale assault. yes, the time frame is extended due to the nature of the battle, but msft wants 1. linux F*ING KILLED or they want to get paid for EVERY SINGLE LINUX INSTALLATION IN THE ENTIRE WORLD! nothing else is acceptabel to these people. think about it.

Re:It's too late to close the barn door

[Cyno]

Its always time to build Linux, but not into a fortress, into a Free Marketplace. No point waiting for Microsoft to come around to our way of thinking. We can do it with or without them. I am not interested in making Linux work with Windows anymore. I'm interested in making Linux work well with itself and my hardware.

If Microsoft were more open minded about cooperation then the efforts to make Linux and Windows interoperable over the years would have been a huge success. But obviously, they are not. Who is the only one to blame for this mess here? Microsoft.

I mean, just look at what interoperability means to Microsoft:
http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/execmail/2005/02-0 3interoperability.mspx
http://www.microsoft.com/interop/default.mspx

"Making software interoperable by design", according to Microsoft they will be designing new software the is capable of interoperating with the alternatives because it uses OpenXML(tm).

However, the community has already built OpenOffice (a complete office suite, designed to be interoperable with Microsoft's Office document formats, OpenXML not necessary). Any help from Microsoft here? Nope. None. And take a look at Mono and Samba and all the IP conflicts Microsoft gives them. And now Microsoft threatens to sue anyone who doesn't sign their interoperability deal. Brilliant! That's a good way to make new friends, NOT!

The ONLY weapon Microsoft has to assault Linux is their patent portfolio. They would have to be willing to launch a full scale nuclear assault, and I know the amount of PR fallout from such an attack would destroy them.

So, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself, i.e. propoganda.

Re:It's too late to close the barn door

[Cyno]

Look at what Microsoft has done to Vista. They've turned it into a Fortress. Designed to keep the competition out, and help their partners lock you, the customer, in to DRM and their ideology of greed.

But that's not a good thing. That's not a good model for Linux to follow. We need to learn when to say enough is enough and simply forget they exist. Because, without them, without their stupid opinions about DRM and profits, we could make a lot more progress.

Want to solve the interoperability problem? Choose Linux.

Re:It's too late to close the barn door

[Cyno]

I mean, it would be good to get Samba, Cedega, Wine, OpenOffice, etc. fully functional, but what if we spend 20 years trying to make Linux 100% Windows XP compatible and still have problems installing apps or working with documents? They are just going to make it exceedingly more difficult to interoperate.

I wouldn't be surprised if they eventually Tivoized the OS so you had virtually no access to the raw binary data for the OS or DRM protected apps at any level. That seems to be the direction we're headed.

Re:It's too late to close the barn door

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't violate the "spirit" any more than Red Hat selling support contracts does.

Re:It's too late to close the barn door

[WilliamSChips]

Actually, all the GPL says about selling stuff is that the source can't cost more than the binaries plus a small amount for physical distribution. Whereas it has a clear clause against this sort of community fragmentation. It's why the Novell deal talks about Novell customers rather than Novell itself--if it talked about Novell itself it would be a GPLv2 violation. Good thing Microsoft doesn't understand how community forks go in the world of GPL.

Of course he considers this "old news"...

[Cherita Chen]

Of course he considers this "old news"; I would say the same thing if my largest competitor (SEL) committed a blunder like Novell did. Is it any surprise that Red Hat turned in the numbers they did last quarter?

Deutsche Bank also is a big believer in "IP"

[10scjed]

Perhaps they have an interest in validating the deal?

Deutsche Bank fund bets on patents as asset class

Boycott Novell.

RTFA, mods! OT?

[multisync]

Matthew Szulik, wearing a red hat. The parent seems 'topical' enough to me.

redhat crem de la crem

[Anonymous Coward]

or something like that. If linux is the answer, redhat is the question. I really like the accounts they've been getting.

Misleading headline and summary

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

RTFA. The Red Hat CEO isn't commenting on the Microsoft-Novell deal. He's commenting on the "three joint customers" that are apparently covered by the Microsoft-Novell deal. Novell is still fully to blame for their own actions.

Re:Misleading headline and summary

[Kjella]

RTFA.

Why?
The submitter didn't read it.
The editor didn't read it.
Those commenting didn't read it (except you).
Somehow, articles don't seem that essential to the process.

Re:Misleading headline and summary

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

My comment was directed at the submitter. The editors and people commenting never read the articles, so it would be futile to suddenly expect that to change.

Re:Shouldn't that be '...on Microsoft-Scovell Deal

[Anonymous Coward]

scofill II, i love you. you're twice the mcbride of scodarl I.

I like Red Hat's attitude

[MikeRT]

They're winners, not losers like Netscape and to a lesser extent, Sun. They don't go running to big mama regulator to help them out from the mean old Microsoft bully. Instead they shrug stuff like this off and fight harder. That's why I expect them to be around in the next decade as a strong contender. They understand the rules of the marketplace, one of which is that it's easier to win if you focus on building a product rather than trying to sell a sob story to regulators about the unfairness of having to compete against bigger companies using their influence to attack you.

Re:I like Red Hat's attitude

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

They don't go running to big mama regulator to help them out from the mean old Microsoft bully.

You sure about that?

been there, done that

[Anonymous Coward]

"I once preached peaceful coexistence with Windows. You may laugh at my expense - I deserve it." Jean-Louis Gassée, CEO Be Ince.

The 1990's called and want their naivite back. Attempts at "peaceful co-existance" with MS is for the gullible. The market place is littered with the husks of those chumps dumb enough to try. A free market is what MS fears most.

Free Software, Open Source Software, and closed source software can all co-exist, with the exception of MS. The basic foundation of MS business model, that of leveraging monopolies not making software, is diametrically opposed.

Re:Shouldn't that be '...on Microsoft-Scovell Deal

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

Isn't it "meet the new new SCO, same as the old new SCO"?

Deutsche bank, that name sounds familiar

[bl8n8r]

Q: And where have we heard that name before?
A: http://www.google.com/search?as_q=sco+Deutsche+Ban k

--
Ron we smell ponies: http://www.techp.org/