Perens Rains on Novell's Parade

unum15 writes "This week is Novell's Brainshare conference. They are touting the Microsoft covenant not to sue as 'good for consumers'. However, Bruce Perens decided to take this opportunity to 'rain on Novell's parade'. Perens read a statement from RMS affirming the GPLv3 would not allow companies to enter deals like this and continue to offer GPLv3 software. Perens even goes as far as to suggest this move is an exit strategy by Novell. There are also audio and pictures of the event available."

Comments

On Novell being obtuse

[AKAImBatman]

I have a feeling that he'll be commenting here soon, so "Hi Bruce!" :-)

What Novell did is not illegal but it is a matter of bad faith, Perens contended. The result could doom Novell to becoming a Microsoft subsidiary, he said, because Novell does not write its own software but gets it instead from those small independents.

Hovsepian scoffed at that scenario. "Them [Microsoft] buying us? I think that's deep in the conspiracy theory bucket."

Is it just me, or did Hovsepian intentionally misunderstand that statement? Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but I read your statement to mean that Novell would effectively become a subsidiary to Microsoft without actually being bought out. Much in the same way that Microsoft "Partners" tend to exist only so long as it amuses Microsoft. When Microsoft grows tired of them, they do something that completely undermines the trust and business model of those partners. (See: PlaysForSure, OS/2, Sybase, Spyglass, Citrix, etc.)

It amazes me that companies still fall for that trick, but there you go. Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. Bye Novell, it was nice knowing you. :-/

Re:On Novell being obtuse

[theshowmecanuck]

It's typical modern American capitalism. Short term gains don't necessarily mean long term pains... at least not for the CEO involved. Take the million+ dollar bonus, cash out stock options, run/quit/get fired, and who cares if the company dies later.

Re:On Novell being obtuse

[robyannetta]

Every day that goes by, I keep thinking that this Microsoft/Novell deal is nothing more than a prelude to Microsoft outright buying Novell who will then offer some cheap-ass Linux desktop solution.

With Novell owning the original Unix IP, Microsoft may then eventually have the upper hand. That's a SCARY thing...

Re:On Novell being obtuse

[Bruce Perens]

Hi. What I meant was that Novell's Linux business is going to be hurt by what they've done, long term, because technical people won't be recommending them. And their Linux business has not reached the point of viability anyway, so I don't see how they plan to go forward rather than take as much money as possible before getting out of the business. Look at the customers they've listed of late (only four) and then ask them why they bought. The HSBC guy called the MS agreement FUD in the press, one of the others told me privately they'd rather be rid of Microsoft.

Will MS buy them? MS tends to work through proxies these days. Is 330 Million a good starting investment? Sure.

Bruce

Re:On Novell being obtuse

[Bruce Perens]

The new GPL3 provision says that if you arrange to protect any party from patents regarding the software, that protection has to apply to everyone. We might have the final language to see on Saturday, for the FSF annual meeting, I've not been told but that's what I'd guess.

Forget about GPL3 introducing major forks. There will be a few small spats. The license is in the interest of the Open Source developers who would use it, and that's all of the developers who want a share-and-share-alike form of licensing rather than an outright gift as in BSD. The folks who mainly would be opposed to it are those who want to benefit without sharing, and to say the community doesn't need them would be an understatement.

If you believed that GPL3 would prohibit Linux from being used in a system with DRM, you can stop now. There are four places where you can put DRM in a system with a GPL3 kernel and have it work well and not have to give away your keys: in hardware as in a chip that mediates access to the display or audio output, in a coprocessor as with the separate chip that runs the GSM stack in cell phones, in a kernel under the kernel as with Microsoft's "nib", and in a user mode program. Those are also the best places to put the DRM from a technical standpoint. I am currently working on a paper on this, maybe I'll have it out tomorrow evening.

Thanks

Bruce

Re:On Novell being obtuse

[Bruce Perens]

So, lets get clear on this to make sure I understand it correctly. You and the GPLv3 are perfectly ok with Tivo implementing DRM in firmware and hardware that stops the player from booting if certain controlled measures aren't present?

No, it wouldn't work this way. In a compliant system, you'd be able to change the kernel as you liked, the system would still boot, but the DRM would still decrypt and play media correctly without offering access to the unencrypted data stream. The key is that the GPL3 DRM terms mean that the DRM must not lock down the GPL program, and the DRM functionality of playing the media must keep working if you change the GPL program. GPL3 does not say that you have to be able to break the DRM, it only restricts what the DRM can break.

This isn't going to keep users away from the program. Users don't generally care about licensing as long as they have a clear right to run the program, and they do. Look at the nasty EULAs they sign from MS, much worse than ours. It may keep certain developers away, but historically the GPL share-and-share-alike terms have helped, rather than hurt, to build a large developer community.

Bruce

People hold high expectations on Novell

[vivaoporto]

People hold high expectations on Novell, and I really don't know why. Of course they "bought" Suse in 2003, the Mono project, and some other free software projects. but Novell was, is and will always be a proprietary software company. They don't care about Free Software, they are not into it for the ideals. Back them they saw an opportunity to make money off free software, so they invested, made some money but, in the end, they would dump everything in a heartbeat and partner with Microsoft if it is more profitable for them.

And that's the beauty of Free Software. They can dump Linux and Free Software all they want, if they do, as fast as it takes, a fork for all projects that they are personally involved (Suse, Gnome, Mono, from the top of my head) will pop up and continue almost as nothing has happened.

And I really wish that happens. I don't like the way they are handling Gnome, ignoring completely the community in order to satisfy Novell's aims and goals (mostly, appease to Windows "converted" users. The recent created Gnome Control Panel is a copy of Windows Control Panel, except that it is slow and cluttered like Win 3.11 Program Manager). That, and things like bundling Mono, pfff. But that's another subject, that doesn't belong here.

Just a heads up. Novell has done nothing to deserve your trust. Don't look surprised when they finally misbehave.

That's the problem with Novell.

[khasim]

They did not understand Free / Open Source software.

They paid $210 million for SuSE. Why?

The more intelligent approach would be to hire developers who would submit patches that you wanted to the various projects that you're interested in.

Then you Open the protocols that you control that you want to see more widely adopted. And pay developers to incorporate those protocols.

Novell had the idea that it can acquire Linux by buying Linux distributions and projects. When this didn't pay out, Novell decided to "partner" with Microsoft in search of some more money.

Re:GPL 3

[Alioth]

That will put them at a significant competitive disadvantage to the likes of RedHat. They will be saddled with maintaining old versions of very complex software (like the entire gcc toolchain, plus binutils and the like) - whereas companies who are not pariahs will just continue using the latest GPLv3 versions of this software. Novell's costs will therefore be significantly higher since they can no longer benefit from the work of the actual package maintainers themselves.

Re:Anyone wondering if Novell is..

[killjoe]

It doesn't matter. They already reversed themselves on their most important pledge and that is to leverage their patents against anybody who sues an open source project for patent violation.

They will no longer come to the defense of open source projects if MS sues them and that's what MS was after all along. MS has already gotten the same kind of deal from Sun. If they can get IBM they will be done.