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Novell Partners With EFF on Patent Busting
Seymour writes "Novell and the EFF have announced that Novell will be contributing to the EFF's Patent Busting Project. Novell will also support the EFF's efforts toward patent reform, including with the WIPO. Could this be Novell trying to get back in the good graces of Linux users? 'Novell's agreement with Microsoft has been a source of contention within open source circles, with one Red Hat executive accusing the company of appeasing Microsoft; others have accused Novell of violating the GPL with the agreement. Either way, signing the deal with Microsoft did a lot to sully Novell in the eyes of many Linux users, and Novell's decision to link up with the EFF on patents may have been made with an eye towards getting some of its street cred back with the OSS community.'"
For me, at least, there aren't any second chances. The great thing about the Linux market is there's plenty of choice. Why choose Novell now?
I won't be.
(Same idea behind not buying Sony ever again.)
Husband sleeps with his secretary. Wife finds out. He buys her a Tiffany's bracelet. For some wives it's the bracelet that matters. For some it's the remorse (or lack thereof). For some there is no uncheating. Same story here.
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Patent Busting? That sounds like a business model. I bet you could patent that....
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
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NO CARRIER
Billg: Novell partnering with EFF? That's the dumbest fucking idea I've heard since I've been at Microsoft.
Wouldn't Novell's deal with Microsoft render anything Novell contributes useless against Free softwares biggest enemy: AKA Microsoft?
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
Is that Novell are trying to have it both ways. But Free (not Open Source) Software is about principles, not realpolitik. Novell can't back both sides, or claim to be some sort of bridge across troubled waters. Well, they can, but we shouldn't be enabling them. Free Software is over hyar, Microsoft is over thyar. The only acceptable compromise is for Microsoft to surrender; we have nothing to gain by moving towards them.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
True, Suse had a rock solid distro. The only drawback was the enormous Scheisse video directory under
Frankly, I'm glad an American corporation cleaned it up and removed the German race's known tendency of perversion. Sometimes puritanism is a Good Thing.
Novell isn't yet, quite, in my list of totally untrustworthy companies. They seem determined to get there, but for now I'm willing to not condemn this move before I see the results. For now.
This doesn't mean that I'm willing to use or recommend Novell software. That appears wantonly reckless. Perhaps *AFTER* I seen the agreement with MS, and decide whether the redacted parts might be larger than a couple of words, and get some reactions from independant lawyers. Perhaps after that I'll be more willing to trust them. Maybe. And maybe just the opposite. The weasel words so far used in public commentaries don't inspire any confidence at all. They're rather like the MS pledge that "We don't currently have any plans to sue...". They could change their mind at any minute, and they aren't obligating themselves to give any warning. And there could exist plans right now that this spokes-thing just doesn't know about, possibly on purpose. Novell seems to aim more towards incoherence than ambiguity, but the effect is the same. The promises appear worthless, and certainly not legally binding. (And if a corporation is carefully insuring that its public statements aren't legally binding, what does that imply about its trustworthiness?)
Well, possibly these were off-the-cuff remarks, and not carefully thought out. Possibly. But they have explicitly refrained from making any carefully thought out statements that address the topic...unless they were so vague as to be worthless. (Or unless they were statements about how someone else would behave, which they obviously can't be responsible for.)
We'll see what gets published about the MS-Novell deal, and we'll see how this quest for "patent reform" works out. Perhaps after those resolve we'll decide that Novell was merely clumsy about what they did and were misunderstood. Possibly. Until then, however... well, Safety First. And that means avoiding Novell, as well as MS.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Novell worked out a deal with Microsoft. Novell got a big bucket-o-cash, and Microsoft got what still seems to amount to nothing.
Now with this, it seems like two things are true.
1.) Novell costs Microsoft money.
2.) Novell actively works against Microsoft.
Awesome
Silence is golden... and duct tape is silver.
They could make a show called Patent busters where they could test patents and mark them as Plausible, Prior Art or Laughable. Then to keep in the spirit of Mythbusters they could use explosions by blowing up the companies that try to sue based on Prior art or laughable patents.
An exploiter is you.
Novell may have gained many meat from this deal, but the loss of moxiousness is overwhelming. Until Novell clicks on the unequip link to the MScontract(tm) in their inventory, they will continue to suffer a permanent drain to their Moxie. No amount of practicing the accordian will ever be able to put this right.
How curious it is that so few people on Slashdot can read any FAQs.
I've seen a few people in this thread and others ask "Why use Novell software?". I assume in this case you mean SuSE linux, and OpenSuSE, so i'll start there. This is long, but true, I have used OpenSuSE long enough to recognize how useful it is compared to other systems available and these things are why I will not just abandon SuSE or Novell.
I have used Ubuntu, RHEL, CentOS, Gentoo, Slackware, and Fedora both in the past and quite recently, and at this time OpenSuSE remains the most usable Linux system available, for a variety of reasons, but in particular the Yast system. Yast fills in a lot of the gaps in Linux system and hardware management. Some of the Yast functions are not presently available anywhere else, and if you decide to use Gnome this is even more important because Yast fills in many of the massive holes in Gnome for these areas. And I don't mean just basic stuff, but more advanced things, like a GUI for inserting PCI IDs into a driver if your card doesn't match perfectly or at all, or a well made Xorg configuration panel, or very well designed network card configuration. It also has GUI configuration for almost every common network service daemon, such as ldap, apache, NIS, kerberos, bind, nfs, sendmail, samba and so on. Pehaps the single most important useful aspect of yast is that all of these functions can be completed over SSH, in a console, or without Xorg at all, because there are totally identical yast systems for both GUI and ncurses, this alone makes yast fairly unique.
OpenSuSE also has one of the best installers I have ever seen, and it beats just about everything. By everything I mean Windows XP, Windows Vista, OS X, and without a doubt every other Linux dist installer out there. Why you ask? Some very important reasons include its nearly perfect package selection, intelligent partitioning (that can create LVM and encrypted volumes for you), hardware preconfiguration, system cloning, and lots of other useful things that actually work. It also gave me a choice between Gnome and KDE within one disc, which gained it lots of points. It also has very nice system recovery that will check all essential files and replace them if you think something is broken. It will also repair grub easily and quickly, something you would otherwise need a livecd for anyway, that novice users could not do otherwise.
So you can see after that long rant, that there are things in SuSE that are custom and unique to it, many of them not present anywhere else. None of these things are proprietary and could be done by others, even Yast could be used by others as it was released as GPL by Novell.
So, I will not just abandon one of the best Linux systems available, nor will I immediately blacklist Novell for what is basically speculation at this point. Novell positioned the company as being highly dependent on Linux, Novell has more reason to stand by the community than it has to assist Microsoft, even with their agreement. And every day it seems Novell is looking more like the goodguy, particularly if they knew what would happen with those coupons, and now this EFF news makes me think they know more and have more planned than previously thought.
I work for a bank. A big one. While they move much like other banks (like a dinosaur), they're starting to bring in a number of linux machines for some non essential back-end services. They picked SuSE Enterprise. To some, partnership with recognised companies is a whole lot more important than any notion of ideals or ethics.
What does the summary mean about getting its street cred BACK with the OSS community?
I didn't think Novell had much street cred since the mid-90s, and I wasn't aware of any from OSS. (buying SuSE doesn't count, since that was "crap! NT/XP killed Netware - we need to get on this Linux thing to stay afloat")
to do that "Linux is tained and stuff" trick? Simple. Before that, Novell where very close to offer full stack of apps/technologies/stuff for migrating SMB to Linux. Groupware? check, Groupwise. Good looking and working distro? Check, Suse. Enterprise technologies? Check, starthing from Zen network, etc. Commited resources to fixing things in open source stack? Check, Novell employ/employed lot of Samba/KDE/GNOME/OpenOffice.org coders. Microsoft actually nailed two rabbits with one hit - they pushed their IP war against Linux a bit forward and stopped capable company from gaining any marketshare and momentum. What makes me so mad that I can even bet that it was just because of some coorporation tricking (I could guess even on corruption inside Novell). I think Microsoft simply pushed right buttons and leadership of Novell, without thinking or consulting devs or middle management first, decided easily.
Of course it is all speculation and don't change a bit - Novell have to clean up their higher management and drop those agreements with Microsoft to get it right back on track - but it is kinda little bit sad that stupid decisions are made just because some people are so easily manipulated trough money.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
So much for the argument that HP books makes kids read, which is good for their education....
Extreme Programming - Redundant Array of Inexpensive Developers
Will Novell's own patents be understood to be "last in line" for a busting by the EFF now? Is this a way of Novell buying influence over the EFF? Or is this a not so subtle way of Novell saying that "Our patents are all good ones as otherwise the EFF would have busted them"?
Busting bogus patents and bending over to a company that almost every year files for one are two mutually exclusive choices.
Until you void your agreement with Microsoft, your whole product line, including SuSE Linux, will remain in the black list of products I will never use myself or suggest to my customers.
If Novell is looking to undo the situation they've found themselves in, they should have done it when the Protest the Microsoft-Novell Patent Agreement* petition came out. They had lots of time to rethink their decision. For all I know, Novell's intentions with the EFF may not be as noble as suggested.
[*] - http://techp.org/p/1
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No. Suse can't be a target for the simple reason that Novell and MS have both signed a mutual agreement no to sue (in addition to agree to collaborate for interoperation).
In fact, that's where the whole story began. Microsoft hoped (and somewhat managed it) that people think that this should mean is that Novell could get sued because of Linux patent infringement and thus signed a deal with MS. Whereas in fact, the net cash flow was massively in favor of Novell (thus you can imply that, maybe, MS was affraid of Novell, somewhat. Novell has indeed a lot of rights inherited from the original Unix).
And that's where the problem currently lies. Novell has earned $wad_of_cash with this procedure. But now Microsoft is starting to go after the rest of the OSS community. Novell knows that all comunity members must work together to protect their work. But Novell can't retaliate, because there's quite a few thing they promised in their agreement with Microsoft, and that $wad_of_cash is nice enough. They don't want to breach the contract and loose their precious.
Helping the EFF fighting is an indirect way that enables them to do thing some of which may be against their agreement with MS.
Just like before, MS used SCO as a proxy to try to sue Linux shops.
If MS threatens to sue over patents, Novell can't counter sue them, but they can help the EFF to either : bust those special patents OR destroy the whole bogus patent system through reforms.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
After a long time of using almost exclusively SuSE (ever since version 1.x, which as I remember was basically a repackaged Slackware) it was yast of version 10.1 that drove me away most of all. Not so much the functionality which I thought was at least adequate. But the speed! It now took ~10min to start up the software selection. WTF? And online updates? Trying to configure online updates sent me into an endless loop of registering online and yast not recognizing that I registered.
And while the yast "GUI" configuration for packages is nice for a start, it gets useless once you have to do something beyond its scope. As soon as you need to make one manual change to the configuration, you cannot go back to yast.
Add to that the confusion about what version of SuSE I held in my hands. I had bought a shrinkwrapped version of SuSE 10.1, but according to their website, it didn't exist. Did I have OpenSuSE? Maybe. It didn't say so anywhere on the package.
And then comes the MS-Novell deal with Novell starting to play the FUD game. No thanks.
So I started to look around. Our servers now run Debian, my desktop Ubuntu. Live is good again.
bla
Play with shit, and sooner or later, you're bound to get it on you.
My father used that as a cautionary metaphor when it came to hanging out with bad company, and I think it pretty much sums up what happens whenever anyone gets into bed with Microsoft.
Thing is, that implies being a victim. Novell's a victim, all right, but I'd say it's a situation more of their own making. Years ago, with NetWare, they were the only game in town. In these days, they're struggling for relevancy, and it appears they're willing to follow whichever way the wind blows.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, write technology blogs.
The great thing about the Linux market is there's plenty of choice. Why choose Novell now?
Because you can. GPL 3.0 has taken the worst thorns out of the Novel M$ pact. A portion of the money might go to M$, but that's much less that an all M$ "solution" would bring and that's the market Suse is supposed to serve. If you work for a big dumb company, Novel might be right for you. If you de-M$ed yourself five years ago, you don't need them.
GPL 3.0 has left Novell no choice but to behave. Sooner or later, even M$ will be forced to co-operate and join the free software party.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
by entering an agreement with MS and MS giving out all those linux vouchers without expiration dates. According to the report on Groklaw MS may have shot themselves in their own patented foot(both feet while they had them stuck in their mouth).
I would have a hard time believing that Novell could be so sly and cunning, but hey stranger things have happened.
Maybe this is an anomaly of keeping your enemies closer.
He who said 1,000,000 monkeys on 1,000,000 typewriters would eventually type the great novel, never saw an AOL chat room
Husband sleeps with his secretary.
Secretary? M$ has always been a whore, dishonest, drugged and only interested in your money.
Wife finds out.
Wife finds out and crafts GPL 3, which transfers all the benefits of husband's infidelity without any drawbacks. She get's all the O time from every M$ whore without contracting the VD M$ is famous for. M$ has become her bitch, little more than a disposable sex toy. There are as many coppies as she likes and no one but Pimp Daddy Bill Gates has lost.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
The SLES vouchers are for Microsoft and Linux together. And every Linux you sell at novell,
you pay Microsoft.
Who are do you think you are kidding here, except maybe yourself? your argument is that
since Novell is making money, that validates the deal. But if you hurt the community's ecosystem,
why would money make that right? We all know you got money for selling out. But that
doesn't make it better to us. It shocks me that you can't see that. Does Novell have no
employees with a feel for community values?
Supporting EFF is nice. No doubt. However, it does not solve the fundamental problem: their product is Microsoft-tainted.
I don't want a Microsoft-approved Linux. I want a Microsoft-free Linux. I used SuSe when it was Microsoft-free, and switched to Fedora once Novell made this deal. So long as the terms of the deal remain, I will not use SuSe.
If you want my money, you must give me what I want. That is all.
This is a typical big corporation issue I think. It's not that Novell decides to both support and go against Microsoft. It's just that Novell has some clueless managing types at the top that see a presentation about how a certain decision will make them money. They decide to go with the decision if it prognoses to make lots of money. The next board meeting or staff meeting (whoever decides that and at which level I don't know), they see another decision that will help them with their image, they decide to go with it because it makes them look good. They have no clue what they are deciding on, they don't know how the community thinks about it or the underlying reasons until they actually make the decision, and although the community is big and strong, all they see is potential customers they need to win over to their side.
That's so with a lot of large companies, the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing and that's fine to upper management as long as the two hands keep their fat paycheck coming in. There's not a whole lot of corpies that actually care about the company as a whole, that have a certain ethic or goal or ideal to work towards as a company, all they want is their weekly $x000. I have seen it in a lot of companies and it's all the same and eventually they go under because of it. In the beginning of the company, there's a few idealists that start the company and that want to bring out their product/invention/whatever and that feel good about it. But as their company grows, they leave or die or get replaced and the monthly employee meetings become yearly and the focus shifts from bringing in new customers or bringing out a good product or working towards a goal or ideal to "make us money, then make us more money and we are losing money here, here and here, let's cut that m'kay". I even had CxO's telling me that they don't care whether or not our computer systems run good or is compliant to standards, as long as I don't have to deal with complains about it, that persons goal was solely becoming a CEO of any company by implementing a change that would make lots of money in a short time, cash out, apply for the new job with 'good' references and examples and as soon as that 'surge' of extra money dries up, they are long gone.
Same with Novell, they don't strive to bring out the best networking software anymore, not since Novell 5. The company is slowing down, big enough to sustain itself and to sustain the paycheck of current management.
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(Score:-1, Flamebait)
Yes, much more so than the wool these people are pulling over your eyes. Fine, have at it. Make people have even less respect for the law. It's like these companies are some kind of anarchists in disguise. They want us to destroy all our institutions, and of course put them in charge. Got news for ya, They are already in charge. You people put them there. Guess you all are too comfortable to care.
What?
This is a place for geeks. Don't try to make it cool by using slang like street cred.
For one, there's no faith involved, so using "religious" as a pejorative term is ridiculous.
Secondly, freedom can MAKE something the best choice. Yeah, maybe the Microsoft product is better and cheaper now, but will it remain better and cheaper when it goes out of support in a few years and I'm stuck on an upgrade treadmill and we have to rewrite half the application?
That'll never happen, they have great backwards compatibility, you say? Tell that to the people porting things to Vista. Even Microsoft's applications don't work right, dammit, so don't tell me it's because everyone didn't obey Microsoft's edicts on how properly working programs should behave.
Please don't speak for me as a Linux user, nor as a system integrator. Novell didn't leave my good graces. In fact, that they could manage to grab a huge chunk of change (it was what, several hundred million?) from Microsoft only increased my fondness for the most refined Linux distribution out there.
Linux is a great operating system. The fact that Novell was able to succeed in scamming Microsoft out of money AND remain in the bounds of the GPL AND turn around and help out in the battle against software patents AND fight against SCO's fraudulent claim of Linux works FOR Novell, IMHO, not against them. I'd be even more impressed if Novell were to offer to back those open source project authors who offered to be the first in line to go up against Microsoft's patent threats in court.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Why don't they go after patent applications, rather than existing patents? IANAL, but it seems like it would be easier to get one of these stopped before it's granted and you are stuck filing a legal challenge for re-examination. Does anyone know? Is it just the number of applications is too great?
It is not a matter of "religion".
It is a matter of principles.
I have some, do you have any?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
You are a person that does not apply any ethical principles to their choice of software.
If that hurts you it is your fault, not ours. I and others are stating a matter of fact based on what you are saying.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I am now happily running Debian 4.0 etch as my default desktop and laptop OS. Novell committed a serious offence in the open source world by signing a deal with Microsoft, and their recent partnership with EFF can't change that. No machine runs SUSE anymore here. Perhaps you should consider Debian the next time you have to install an OS, as it'll enable you to become part of a much more healthy community and avoid becoming a customer of a corporation that WILL step over you if it's good for their bottom line.
Because I have professional standards that are pretty high.
That is not a religion, it is professionalism. I will not compromise my profesionalism for the sake of following the flock.
If a client insists on using something after I have given my expert opinion, that is fine, but that is why I am an expert in the field, I am aware of the reputations of the different companies and can recommend with confidence the ones that will provide you with a good service or the ones that may be out to screw you.
MS IMHO have amply demonstrated that they don't care about their costumers and have broken the law in several places around the world.
YOu are happy to negotiate with them, fine, just don;t defend your shoddy professional standards pretending that people with principles and care for their costumers are some kind of religious zealots.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.