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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.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Patent Busting? That sounds like a business model. I bet you could patent that....
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
Billg: Novell partnering with EFF? That's the dumbest fucking idea I've heard since I've been at Microsoft.
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.
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.
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!
Some of you apparently have adopted FOSS to be against something.
Can't you let go of that anger?
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 ]