Groklaw Guts the Novell/Microsoft Deal

walterbyrd writes "Pamala Jones, at groklaw, totally rips apart the Novell/Deal patent protection deal. From the article: 'Justin Steinman reveals that to market their SUSE Linux Enterprise Server against Red Hat they ask, "Do you want the Linux that works with Windows? Or the one that doesn't?" It's just appalling. Let me ask you developers who are kernel guys a question: When you contributed code to the kernel, was it your intent that it be used against Red Hat? How about the rest of you developers? Is that all right with you, that your code is being marketed by Novell like that? I also have questions about antitrust issues, with Microsoft being Novell's partner in such deals and sales pitches. Nothing speaks louder about Microsoft's true determination never to be actually interoperable than this conference.'"

Comments

Re:Self-serving

[morgan_greywolf]

Well its rather self-serving that an IBM employee would rip apart the Novell/Microsoft deal. Now if an uninterested and unbiased third party had something to say about the deal that would be insightful. Pamela Jones? An IBM employee? PJ has stated, oh, I don't know, like a few dozen times that she most certainly does not work for IBM and never has. She's a paralegal who works for a law firm. Which one, I don't know, but I'm betting it's not Swain and Cravath, LLC., IBM's legal representation. Especially since she has to get the court filings off of the public legal databases like everyone else and she relies on readers living in Utah to report on court hearings.

But never mind that. Thing is that IBM has a standing relationship with Novell to sell and market SuSE. They also happen to have a similar relationship with Red Hat. But IBM tends to push SuSE more for high-end enterprise stuff than they do Red Hat. I think it boils down to YaST vs. Anaconda/Kickstart. Whatever.

Re:Ever had a real job? No?

[Spudds]

Let's see you tell upper management that they need to pay to retrain the entire user base so that they can use *your* desktop operating system of choice rather than the desktop OS that both the company and everyone else in their business space has been using successfully for over a decade Done. I work for a phone company in Springfield, MA. They've been using Windows on their desktop for quite a while now, mostly due to both my predecessors being totally incompetent and windows being the status-quo.

It took very little convincing on my part to get the management to see the benefits of Ubuntu on the normal users desktops and we'll be doing a nearly-full rollout (some manager computers will remain windows) in a couple months.

The 'retraining' argument is mostly FUD as most computer users are familar enough with the desktop (any desktop) to use a "start" or "applications" menu. There's practically no difference from a user stand point between IE and Firefox and Word (pre-tabbed interface) is close enough to OpenOffice to not make much difference. Oh, and did I mention it makes my job and the manager's jobs easier by leaps and bounds due to the enormous configurability of linux? I can put exactly what the users need in the menus and lock down the machines so they can do only what they're supposed to do for their jobs.

Sounds like someone is still in school and has never had a real job. Trust me, kid, when you get out into the real world your thinking is going to get much more realistic. Huh. Condescending and incorrect at the same time! Just because you don't have the sack to anti-up and try to improve the technological world around us, doesn't mean you should FUD-storm those of us with the will and determination to try.

Looks like you're the one that needs to 'grow up'.