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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.'"
"Do you want the Linux that works with Windows? Or the one that doesn't?"
... but my enterprise needs computers that work and people who are competent enough to use something like pre-installed Ubuntu (hoo boy, guess they'll have to go back to school for that!)
The one that doesn't, of course.
To me, that's like asking, "Do you want the wrench that works with the Edsel, or the one that doesn't?"
I guess if I was an Edsel mechanic, that would matter. But since the Edsel sucks, and my business isn't repairing other people's Edsel's, I really couldn't care less... Yes, I am being glib, and I understand the needs of "the Enterprise"
I think that some more "mainstream" journalists have written articles on topics after seeing her coverage. It seems like a lot of the tech writers in big media don't bother doing the type of digging that PJ is known for and instead wait for her to do a most of the real work before they decide whether or not to voice their own opinions.
Classic Microsoft - leverage a partnership with a company seen as your enemy, yet try to do so to keep them at the mercy of the guys in Redmond. That's why MS has always tried to do with Apple - prop them up so they can be seen as viable, but make them your bastard stepchild anyway. This is just a more appalling trespass as they managed to get Novell in a position to market the hard work of thousands of contributors, who simply wanted a free viable alternative for those not wanting to be held to MS's will, in a way quite opposite of the motivation of that work.
I've always liked SUSE as a distro, but once the Novell deal went through, I knew it was only a matter of time until the sour taste was just a little too sickening, making it unconscionable to fathom dealing with them for the foreseeable future. There are better distros out there anyway.
Ignorance is the Agent of Fear; Fear Is the Agent of Violence - >1
"Well its rather self-serving that an IBM employee would rip apart the Novell/Microsoft deal"
Isn't it curious that the entire SCO/Microsoft legal team hasn't been able to come up with any evidence for this. But you carry on not commenting on the article and engage in a dishonest and personal attack - TROLL !!
was: Re:Self-serving
davecb5620@gmail.com
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.
My blog
On the one hand, there is the M$ deal.
On the other hand, there are the Good Things that Novell has done, and does, for GNU/Linux and F/OSS.
On the third hand, there is me, and others like me, that I'm sure wonder about the MPD that Novell exhibits. To whit: I understand and agree that Open-solution based entities should be willing and able to work with proprietary companies. But it seems that in this instance Novell is going about that the completely wrong way, with the completely wrong company.
It's like there is Novell Darkside, and Novell Lightside, and ne'er the twain shall meet.
Maybe these are just the actions of a corporation that is so large that the different divisions inside of it are unaware of what others are doing, a la Sony.
"...there are some things that can beat smartness and foresight. Awkwardness and stupidity can." ~ Mark Twain
As disgusting as this might be, it's going to have very little impact on Linux. It's marketing and unfortunately even Free Software is not immune from marketing. RedHat markets as well with slogans like "more than mission critical".
While I can't defend what Novell is doing here, I do want to point out that after buying SuSE, they created an open-source community project around a distribution that was one of the most closely kept. The openSUSE project now releases free SUSE downloads - something SUSE had been against. Novell also bought Ximian which I think has a great reputation in open-source development and Novell has been continuing the work that they have done.
Is it possible that Novell needs this marketing to overcome the fact that it is a late entrant? Maybe, judging by the other things that Novell has done (opening up a formerly closed distro and continuing important work on open-source projects) it is ok to forgive them for this highly annoying example of stupidity? Maybe I'm just naive and this actually is a bigger deal.
One of the primary reasons that Novell/SuSE were gaining market share was Samba. Guess what? Jeremy Allison, one of the core Samba authors, left Novell over what he sees as the illegal behavior of Novell in this deal. He now works for Google.
If Microsoft wanted to try to control Samba development, they may have done so. But I'd expect Google to run with the network storage work, now, with Jeremy in place.
I think the thing that particularly set her off was Novell's Justin Steinman claiming that "the community was no longer upset about the deal" (quoting PJ, not Steinman). She disagrees, and I think the intention of the article was to bring to a wider audience the way Novell are misrepresenting the situation.
And I have to say, I think it's an valid point. I won't claim that we've been unanimous in condemning Novell, but to claim all the objections are yesterdays news smacks of either deliberate deception, or a worrying detachment from reality.
Either way, it reflects poorly on Novell.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
Stallman isn't anti-capitalist. GPL V2 was written specifically to make it clear that people could make money off of GPLed code. The GPL doesn't try to 'eliminate' capitalism by any stretch. In fact, it creates more capitalistic opportunities than closed source software. The GPL, the way I see it, isn't socialist, but libertarian. It seeks to prevent people from manipulating markets and eliminating competition through the control of software and copyright law.
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How can Novell not care about that? They are benefiting from code that was written by people who are now not protected from patent claims from Microsoft, and Novell is making money from doing a deal with the company threatening them.
Need I say more. This deal is a shame.
-- Cheers!
"Before, Linux was this cloud we didn't get. I was high-fiving everyone I could find when Novell bought SuSe. We already won once against Novell." Martin Taylor, Microsoft General Manager of platform strategy link
Developers are free to join a project to help improve it, they are also free to abandon such projects enmass to equally stifle the products development and therefore screw those companies who are relying on the developers efforts to bring to market a good product!
Microsoft has some emerging issues it has to deal with:
.NET and Silverlight competing with Flash and AJAX web apps, XML markup base for Microsoft's new standards such as OOXML and XPS, IIS7 configuration XML files etc.)
:)
- the threat of a free OS commoditizing what they worked so hard to keep unique in Windows
- the emerging of accepted open standards that turn Microsoft's proprietary alternatives against themselves and wall them from the rest of the world
- the emerging of plenty of companies ready to deliver free OS components and support to Microsoft's corporate customers (which will directly affect Microsoft's bottom line and the industry trends in adoption of Windows)
Microsoft's business strategists have done a careful and detailed analysis of their situation and arrived at the infamous "patent deals". They have drawn the decision chart and figured, there's no way for them to lose, no matter how the market or their competition moves.
Possible outcomes & side effects:
- The patent threats split Linux community and cause unrest in corporate clients who consider adopting Linux for their servers or even desktops.
- Novell and the other distros in the patent deal are rejected by the community and Microsoft eliminates one of its more dangerous competitors should Linux' adoption really take off. -OR-
- Red Hat and the other distros OUT of the patent deal get destabilized and abandoned by the corporate clients and Microsoft gets to "coown" the Linux code together with Novell by means of the patent implementations all over the code. They can't just buy Novell now since it'll destabilize their Windows brand, and cause antritrust lawsuits. But should Windows go down next 5-10-15 years, you can be sure Microsoft will be talking to merge with Novell and offer their Linux distro with all the windows IP in it.
In essense Microsoft either gets to split the OSS movement, eliminate some of their stronger competirors, and improve the Windows brand and adoption, or gets a second route to quickly enter the market with Linux OS should Windows go horribly down, by utilizing all their Windows IP inside the Linux system.
What about standards:
- Where Microsoft has their own standard opposed to an open competing standard, they try to promote it to a full standard (OOXML, Exchange server integration with SUSE, ActiveDirectory integration with SUSE etc., XPS)
- Where Microsoft doesn't have their own standard, they adopt the publicly accepted standard, and extend it in attempt to create added-value dialect (RSS with own extensions in IE7,
So Novell's deal helps Microsoft make better penetration of Microsoft standards and technologies as something that comes standard with Linux. We're talking about Mono, Moonlight, Exchange integration, Samba integration and all those technologies which might have alternatives outside the Microsoft world.
This is marked to the public outside as interoperability effort. It sure is improving interoperability, but at the cost of putting more and more MS IP in Linux's distributions.
So was Novell wrong to sign the deal? If they had the pure intention to move the OSS community and help Linux as a whole, it was wrong. But as a company that competes against *OTHER* Linux distro companies, it was half right.
Right now if you see above all the outcomes from this deal (which are all good for Microsoft) there's 50/50 about who will survive (the non-patent deal Linux companies, or the patent deal Linux companies). Novell and RedHat are on the opposite sides of a gamble that'll play out in the next years.
While they're the gamble players, Microsoft is the casino. Never mind who wins, the casino always wins. Good job, MS
That largely depends on how they compete though. If I compete with you by blowing up one of your offices, that doesn't improve the quality of my software, and does nothing for the end user. If you compete back by killing my top developers, the only innovation we're going to see will be in weaponry.
You can see this in Microsoft: world class PR machine, but in terms of software... well, they can't even design a power-off button without five years of committees, meetings, and focus groups.
mmm... you cut that paragraph a little too short, I think. Here's a longer section:
Keep on like that, and you'll have to change your handle to "quotes_out_of_context"
Go read some of the legal research. Look at how closely the Groklaw analyse the legal filing in the SCO case. Look at the care they take to be accurate. That's why PJ is so widely respected. For her hard work and dedication to defending free software from a threat against which of the Linux hackers wouldn't have known where to start.
Granted, when she moves off law and on to wider subjects, she can sometimes go a bit over the top. I don't think she has in this particular article, but even if she did - I figure all that hard work earns her the right to voice the occasional opinion.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
Why would any uninterested party say anything about anything?
I want a Linux that works with Windows.
But if I invest in Novell's (Suse) Linux(TM), will my Windows work with Linux? Or will I have to buy the Novell version of Windows for that to happen?
Those of us old enough will remember when Microsoft had certain licensing deals with Compaq, and if you bought a Compaq server, you also had to buy Compaq Windows NT, which was quite a bit more expensive than the Redmond version. If you tried to get around this by just buying the server and installing Microsoft's Windows NT, you'd find yourself with a dead machine - the BIOS actually checked the Windows version, and if it didn't have the Compaq magic number, would refuse to continue loading it.
I can foresee a time when Windows will check to see if it is connecting to an "authorized machine" - presumably, to improve security - and that it will simply fail to connect to a Linux box, unless it is running an MS-approved version. (aka, Suse).
The only reason why Microsoft tolerates Novell is because they realize that Linux has replaced UNIX in a lot of corporate environments. As soon as Linux becomes widely used on the desktop, Microsoft will treat Novell as they've treated all of their past partners. Novell seems not to understand this - they can market their version of Linux only to the extent that Redmond blesses it, and that is truly sad.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
have a look at this user's first comment on this story here
...vividly encapsulates that post-Watergate/pre-punk/coked-up moment when you could trust no one, least of all yourself.
I have decided not to waste my time condemning Novell over the deal, however I no longer recommend their distributions to clients.
When clients ask for SuSE or Novell Linux I usually explain that Microsoft and Novell have signed a 5 year deal that allows Novell to use some Microsoft patented code in their Linux Distro. There is no telling if the deal will be renewed at the end of the 5 years or if users will have to start paying a license fee to either Novell or Microsoft. Novell and Microsoft have kept details of the deal a secret, but these details could incur costs for users. It is impossible to know what will happen.
I tell them that because of this ambiguity over the deal I no longer recommend Novell SuSE Linux as this could leave my clients in a legally questionable situation.
So I recommend Red Hat because they indemnify their users against legal harm and debian because their commitment to open source guarantees that any legally questionable code will be removed or replaced
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'.
You seem to have replied to some post other than mine, but attached it to my post.
I said nothing about patent protection for Novell or its users.
I did say:
Are you saying that the interoperative software you speak of will not be part of the Novell Linux Distro? Or that it will not contain any code that users would need patent protection for using? If the interoperative software wasn't part of the distro or didn't use Microsoft owned patented techniques, why would the end users need patent protection.
I believe that the selling point of the deal is that the code will be available with the Novell distribution and that it will contain Microsoft patented techniques, thus requiring protection for Novell's users. I mean if it doesn't, then what is the point of the agreement?
The deal is ambiguous. It delivers unknown benefits and may or may not be extended beyond the original 5 year window. This ambiguity raises a cloud of uncertainty around the Novell Linux distro. It is better to avoid it than use it at this time.