Why Microsoft Can't Afford To Let Novell Die

geek4 sends in an analysis indicating that Microsoft may have the most to lose if hedge-fund operator Elliot buys Novell. (The eWeekEurope piece is based on a longer and geekier writeup by Andy Updegrove on how the mechanics of unsolicited tender offers can play out in the tech world.) To avoid meltdown or asset-stripping, Novell can try and find a preferred bidder — a company with some interest in running Novell as a business, and preferrably a tech company. Or another company may make a move independently. But who might that be? A couple of analysts have suggested IBM, Oracle, or SAP. These all have problems... Microsoft is in a similar category, with one added problem. ... Microsoft has staked any open source credibility that it has on Novell's SUSE distribution. If Novell falls to bits, then Microsoft's efforts to gain open source cred pretty much disappear with it. It's something that would have been impossible to imagine a few years back, but if we're looking for someone to prop Novell up, Microsoft would now be a prime candidate."

Comments

Microsoft the tar-baby

[Bruce Perens]

Once you start with MS your paths close up until the only remaining one is: they own you. Maybe if Novell had stayed away from Microsoft they'd be doing better now. Red Hat is doing really very well.

Re:Microsoft the tar-baby

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Do you think that they did badly because they touched Microsoft, or that they touched Microsoft because, for some other set of reasons, they weren't doing well enough against Red Hat and thought that it would provide them with competitive distinction?

Re:Microsoft the tar-baby

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Once you start with MS your paths close up until the only remaining one is: they own you.

Apple did pretty well with that 'investment' by MS a decade or so ago.

Re:Microsoft the tar-baby

[Anonymous Coward]

You have bad memory.

I think SuSE understood what they had to do to make a business out of a Linux distribution.
Back in the days, SuSE was in the red for $50 000 000 and survived because IBM injected them cash. They already were not very much in control any more. Later, IBM gave another $50M to Novell wich then bought SuSE. Is that the way to make a business out of a Linux distribution? To get in the red to get bought?
http://209.85.229.132/search?q=cache:jaPNE148pE0J:techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/main/novell_suse.html+ibm+novell+deal+suse&cd=3&hl=fr&ct=clnk
I don't believe that Novell ever has. ... they ended up alienating the very communities that would have pushed their own product in the enterprise, because they didn't understand that those communities were grass-roots engineering staff within their corporations - and were already connected to Open Source developers if they weren't themselves the developers - rather than the IT management that Novell focused upon.
Basically, SuSE was doing business around IBM big iron, they had (and have) a good relationship with IBM (frankfurt iirc) and work well.
Apart from that, they alienated every (popular) community gathering around them long before the novell buy out by not freeing YaST, their management tool. The thing is, they tried to get some money from the people using their distro before you could download it. Which didnt work either, which leds to the $50M loss. (Others tried to not get money from their users, and it did work).
Apart from that, as for the grass-roots engineering target, it is an entranched place where you find people either deeply tied to debian or to red hat. They don't give a damn about anything else, even if it's a nice piece of engineering as SuSE has always been. So is it really unwise to have aimed at another target? Maybe an already untouched area, like compagnies already doing microsoft that want to go linux too? I don't think so.

those same IT managers that Novell was after
AS FOR NOVELL, once it bought SuSE, they freed everything that wasnt already free in SuSE and then they freed some NOVELL software too. They hired people, they had for example 3 engineers on the ATI drivers, they have developed new distribution tools like the build system and the SuSE studio which are excellent and innovative.
So would they have done this if they werent really trying to do a very good distro (and it is) and build a business AND a community around it?
Also there is a text online from one of SuSE founder that says that after the buyout, the 5000 NOVELL people listened to the 500 SuSE people and got along with the program.

The only meat in what you say is of course the MS deal which infuriated many persons (and me too). But this problem arise from the existence of patents and of a broken patent system. That is the real problem that needs to be fixed. You need a new Jefferson.

Re:Microsoft the tar-baby

[Kennon]

I pretty much agree with every point you make here except this "Then it bought Suse, and screwed that up too." I don't understand why so many people repeat this. If I recall correctly SuSE was failing as a commercial Linux company when Novell acquired them. They were on their way to Mandrake-ville. Where I work we have hundreds of SLES servers in production today and they are rock solid. Fast, reliable, super easy to manage. I would put my SLES datacenters up against a Red Hat shop any day of the week. And Novell licensing is so much cheaper than Red Hat we basically have a site license for the cost it would take to license half our servers for support to Red Hat. Not to mention the fact that Red Hat basically abandoned the Desktop a while ago and SLED is a great windows replacement for a significant portion of our end users who don't require the few remaining windows client-servers apps we have left.

The stupid MS agreement and not ending support for these crap legacy apps is what is killing them. If you look at the numbers, the Linux division of Novell is profitable. The problem is the boat-anchor of closed source legacy BS they are still supporting is dragging down the whole company. Instead Novell has too many old timer bean counters at the helm who don't understand that the word Free does not mean free.

Re:Microsoft Has Already Moved On To Ubuntu

[93 Escort Wagon]

Microsoft is perfectly happy to leave Novell's rotting corpse on the trash heap of computing. It served its purpose of getting the message out to the commercial world that Linux is a Patent Minefield.

Everyone's going to have a different take on this of course, depending on their personal views regarding Microsoft and Linux. Me, I think the main point is it's no longer the 1990's. Microsoft has very short coattails, and anyone planning to ride them to success nowadays is in for a rude awakening.

But I really don't get your "patent minefield" comment at all. That's what Microsoft was HOPING to accomplish, but frankly it seems obvious they failed miserably - that's why for the past couple years they've made significant moves towards coexistence and interoperability with Linux. It's not like they managed to even slow down Red Hat, let alone turn the corporate world against them.

MS doesn't need Novell, not now, not ever.

[ipquickly]

Why would MS even care?
In fact if Novell fails, along with what recently happened with MySQL and Open Solaris, MS can brag about how proprietary software is the way to go.

Call my cynical, but any inroads into open source software by MS have been either because they had to, or because they had a direct benefit from the public image attained by playing nice with open source software.

At the end of the day, the fact remains. MS would like everyone to use their proprietary software. MS would like everyone to forget about open source.

The only way this will ever change is if open source becomes more profitable to them than proprietary software.
Then MS would transform into the #1 proponent of open source.

Think of the shareholders!

Rubbish article

[Gorobei]

Trying to pretend this is some giant strategic cat-fight is a waste of time. I can only assume the author of the article is trying to gin up his importance and earn a few thou in consulting fees.

The big companies have already figured out that Linux works just fine in datacenters. Most managers don't know or care if they are running Redhat, Ubuntu, Suse, or a home-roll. They do know that Linux isn't going to vanish just cos some random firm gets bought out.

Re:Microsoft Has Already Moved On To Ubuntu

[Bruce Perens]

All software is a patent minefield. You can't write any significant software without infringing upon a granted patent. If existing patents were enforced at all well, there would be no software industry.

MS continues to make gains in licensing its "Linux patents", and there's nothing that says they won't decide it's time to enforce them against you and me tomorrow.

The worst part is that we have no credibility in fighting this at the government level any longer. When Open Source was people doing good for other people, we had the credibility to kill a proposal for uniform enforcement of software patents across the EU. Today, Open Source is big business, and there is no such credibility if it's Microsoft vs. Red Hat rather than Microsoft vs. do-gooders and non-profits. So, this means that our commercial success is likely to kill us through software patents eventually.