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

[Bruce Perens]

I think SuSE understood what they had to do to make a business out of a Linux distribution. And Ubuntu/Canonical has, and they started later. I don't believe that Novell ever has. Like Caldera before them, 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.

So, Novell was doing poorly, and saw MS as a fast and easy source of some third of a Billion dollars if they'd just do what Microsoft wanted, which would also endear themselves to those same IT managers that Novell was after, while further alienating the engineers.

It was a short-term strategy.

Want to bet that Novell becomes a litigation factory eventually? We're starting to see the symptoms.

Bruce

Re:Microsoft the tar-baby

[lennier]

Being signatory to a dodgy, borderline-illegal, patent protection racket which offended anyone who understood the GPL certainly was one way to differentiate their Linux product from all the rest, yes.

Re:Microsoft the tar-baby

[cptdondo]

Novell has a long, long history of making short-sighted decisions that eventually turn out badly.

It failed to see the shift from dedicated, limited network OS to distributed peer-to-peer networking.

It didn't react in time to dump IPX/SPX and got left out of the whole internet thing.

It bought Wordperfect about the time it tanked, then couldn't make a go of it.

Then it bought Suse, and screwed that up too.

Now it's got wads of cash. How much do you want to bet it will make a short-term decision that ends badly?

Re:Microsoft the tar-baby

[TheRealMindChild]

Have you ever taken an MSDN certification for Windows NT 4 (long time ago, required for a contract). ALL questions revolved around migrating to/from Novell networks and integrating them. However they depended on one another, they certainly did.

Re:Microsoft the tar-baby

[jim_v2000]

There's no such thing as "borderline-illegal". That's just stupid shit people say when they don't like something someone else is doing.

Re:Microsoft the tar-baby

[linumax]

+5 Insightful? Really?! Microsoft has hundreds of partners of different sizes, many have been with them for decades, some competing at the same time and are still alive and well and some have been bought out.

In Novell's case however, it's not like they were taking over the world before "closing paths" with MS, they were already in dire straits and had nothing like the growth rate of Redhat. It's all guesswork but their partnership extending Novell's life seems like a much more likely outcome than your assessment of what happened.

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

[GNUALMAFUERTE]

Yes there is such a thing as bordering the illegal.

When something is per se illegal, but a team of lawyers with questionable ethics find a way to phrase it that somehow circumvents the law, that situation is certainly in the border of the illegal.

When something goes against the spirit of the law, but steps carefully over regulations, and is "technically" legal, that is bordering the illegal too.

Re:Microsoft the tar-baby

[jpobst]

Without Microsoft, Novell would have hit this crossroad many years ago. Novell could not have slowly and organically built a Linux business fast enough to replace lost revenue from the decline in things like NetWare. Microsoft gave them cash, marketshare, and mindshare (with paying enterprises, not the FOSS community of course).

Indeed, the Linux business of Novell has steadily increased and is one of the bright spots if they are allowed to continue. But it is doubtful that an investment firm is going to be interested in slow but steady, long-term growth when they can gut the company and make a quick buck.

Novell may ultimately fail, but they have already made it much further with Microsoft then they would have without.

Re:Microsoft the tar-baby

[RMS Eats Toejam]

I think SuSE understood what they had to do to make a business out of a Linux distribution. And Ubuntu/Canonical has, and they started later.

Indeed, Canonical has made a business. Just not one that turns a profit.

Re:Microsoft the tar-baby

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

They did. But then Microsoft owns them at least partially.

I'm too lazy to google it up, but I'm pretty sure they unwound that a couple of years ago.

Re:Microsoft the tar-baby

[hklingon]

I once emailed RHovespain @ Novell because I saw a tremendous opportunity for Novell -- to be the SUSE/Ubuntu of the small business world. I was very excited about SLES / SLED and the possibilities for our small business customers (who typically use SBS2003 and now SBS2008). To have something like eBox/samba/ldap in one box with a well-maintained package repository.. seamless virtualization for legacy apps.. Their press releases were making me really excited with the possibilities. All the pieces exist independently, pretty much... All Novell has to do is put the pieces together.

The Novell website for potential enthusiasts like me was nigh impossible to navigate. I spent the better part of 2 days buring about 11 CDs (no DVD distribution was available) of SLES/SLED 10 and after that.. being thoroughly underwhelmed. I basically wanted SBS in a box (something for file serving, something for intranet, ldap, workstation management and exchange type functionality) and seemed to be advertised as such (with groupwise) but I just couldn't make it materialize after playing with it for a couple days. I lost interest after that.

The point is that Novell very much has missed the boat in terms of knowing what their would-be customers want.. While it would have been easy to anticipate the licensing snafu I don't think this would have been a real problem especially if this was prelude to tighter integration with microsoft stuff. That certainly would have been an easier pill for businesses to swallow, I think, if they could have their "business in a box" app.

I would like to see the Novell name on a such product that appeals to small businesses and certainly they could make this happen on a modest budget with the talent they still employ.

Re:Microsoft the tar-baby

[Degrees]

This was a really big part of it. The other aspect that people seem to ignore was the back-and-forth sales calls on big customers by both Novell and Microsoft.

Novell: "We've got this great OS now, and it is inexpensive, and if you later want to part ways, there's Red Hat and other companies who you can turn to for support. It's the new thing, and Microsoft is 'Legacy'. You want the newest and the best, don't you?"

Customer: "Well Microsoft does kind of suck, and is expensive."

Microsoft: "So Novell is telling you to become the next AutoZone, hmmm? They got sued for running an OS with patent problems you know."

Customer: "Dang. We're already a big company that attracts frivolous lawsuits. Novell - we are not interested."

The Novell sales reps goes back to their bosses. They hatch a plan. Microsoft takes the bait.

Novell: "Remember how Microsoft was warning you about Linux? Well, they sell Linux now. Ours! You interested?"

What is Microsoft going to counter with? "Uh, we'll take your money, but we might sue you later." What would that do to their future sales (of all types)?

You are 100% correct that Novell did think about Red Hat as a competitor, and that drove a big part of the decision. It was a huge mistake to turn on Red Hat. When you try to feed your teammates to the alligator, all you are really doing is trying to be eaten last. With your teammates, you could have slain the alligator.

But they did choose to say "We and Microsoft are buddies now, and you won't have any trouble running Windows VMs under SLES, or SLES VMs under Hyper-V. Neener neener neener Red Hat." It may have gotten them a few sales, but the taunting of a beloved teammate sure pissed a lot of people off. Not to mention becoming best buds with the alligator.

Re:Microsoft the tar-baby

[Degrees]

I agree. It is all gain for Microsoft when Novell burns.

No more competition in the user directory space: Active Directory for the ultimate win. (Local data center) Email is down to Exchange versus Domino. MS SMS no longer has to compete with ZENworks. (Note that Novell has ZENworks for Linux now, too). The Google Wave server that Novell is working on will go down in the flames too.

Most of the migrations will be from SuSE to Red Hat - but some will be from SuSE to Windows. And all those Red Hat users will have to authenticate to Active Directory. It won't be any surprise when the Windows clients get right in to Windows servers, but the Red Hat boxen have inexplicable delays, random timeouts, and "what we have here... is a failure to... authenticate".

It's all win for Microsoft when their potential (hold-out) customers lose an alternative.

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 the tar-baby

[houghi]

Yeah, because if they stayed away from Microsoft, then they would not have gotten attention from a hedge-fund company. Novell is not trying to sell itself because they are doing something bad, Elliot is trying to buy because they are doing so good.

Re:Microsoft the tar-baby

[couchslug]

"Want to bet that Novell becomes a litigation factory eventually?"

SCO is dead. Long live SCOvell!

Re:Microsoft the tar-baby

[segedunum]

Back in the days, SuSE was in the red for $50 000 000 and survived because IBM injected them cash.

Not particularly accurate. It's not unusual for such companies to take some time to break even, and the same was true of Red Hat. The $50 million injection was purely as part of the Novell deal and no they weren't in the red to that figure. There wasn't a second payment that I'm aware of. Novell have also only just about, with some creative accounting, managed to make their Suse Linux business break-even. Would Suse have done better by themselves? It's a matter of some debate.

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).

You're going to have to qualify that statement and set of assumptions with some facts I'm afraid. Trying not to make money from something to get money is a contradiction in itself. Many open source companies around Linux have tried it and they've burned their VC money and went to the wall. It's a stretch to assume that because Suse didn't open YaST it was in trouble, but it would have probably had to have happened eventually. They didn't open it purely because they had some competitive advantage at the time. It was hardly a reason for people not giving Suse money for the distro, which is ultimately what counts.

Additionally, Novell has done the very thing you accuse Suse of doing - and it has cost them. They haven't opened Groupwise or any of their other archaic pieces of software and as such no one was using them. That was the real problem at the time Novell bought Suse. That's sometimes even worse than people not paying for your software! They've also retro-fitted Novell on to effectively a proprietary Suse Linux in OES which has not only alienated Linux users but has also completely alienated and failed to attract existing Netware users - who've usually gone to Windows Server. They've handled that so badly it's unreal.

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.

I'm not entirely sure what that means, but that sounds like a problem with Novell's management and leadership.

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 freed some Suse and Novell software they didn't care about, and much of the Novell software they did free like Hula fell by the wayside very quickly. The important software that they should have open sourced and found a business model around like Red Hat's to get people really using it again they didn't, and it's all been left to rot and stagnate. Novell's revenue has steadily declined since just as it did before the Suse takeover.

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.

What money have they made off that? Their much touted 'Enterprise Linux Desktop' is absolutely nowhere to be seen. Suse Studio is possibly the most different thing they've done, but again, they need to turn that into revenue. They just haven't made the money from Suse that they should have done.

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 pro

Re:Microsoft the tar-baby

[segedunum]

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.

Probably because it's true.

If I recall correctly SuSE was failing as a commercial Linux company when Novell acquired them.

Well, Suse as part of Novell is still failing if you think it was before, and it's only recently that through some creative accounting they have allegedly broke even.

They were on their way to Mandrake-ville.

It's not unusual for companies like Suse to take several years to turn some solid revenue and then profit. Suse certainly wasn't failing. Mandrake went through the same process and they are very much still around. Red Hat took some time to hit their stride.

Where I work we have hundreds of SLES servers in production today and they are rock solid. Fast, reliable, super easy to manage.

That'll be as a result of the work that Suse put in before and after they were bought by Novell.

...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.

Hmmmm, this is the part where I smell some astroturf. SLED is so far away from being a Windows desktop replacement it is unreal and it is very, very, very, very seldom used. God knows how small a part of Novell's Linux revenue it is. Suse's own desktop offerings before Novell's takeover probably made more. To mention SLED is, frankly, a joke and backs up Red Hat's decision to largely leave the desktop behind. As it is, it isn't viable.

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.

The Linux division has broke even, thanks to Microsoft's coupons, but the point is it is still a drop in the ocean when compared to the total revenue from Netware and other software - even if it is declining. They just haven't worked out what to do with that older proprietary software and haven't worked out what business model they want.

Re:Microsoft the tar-baby

[neurovish]

The Linux division has broke even, thanks to Microsoft's coupons, but the point is it is still a drop in the ocean when compared to the total revenue from Netware and other software - even if it is declining. They just haven't worked out what to do with that older proprietary software and haven't worked out what business model they want.

I was actually surprised to see that Novell's "Open Platform Solutions" account for about 21% of their positive operating income ("Identity and Security Management" and "Workgroup" are the other units that made money last year) for 2009 (2008 was about 10%, 2007 was about 6%). Novell still posted a $206M operating loss for the year (SuSE profit was $87.355M). The only time Novell has ever made a yearly profit in the last five years were in 2005 and 2006, thanks only to agreements with Microsoft and lawsuit settlements from Microsoft.

Re:Microsoft the tar-baby

[Bruce Perens]

Yes. But they built market share really well. At the expense of at least one Free Software project that I know.

It is possible that they made a wrong turn with the new management. Matt Asay was not the most clued-in person in the Open Source world, judging by his columns and the frequent hostility he experssed in them toward the Free Software community. If they are smart they will keep him working exclusively on operations.

Re:Microsoft the tar-baby

[h4rr4r]

The Ubuntu phenomenon is just what happened when someone decided to take all that is good about Debian add in a little easy to installness and market the hell out of it.

Re:Microsoft the tar-baby

[segedunum]

I was actually surprised to see that Novell's "Open Platform Solutions" account for about 21% of their positive operating income

Let's be honest, it is ridiculously easy to redefine what the 'Open Platform Solutions' division is in order to make the figures look better.

Novell still posted a $206M operating loss for the year (SuSE profit was $87.355M). The only time Novell has ever made a yearly profit in the last five years were in 2005 and 2006, thanks only to agreements with Microsoft and lawsuit settlements from Microsoft.

It's rather pointless pointing out a profit for Suse when the overall loss is so much bigger. The point is that Novell's losses are increasing and revenue is decreasing at a rate that any gains from Suse cannot make up. They're still getting payments from Microsoft for Suse coupons, which makes the situation even worse.

Re:Microsoft Has Already Moved On To Ubuntu

[postbigbang]

Except that it's not a patent minefield.

It's a blowhard's way of stanching competition with bogus citations. Ubuntu doesn't have the enterprise penetration of any of the community versions of SUSE or Red Hat. Novell's stupid, and hampered by the FOSS community's perception that they're a Microsoft sell-out because of their license agreement with Microsoft.

Still, the openSUSE community thrives. It's Novell's legacy problems (hello Eric Schmidt!) and their incapability of appealing to enterprise systems designers that they're in the undervalued column. Microsoft won't buy them. They'll get broken into pieces, and sold off that way. My guess: to Oracle, whose Linux version languishes. At least Oracle knows how to excite developers.

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:Rubbish article

[Gorobei]

Hmm, I've got 10K+ cpus running right now. I 'd bet at least three nodes are actually running Ubuntu: some of our SAs like it, and I'm guessing a few boxes got booted manually and left in some random mode. Me, I don't much care, as long as the node can fork and exec and return the right results.

Amazing How Easy It Has Been For Microsoft

[MediaStreams]

When Novell sold out to Microsoft you had open source kooks falling all over each other to proclaim that they would go right on using Novell products and projects so they could brag about how 'open minded' they were to the rest of the world(who didn't give a shit one way or another).

You have to imagine the execs up in Redmond were just shaking their heads in disgust that they had disrupted the open source/Linux world with so little effort.

I don't think Microsoft is really actively wasting time with Ubuntu. They don't have to. Linux marketshare is going nowhere outside of statistical blips. They have Miguel de Icaza doing so much damage to desktop Linux adoption and application development with the Gnome/KDE split and the Mono fiasco that they surely must be entirely focused on Google and Apple(commercial companies run by grownups and staffed by competent people who put in 40+ hour a week work on the unglamorous work that goes into creating polished consumer ready software).

IBM should buy them.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Novell still has the copyrights to Unix.

If Microsoft were to buy them we could see a re-run of IBM vs. SCO, with Microsoft playing SCO but, having learned from SCO where the land mines are and having the REAL copyright ownership, going after any places where they might win and winning. They might be able to collect a "Microsoft Tax" on any remaining Unix vendors that are still running under ongoing licenses. They might find places where other vendors weren't covered by previous licenses. They might find some code leakage from Unix to open source projects and go after them, beating them into submission or bankruptcy, maybe winning on the merits, maybe winning by just having big pockets while open-sourcerers live on a shoestring. This could be a disaster for IBM, open source, any remaining proprietary Unix vendors, etc.

If IBM buys Novell they are protected from this sort of attack on their current business model from now on. They have the option of releasing the Unix code base under open-source licenses. I could go on.

IBM has the bux, the incentive, and the smarts. So I'm not just hoping, but betting, on them.

Re:IBM should buy them.

[Bruce Perens]

Forget about Unix copyrights. No litigation value remaining because of the time they were in the public domain, and the time they were released under the BSD license. Look how far it got SCO.

Re:IBM should buy them.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Why would you want IBM, the largest patent troll in history, to buy them?

Because IBM has built a large business supporting open source solutions in large corporate customers. They're smart enough to feed the goose that lays their golden eggs - and have a track record of doing so.

IBM was ONCE a problem. But they've been through a mid-life crisis since then, and came out as one of the best "corporate citizens" the Open Source community could have for a neighbor. Past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior, but recent past behavior is a better predictor than distant past behavior.

Re:IBM should buy them.

[Bruce Perens]

The BSD I am talking about is a Caldera release of the Unix source code under the BSD license. It's well-documented. Regarding USL v. BSD, the key part is known, which is that Unix was released to Berkeley and the BSD users without a proper copyright statement, and before the Bern Copyright Convention was ratified by the US. At that time material without a proper copyright statement was in the public domain.

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.

MS and Apple seem to be best friends these days

[alen]

Apple has a fully licensed MS Exchange client on 50 million or so iphones and ipods
Snow Leapard has a fully licensed MS Exchange 2007 client
MS Office for Mac will have Outlook in the next version
Rumors are Bing is going to displace Google as the default search engine on the iphone
Apple is big in Open Source since OS X is based on some version of BSD. FreeBSD I think
Microsoft doesn't seem to want to compete in the mobile space or with MP3 players. the Zune was a total waste of great hardware
Apple doesn't seem to want to compete in the Enterprise Software market where MS likes to be these days

And Google with their vision of the cloud is the common enemy to Apple and Microsoft's fat client strategy

News just in!

[Fex303]

In news just to hand, it seems that Microsoft might have ever had any open source credibility whatsoever.

"Oh yeah, Microsoft are totally all over that open source shit," according to Richard M Stallman, the open source movement's supreme leader by virtue of prime beardiness and epic ninja skills. "If they let Novell die, then I'll have no choice but to see them as money-grubbing organisation who simply try to wring every last cent from their customers, rather than the benevolent and inspiring open source leaders that they are today."

Mr Stallman was later spotted sharpening his katana.

Stay tuned for more updates, unfounded speculation and general craziness masquerading as 'analysis' as it comes to hand.

That's what I always wondered.

[khasim]

Instead of buying a distribution, how about hiring some of the coders and providing them with specs to get your money-making products ported to ALL Linux distributions?

Then pay bounties for improvements you need/want in other areas of Linux.

Your company and products end up distribution-agnostic and you have lots of good will from paying the coders who are furthering Linux. And you can do it for a LOT less than the price of buying a whole distribution.

Re:That's what I always wondered.

[Bruce Perens]

Instead of buying a distribution, how about hiring some of the coders and providing them with specs to get your money-making products ported to ALL Linux distributions?

Because we don't really need those money-making products. We've got our own products that are already across distributions.

Re:That's what I always wondered.

[JackieBrown]

Do MS licenses come with free support at the same level as red hat support?

Who will own Unix?

[Billly Gates]

SCO lost because Novel owns Unix, the utilities, posix, and how it operates.

I am afraid of someone like Microsoft buying Unix only to cease and desist any Unix like product that looks similar. What better way to get back at Oracle and kill Linux then to own the unix standard?

Re:Who will own Unix?

[Bruce Perens]

The problem is that the law that made ATT lose that case by placing Unix in the public domain has since been changed. If that case was held today, ATT might have won. Also, it didn't help ATT that the Berkeley folks were able to show that ATT plagirized them.

Don't know how appealing it is..

[Anonymous Coward]

IBM is in an interesting situation. They've avoided distributing Linux like the plague, yet they invest a lot of development into it. They base a lot of firmware and utilities around Novell-sourced linux, but simultaneously make every effort to not make that obvious. Novell I don't think is that appealing in and of itself, but IBM would be left having to rework their linux sourcing strategy, which is not a technical difficulty (switch to RH or just live without SuSE maintaining the codebase), but their lawyers may make it highly difficult to continue without significant impact. Owning Novell would also put them in an awkward position relative to frequent partners RH and MS.

SAP, I can't comment on. I could see it in theory, but practically speaking the partnership I've seen with SuSE is probably not worth the price of the company compared to the price of just jumping to RH.

Oracle I seriously doubt. They have Solaris and a RHEL derivative already in terms of platform. Maybe they can get some credibility in broader enterprise directory or systems management, but it seems to be stretching it and I just don't see it.

MS I don't see as giving a rat's ass. In terms of the legal circumstance MS wanted to project in the world about linux, that pretty much was over with the moment RH called their bluff and didn't get sued. I think they tried to grandstand a little around the MS-Novell partnership to make the best out of the situation, but it comes off as a salvage operation of a move that didn't pan out rather than a strategic investment to preserve.

If Novell/SuSE is on the verge of dying out, I don't see any companies investing any money in salvaging. The companies that want to be a distributor of linux already do. The ones that don't would be better off with a rebuild of RHEL or Ubuntu. A company thinking they could make a better run of making something of SuSE's assets than Novell is deluding themselves.

They had some decent products.

[khasim]

I still prefer their file/directory rights system. And eDirectory was decent. And GroupWise was decent.

Novell killed itself with its choices

[deanston]

Nothing Novell does is special or cost effective any more. Groupwise? Still sucks on the web and on mobile and feels like desktop email from 2000. Netware? Plenty of competition there. Suse? The lizard's cute but can't beat RedHat/CentOS in farms or Ubuntu and others at home. Mono? Regardless of your opinion about dotNET, the sure thing is Mono will always lag behind latest MSFT version and never gain significant production and commercialization. The closer they get with Microsoft, the easier it is for shops that used to run both Novell and MSFT to drop the extra Novell piece and just go with all MSFT. Same old story.

Open source cred? Important to whom?

[jasmusic]

People really think Microsoft gives a flying fuck about its open source cred when their entire product line is bolted away?

Re:Microsoft Has Already Moved On To Ubuntu

[Firkragg14]

At least Oracle knows how to excite developers.

Star trek slash fiction and free coffee?

RedHat should step in

[jroysdon]

I hate to see Novell die (I was a CNA way back in the day, and learned NetWare 3.x in high school), but I think it'd be for the best interest of FOSS due to their taintedness with Microsoft.

Here's what I think should occur:
RedHat should set up a third-party company that they own. That company should buy Novell. That company should sell all non-tainted assets to RedHat.

Then what is left are the tainted bits the third-party is holding. Let it just die or shut down or whatever it is that you can do with a corporation to put it out of its misery.

Re:Microsoft "investment"

[warrigal]

That "investment" of $150Mill worth of non-voting shares was cashed in at a good profit a few years later.
Apple had a cash heap of over $15Billion at the time and no debt. The $150Mill was simply a confidence move.
If anybody did well out of it it was Microsoft. They got to keep using the Quicktime code they were illegally using in Windows and Apple's promise to keep putting IE for Mac as the preferred browser. In return Microsoft promised to keep pumping out MS Office for the Mac for several more years. That latter agreement has long ago expired but MS Office is going as strong as ever.

Re:Same Story with Apple in the 90's

[dangitman]

Microsoft did the same thing with Apple in the '90s. They bought a huge stake in Apple, right when they were sinking down the toilet and then proclaimed that they were not a monopoly. Having competition - even propped up competition - is better for business.

No. Microsoft bought a small number of non-voting shares as part of a court settlement. There was nothing "huge" about it, and it had nothing to do with the appearance of competition or anything like that.

I smell a car analogy!

[WebCowboy]

You might ponder why Novell would associate itself with Microsoft--a business of the kind Novell most think would be best to stay far away from. I think that in this case we've seen the story play out in the automotive industry. Perhaps Novel should've heeded the lesson.

Novell is like Chrysler. At one time, not so long ago, both companies were "second bananas" in their respective industries that despite past troubles and having to face major crossroads were showing promise and were prosperous and improving...

Novell: it was direction-less and fighting a losing battle with Microsoft. The flagship products like Netware and the stepchildren it acquired like WordPerfect were starting to look antiquated and were losing market share to WinNT and MSOffice. Then at some point they remade themselves. They embraced open source and did a stellar job acquiring SuSE and Ximian in the face of doubters to building a sustainable, quality business around their Free software and though they've never achieved #1 spot over Red Hat they became a very respectable part of the "big three" Linux-based OSes.

Chrysler: it was direction-less and fighting a losing battle with imports from Asia and Europe. When OPEC was closing the taps and drivers had to hunt for pumps that hadn't run dry and cute, little round imports like the Beetle and the Civic and the Corolla were taking America by storm...and there was Chrysler building big, thirsty, stodgy boxy road boats. Finally facing the prospect of bankruptcy and pleading for a government bailout (the first time) they were forced to face reality. Iaccoca came in as chairman and embraced an whole new set of smaller more efficient front-wheel-drive platforms resulting in early successes like the Aries and Caravan. Chrysler did a stellar job in acquiring AMC from Renault and making the Jeep brand part of a sustainable, increasingly quality business that though far from #1 was a leader in design and once again a respectable part of the "big three" American-based automotive companies.

---

Novell: at the peak of its game it started to lose momentum again and though still in a very good financial condition felt the pressure to shake things up again and find a new growth strategy. This time, however they lost sight of their customers and the culture of the company. Someone who clearly didn't "get it" decided Novell should associate themselves with Microsoft. The flawed logic was that as the IP trolls gained prevalence and MS seemed here to stay for eternity that Novell would be the "safe harbour" from litigation and the Linux you could go with for superior interoperability with Windows infrastructure. But the cultures of the two partners could never mix and Linux customers were about OPEN systems and were offended that Novell would poison that openness just to get some cash and potentially check off some boxes on "the facts" list. Furthermore, for all the bad will the deal generated that hurt Novell's business Microsoft did nothing to promote the use of Linux amongst those that received its "SuSE Certificates". In the end MSFT did more to damage Novell than to nurture it.

Chrysler: They finally had more products that scored above average than below in performance and reliability, and it was the "cab forward" era when the cars were sleek, roomy and comfortable without being big lumbering boats. However they were hitting a plateau and needed investment to keep relevant and growing. Against common wisdom they chose to get with Daimler--a company that serves a completely different market segment, were known for quality but rather stodgy designs based in a country with a much more button-down way of doing business. Mopar fans' reactions were rarely favourable to the idea and nobody seriously thought Daimler REALLY thought of Chrysler as an "equal partner". Instead of getting the best of both worlds we got the worst--Chrysler's level of quality and MB's design influences! As the "cab forward" era ended MB did NOTHING to help Chrysler and in fact starved it

Re:Same Story with Apple in the 90's

[dangitman]

Well, those articles would be wrong. That wouldn't be unusual, the tech media is full of inaccurate articles constructed from pure bullshit.

Re:Same Story with Apple in the 90's

[dangitman]

P.S:

nevermind the fact that there were several opinion pieces relating how Microsoft used Apple to help leverage the DOJ to get off their backs.

If the aim of this settlement was to get the DOJ off their backs, then why did it include an agreement for Apple to make Internet Explorer the default browser on Mac OS? Surely, that would have the opposite effect - and the DOJ would see it as MS extending their monopoly to the Mac, which was the only commercially viable desktop OS aside from Windows.

I don't see how extending IE's presence to practically 100% of consumer personal computers would help Microsoft's case with the DOJ. Previously, the default Mac browser was Netscape. How does eliminating Netscape on the Mac indicate a desire for competition?