12.17.06
Posted in Deals, Fork, GNU/Linux, IBM, Novell, Office Suites, OpenOffice, Red Hat at 10:20 pm by Shane Coyle
Stafford Masie, Novell South Africa country manager, speaking at the recent CITI Forum, gives a great deal of background on how Novell came to be a Linux company.
Interestingly, according to Masie, after realizing that they couldn’t open-source Netware, Novell apparently considered acquiring Red Hat at the time, as well as the possibility of forking Slackware before deciding to acquire Ximian, and subsequently SUSE.
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Posted in Deals, Fork, Formats, Intellectual Monopoly, Interoperability, Microsoft, Office Suites, Open XML, OpenDocument, OpenOffice, Patent Covenant, Standard, VBA at 9:30 pm by Shane Coyle
Stafford Masie, Novell South Africa country manager, speaking at the recent CITI forum in South Africa, was talking about document format compatibility between OpenOffice and Microsoft Office, when he mentioned that Novell is expecting Microsoft to include native ODF support in their Office product:
So, just in terms of document format compatibility, we’re not forking it, the code’s up there… hopefully that code will be incorporated into the next derivative of, of the OpenOffice release, as part of the code… we’ve done quite a few things there, there’s the translator engine, the VB macro support, where you can import Excel macros into OpenOffice now and it will open up execute, etc there’s quite a few things that we’ve done there,
Also we’ve licensed in some fonts… and we worked with AGFA we put some truetype fonts in there, it’s similar to Microsoft’s true-type fonts in the OpenOffice product, and its for free, its there, we’ve published that up.
So, again, enterprise customers want this, they want to see the product more interoperable, they want to see openoffice having the capability to open up office 2007 documents and backwards.
Now, its good to do open xml because open xml is being supported back in Microsoft all the way to Office 95 or Office 97, one of those, I think its Office 97, they’re supporting open xml so, essentially, you’ll be able to open up all, up to office 97 documents that come from Microsoft with Office and in turn, we are also working with Microsoft to ensure that they put native ODF support within Microsoft Office.
Ok, that’s key, the fact that it will now open up our documents that we natively store in OpenOffice… inside there.
There was also a point when Masie acknowledged that there are many who have concerns about Microsoft’s Open XML format itself and their dubious Patent Covenant associated with the "standard", but he passed that off as a problem for ‘everyone’, but it would not be a problem for anyone who eschews Novell’s Danaergeschenk of Open XML.
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Posted in Boycott Novell, Deals, GPL, Novell at 8:58 pm by Shane Coyle
Here is some from Stafford Masie’s presentation at the recent CITI forum. According to Masie, Novell will alter their agreement with Microsoft, if necessary (and it makes ‘business sense’), in order to be compliant with the upcoming GNU General Public License version 3.
While he makes a point to reiterate how the current agreement apparently does not violate the GPLv2, an ominous thing in my mind is how Masie refers, in an offhand manner, to the downstream effects of their Microvell agreement in relation to GPL2, what could that be referring to?
Anyhow, here is Novell pledging to "do what is right" in relation to the Microvell deal and GPL3:
Now, people say, you already violate GPL version 3, no we dont because GPL version 3 is not there yet.
And, it is a good thing that GPL 3 is being discussed so extensively right now, because we are participants in that entire authoring. Y’know we talk to Stallman, and we talk to Barrett and all these people that are authors of GPL version 3, and we’ll continue to do that.
Now, as GPL version 3 matures, and Stallman has said we’re not in violation of GPL version 2 at the moment, now we’re not with the current agreement, but he believes in GPL3 he will put verbiage in there to ensure that we are.
Y’know, he wants to ensure that its not just patents that you’ve bought that will violate GPL v3 if you own them, that agreement, but the fact that an agreement like this is in place that downstream affects people… that utilize your distribution makes you in violation of GPL version 3, so we’re working very closely on the authoring of that, we will be GPL V3 compliant, trust me, we will,ok?
Will we have to alter our agreement with Microsoft to ensure that it happens? We will, we’ll do what’s right. We’ll participate, and yeah we’ll do what it takes, but its gonna be a collaborative effort.
We’ll talk to the GPL version 3 authors… like we are right now, I think common sense will prevail, because at the end of the day we actually do benefit the community being here, we do benefit, its not… it doesn’t make sense to vindictively come after some of these agreements, there’s got to be a reason behind it, and we’ll listen to that reason, and we’ll concede where we need to concede and where it makes business sense, thats always been our stance.
so, GPL v2 according to Stallman, we do not, y’know we dont infringe on the GPL2 whatsoever with this current agreement.
More to come from Stafford Masie’s presentation, including what Novell considers their role to be within the ‘community’, how Novell wants to be considered the "800lb. Penguin" (alongside IBM), how Enterprise customers don’t like indemnity, and more…
The full transcript of Masie’s presentation will be posted soon, or at least the full transcript of the OGG, it cuts off early when it was about to get interesting and is a little bit of a disappointment. Anyone in attendance that has a full recording, please contact me.
Also, check out the transcript of the Q&A session for more from Stafford Masie on Microvell and Software Patents.
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Posted in Deals, GNU/Linux, GPL, Microsoft, Novell at 12:38 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Here is a quick mention of a rebuttal to the article “Payback time for Novell“.
…Novell had to cause significant harm to the GPL in order to be paid. And that is what Microsoft was after.
Microsoft wants to invalidate the GPL by making further contributions via the GPL distasteful for developers. Now, I doubt that IBM would be so convinced or confused. IBM as a Linux contributor can most likely deal with it. But, Microsoft is out to cause harm to the thousands or more of individual contributors who depend upon the GPL to protect their rights and interests. And it is those contributors that are being attacked by the Novell-MS deal.
You may wish to read the entire text @ lamlaw.com.
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