02.06.07
Posted in Finance, GNU/Linux, Novell, Red Hat, Servers at 2:38 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
When the Novell/Microsoft deal was struck, Red Hat’s stock was struck as well. And yet, it turns out that this momentary decline was a temporary one whilst there’s no apparent long-term volatility. Not even Oracle’s elbow could destroy the prospects of Red Hat, according to one analyst.
Stimson considers the competition from Oracle and Microsoft/Novell “a nonevent so far” as he’s seen little evidence that Oracle is winning support business away from Red Hat.
Dana of ZDNet concurs. He even shares some interesting figures.
- Oracle — Down 3.56%
- Microsoft — Up 2.7%
- Novell — Up 8.13%
- RedHat — Up 36.82%
Red Hat’s last financial report was no exception.
“Open-source is not going away and Red Hat is the leader,” Chowdhry said in a telephone interview. “Oracle is a nonevent when it comes to open source.”
Perhaps Linux companies are as robust as the platform and software which they sell. It is worth mentioning, however, that Red Hat has a series of ongoing buybacks, just like Microsoft.
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Posted in Action, Boycott Novell, Deals, Deception, Free/Libre Software, GNU/Linux, Google, GPL, Interoperability, Microsoft, Novell, Patent Covenant, Red Hat, Samba at 1:19 am by Shane Coyle
We all know about Jeremy Allison going to Google after leaving Novell over the Microsoft-Novell deal, but it appears that the other 4 members of the Samba team that were employed by Novell are now employed by Red Hat. Somehow, that escaped me until now.
In an article regarding Red Hat’s upcoming RHEL5 and the "nonevent" that the Oracle and Microvell announcements have been for Red Hat, I happened upon this gem:
Stimson has seen a “backlash” in the open-source community to the Microsoft/Novell arrangement. He noted that all five members of a Novell software development team quit Novell after the Microsoft deal was announced and four of them went to Red Hat. They were working on the Samba Project, developing an open-source file and print server software product than can run on a Microsoft Windows operating system.
“I think (Microsoft/Novell) is tainted now, because I think they are violating [the] GPL license,” said Jeremy Allison, the fifth member of the team to quit Novell in December 2006. He went to Google Inc. but emphasized that he was not speaking for Google on this subject.
In our interview, we had asked Jeremy if any other developers had, or were considering, also leaving Novell over the deal. Of course, he could not comment due to legal and ethical reasons, but now it appears that there have been further repercussions for Novell as additional developers join the exodus.
At the CITI forum, in December 2006, Novell South Africa Country Manager Stafford Masie had refererred to the Samba team, noting their public dissent over the Microsoft deal but told those in attendance that "the Samba project team actually works for Novell.":
There’s alot we do to the kernel, we’ve got alot of kernel developers… we’ve got alot of file system guys, the Samba team- the project team, the Samba project team actually works for Novell. I know the recent press releases about what the Samba team thinks about the Microsoft thing doesn’t depict them working for us, but y’know what? they actually do. They used to work for HP, but now they work within us. And then we’ve got Miguel and Nat and that entire team there.
Well, they’ve still got Miguel and Nat, anyhow.
Correction (February 17th 2007 by Roy Schestowitz): Linux.com points out that, as one of our references was inaccurate, the headline (which has always contained the question mark by the way) is in fact incorrect.
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