Bonum Certa Men Certa

Even Microsoft Chooses Red Hat Over Novell's SUSE

Bad decision



AS we pointed out before, part of microsoft.com uses (or used) a Fedora spinner and quite a few Microsoft-owned Web sites go with the de facto server distribution which is Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The following post from Planète Béranger caught our attention because it shows a certain Microsoft preference for Red Hat. Microsoft is shy to admit this, but it's using a lot of GNU/Linux and Free software because it's better suited for the task. So why not SUSE?



But my final question arises from the initial choice of this Microsoft guy: "I chose to use Winbind on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (RHEL5) for my Linux-to-Active Directory integration project. RHEL5 is the current version of the commercial Red Hat Linux distribution, and it is fairly popular in enterprise datacenters."

Say, wasn't Novell the big friend of Microsoft, committed to interoperability and the like? Maybe its YaST configuration tools handle better the Active Directory authentication. Why wasn't SLED, SLES or openSUSE the primary choice of Gil Kirkpatrick?

It might be the case that licking Microsoft's asses doesn't pay, not even when your name is Novell.


Yesterday we wrote about the protest in Kerala. Here is an explanation of why Novell is to be avoided.

A free software activist and former student at CUSAT, Anivar Aravind was manhandled today (16/11/2008) by the “National free software conference organizers” @ CUSAT with assistance from the states police forces, for his peaceful protest against the “Novell Sponsorship”. The free software conference is backed by CPI(M), the ruling left party in Kerala.

[...]

Q2. What is the problem with NOVELL?

Novell doesn’t respect the free software philosophy and works against the interest of the community. In short we are against Novell because of the following.

1. Novell helps Microsoft more than it helps GNU/Linux. 2. Novell still insults competing GNU/Linux distributions and Sun’s Openoffice.org. (Read more) 3. Novell & Microsoft’s software patent agreement betrays rest of free software community, including the very people who wrote the Novell’s own system, for Novell’s sole financial profit. (Read more) 4. Novell helps Microsoft’s fight against Ajax, web standards, SVG by supporting Silverlight & implementing its GNU/Linux version. (Read more) 5. Novell supports Microsofts proprietary standard OOXML. 6. Novell is pushing Microsofts patents to GNU/Linux and cheating Free Software Community. 7. Novell is the biggest promoter of MONO in Free Software Development.


Except for the links from yesterday, this was also covered in:



Here is another important piece of information.

All hell broke lose when novell guys saw the 'Bycott Novell' handouts pasted right across their booth and said they won't pay up any sponsers money they owe to the event organisers. They took their ire by kicking out the activists and tearing up the posters.


So, as suresh pointed out yesterday, "Novell had threatened that they won’t give the sponsorship money when they saw the anti-Novell posters in the stall.So the blame on Novell is not totally out of place."

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