11.25.09
Novell Ignored Staff’s Own Advice Before Selling Out to Microsoft
Summary: An excellent new audiocast covers lesser known facts about Novell’s deal with Microsoft
JEREMY Allison, whom we interviewed shortly after he had left Novell in protest, has just done a session with the SFLC where he talks about events predating the Microsoft deal. According to the audio (playable below), Allison was sent an early copy of Novell’s deal with Microsoft, which he said was like passing a crayon over section 7 of the GPL (v2). Allison resisted it, but the lawyers ignored his feedback anyway and requested deletion of the trail.
Here is the original page, which includes in its index:
* Jeremy discussed that he resigned from Novell in protest over the Microsoft/Novell deal. (19:33)
The main new item there is Novell’s treatment of antagonism. The legal team patronised an expert advice, so what was it sharing a draft for? A pursuit for endorsement and “yes men”? Based on the bogus survey, that is a possibility. █
dyfet said,
November 25, 2009 at 10:09 pm
I greatly respect and admire Jeremy Allison for what he did.
Roy Schestowitz Reply:
November 25th, 2009 at 10:37 pm
He also spoke out against Mono [1, 2, 3, 4, 5].
Needs Sunlight said,
November 26, 2009 at 4:09 am
Ignoring staff expertise is par for the course. Microsoft products would never have gotten into the enterprise, especially the server room, if the IT departments had anything to say. Most places no longer have IT departments any more so it’s easy for Microsoft.
It’s that grip on the server room that keeps Microsoft’s tenuous grasp of the desktop alive, OEM monopoly notwithstanding. Without it, the Windows tax would just be written off and new machines imaged with a linux distro or similar system.
Around the time that Microsoft was engaged in false advertising against Novell, the M$ execs had a marketing gimmick along the lines of junkets dressed as training “courses” where the theme was how to steam-roll the IT department. Their ideology uber alles, damn the inconvenient things like facts, benchmarks and reviews. Notice that benchmarks, comparisons and evaluations have been all but banned by M$ for its products.
Don’t most countries have policies on how to deal with those driven maniacs that drive through their ideology, destroying large parts of the economy? If some pud-pulling MSCE throws a rock through the ER window, he gets a jail or a fine. If the same pud-pulling MSCE manages to get Windows on the desktops in the same hospital, the lost productivity and costs are many orders of magnitude larger. Shouldn’t the law’s response be larger as well?