02.24.11
Novell: Pushing Proprietary and Paying Microsoft for Free
Summary: Novell is reducing people’s freedom and helps Microsoft impose a patent tax on software which is free/libre
NOVELL has always been a proprietary software vendor. It still is, but some of its proprietary offerings depend on Free software which is developed from the outside, without Novell’s investment. For instance, for those who want RHEL but also want to please Microsoft there is the ‘knockoff’ called SLES, which Microsoft takes/has commissions on. Novell is giving Microsoft’s ally, SAP, a Microsoft-friendly RHEL that pays Microsoft for alleged patent violations which were never proven. That’s Novell role and that’s why Microsoft has been sponsoring Novell for over 4 years (there are more reasons like OOXML and Moonlight). To quote:
Novell is enhancing its partnership with SAP with an expanded Linux offering for SAP applications.
Josh Dorfman, director of alliance marketing at Novell, told InternetNews.com that the new version of SLES for SAP Applications is based on SLES 11.
SAP’s portfolio is also RHEL-certified, but ever since Novell and Microsoft became allies, SAP has been enjoying a sort of relationships triangle.
If one looks at Novell news in general, it’s mostly about more proprietary software. Even BrainShare 2011, which Ron Hovsepian says will take place, is mostly about proprietary software. Rather often we just find that Novell uses SLES as a platform on which to sell its own proprietary software, so what good is Novell? There is of course the OpenSUSE project which still has some articles about it [1, 2], but that too is being neglected by Novell and abandoned by volunteers (they don’t want to carry water for AttachMSFT).
Over at YouTube, there are new videos of Novell promoting SUSE using Microsoft capabilities like Mono Extension (video with Windows Vista), proprietary software like ZENworks (it is also promoted for the Microsoft side of course) and the proprietary Novell PlateSpin (Forge) or even GroupWise. Here it is:
There are also videos about the proprietary IDM4, e.g. “IDM4: What is Novell Analyzer?” (Japanese). There are two more of these and also “The Lord of the Files” [1, 2, 3]. Here is part 1:
This basically promotes Novell Vibe, which also spreads proprietary problems. Why are some people still characterising Novell as an “open source” company? It’s not. █
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