02.03.12
Posted in GNU/Linux, Novell, OpenSUSE at 11:38 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Novell being emptied, then SUSE
Summary: Key people continue to leave SUSE and the distribution is left without a compelling sales pitch
THE brain drain at SUSE continues as many of the familiar names, not just Greg K-H, are leaving the Microsoft-funded SUSE. It’s funny that some of them will be serving SUSE’s competition, e.g. by maintaining a kernel from RHEL for 10 years.
None of this exodus should be surprising to people who have followed SUSE in recent years (as we have). The project lost momentum, it has become quiet, and Attachmate seems reluctant to invest much in it (more on Attachmate’s financial problems later). One of the executives of SUSE moves on to join other former SUSE executives:
ownCloud Inc., the commercial entity behind the popular open source file sync and share project, announced today that former SUSE executive and ownCloud co-founder Holger Dyroff, has joined the company as vice president, sales and marketing.
There are other SUSE people in there, as we showed in the past. And to quote a very recent article from CMS Wire:
ownCloud was formally founded last year, and in December the project announced that former SUSE and Novell executive, Markus Rex, would be joining the company as CEO and CTO.
Basically, SUSE has lost a lot of its leadership. Those who deny this would struggle to put together a counter-argument. Here at Techrights we faced the facts when Microsoft and Novell lied to the world about their patent deal and we still adhere to realism in this age of excessive PR and spin.
As Sean Michael Kerner put it the other day, one of the people behind OpenSUSE “Gives SUSE the Boot” and:
The move means that he’s leaving SUSE – that’s right kaput, no more SUSE for him.
He is one of the key people behind OpenSUSE’s formation, so all that’s left of the project is some tiny community and under-funded SUSE (partly funded by Microsoft). Here is an example of volunteer work:
I’ve been playing around a bit with SUSE Studio and I’ve created ‘moniz’, a openSUSE 12.1 based image with Cinnamon as default Desktop Environment. Currently it’s in a very Alpha state and it’s mainly the result of a series of tests to the functionality of SUSE Studio. I’m going to work more on this but locally using Kiwi.
OpenSUSE hopes to emulate the success of a two-men project, Linux Mint (maybe more than two people in practice). This is a sad testament to the weakness of OpenSUSE/SUSE, which was a leading distribution because Novell signed that treasonous deal with Microsoft. Not so long ago OpenSUSE suffered repeated downtimes and now it is getting new certificates, presumably for unrelated reasons.
“SUSE has become a mess that GNU/Linux does not need.”The other day we found in YouTube this new video which says: “Not all Open Source Software is free, and not all free software is open source. Open Sourcing Software can be done not just for community, but for security or integration. A sure way to make your software well documented is to provide the source code so that those integrating with your system can see the limitations in the code itself. SUSE Linux from Novell is one such product.”
Like we said before, SUSE is weird when it comes to access to code. Novell hides it or makes it hard to access. If one wants to fork “Microsoft Linux”, e.g. to make a taxless SUSE, there are technical barriers to it, imposed by Novell for years.
SUSE has become a mess that GNU/Linux does not need. Its main purpose now it to replace RHEL with Microsoft tax and more Microsoft APIs. █
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01.27.12
Posted in Dell, Mail, Microsoft, OpenSUSE, SLES/SLED at 12:33 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Microsoft on track to global Linux tax?
Summary: Microsoft’s Linux internment and Microsoft Linux (SUSE) in the news; a little bit about GroupWise too
MICROSOFT has been creating its own internment pen for GNU/Linux users and it is looking to hire a mole to handle operations and lure some innocent sheep in.
As Microsoft boosters put it, Microsoft has Red Hat customers in sight. Microsoft already taxes Red Hat Linux (servers) at Amazon and now on its own turf it is trying to take this extortion further. Aiding Microsoft’s efforts we have had SUSE for a while, but fortunately Dell is moving away from that (although not to the right system, feeding Oracle instead). From a new page:
How Dell Migrated from SUSE Linux to Oracle Linux
Switching the underlying operating system on a single server is not trivial. Neither is dealing with the related conversion and compatibility issues. Imagine what’s involved in switching the operating system on thousands of servers spread globally across an enterprise, like Dell just did.
The good news here is that Dell itself won’t pay Microsoft tax (for its own systems), but at the same time Dell is actively promoting Microsoft-taxed Linux for OEMs solution, which troubles us a bit. It’s a signed deal which has the VAR Guy arguing about SUSE Studio:
Dell Servers Embrace SUSE Linux, But SUSE Studio Is Real Story
[...]
No doubt, Dell has relationships with multiple Linux distributions — including SUSE, Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Canonical Ubuntu. But SUSE apparently is the “first Linux vendor” in the Dell OEM Technology Partner program.
Sort of makes you wonder: Is something deeper brewing between Dell and SUSE? Hmmm…
This is just another reason to actually avoid Dell, but Joe Brockmeier, the former Novell employee, is promoting this. VAR Guy, who has also been close to Novell over the years, goes ahead and promotes GroupWise, which sane Web sites say nobody cares about anymore (and they are right). To quote:
No One Cares That Novell Has A New Version of GroupWise
Today Novell released its 2012 version of its email software GroupWise, and the announcement was greeted by most with a big yawn. GroupWise? Seems so last century. (Actually, the last updates to the software were for version 8 back in 2008-2010.) According to one analyst, “GroupWise has 10,000 customers and is used by 47 of the 50 US state governments.” It has been a distant third to Exchange and Lotus Notes for a while, and many GroupWise customers have switched over to Google Apps in the past several years.
GroupWise is proprietary and it distracts from Free/Open Source options that work equally well or better. GroupWise — like SUSE — is a solution in search of a problem, much like OpenSUSE when it looks for other people’s work again (trying to ape Linux Mint in this case). SUSE over the past 5+ years has been just a product for Microsoft to tax GNU/Linux through. It lacks technical merit/advantage and the latest release of OpenSUSE — as put in this new review — “was released too early. Period.” Boycott Novell and boycott SUSE. █
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01.24.12
Posted in GNU/Linux, OpenSUSE at 12:25 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: A reminder of the unappealing nature of OpenSUSE due to a release cycle of 8 months and support span of just 18 months
JUST as we mentioned the other day, OpenSUSE cuts the line of support for 11.3 and moves ahead to 12.2. As the official blog post put it:
As Benjaman Brunner announced yesterday, openSUSE 11.3 has reached end of life. As a quick refresher, openSUSE releases new versions every 8 months, and each version has a life cycle of 18 months. As 11.3 was released in July of 2010, the time has come to embrace our newer versions, including the successful release of 12.1 in November of 2011.
A year and a half of support is very little although Fedora does not do much better. Yesterday I installed Debian GNU/Linux on two machines, knowing that it would be supported for a long time to come. Why do people feel as though OpenSUSE is still competitive when better options exist that also get long-term support? Experience suggests that many of SUSE’s users — especially corporate users — just happen to be in the same country as SUSE. Is that really a proper selection criterion? █
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01.23.12
Posted in GNU/Linux, Microsoft, OpenSUSE at 6:59 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Quick SUSE and Tuxera updates
OPENSUSE plans a release in the summer because “OpenSUSE 12.1 was released last November”. Releases are typically 8 months apart (it used to be 6 until a few years ago). 11.3 is soon to be neglected, which leaves this distribution in state much worse off than Debian or Ubuntu (LTS). The project focuses on the wrong things while users seek something that can work reliably over time. We often hear that OpenSUSE works beautifully once installed, but the system is prone to breakage over time. Unless that changes, OpenSUSE will never regain that appeal is had before the Novell/Microsoft deal. Under Attachmate leadership, it is unlikely the this project will get a boost. In fact, Attachmate shows no signs of health. Webroot picks a former Attachmate executive according to this press release:
Prior to Symantec, Giesbrecht held executive positions at Attachmate Europe, Lotus Development and Digital Research, where he grew the operation to be the company’s most profitable subsidiary. He has also held a number of leadership positions in the information technology and semiconductor industry at Rank Xerox, Mohawk Data Science, Teradyne and LTX.
Apart from that and some bits of technical posts about OpenSUSE [1, 2, 3, 4] we can find Tuxera promotion (Microsoft software and tax on Linux) at Phoronix. Fortunately, there is no sign of this Trojan horse getting much momentum on Linux and SUSE too is dying up, leaving Linux untaxed by Microsoft. █
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01.21.12
Posted in Novell, OpenSUSE, SLES/SLED at 11:32 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: A roundup of SUSE news and OpenSUSE in particular
SUSE is a project/product that Microsoft uses to tax GNU/Linux. It recently got a boost from a VMware/Dell deal, as we covered some days ago.
The “community” side of it shut down due to problems and later in protest (just the other day). It’s about SOPA. There is also ongoing maintenance:
It’s now the beginning of a new year (happy 2012 everybody!) and I’m writing about some changes that happened at the end of the last year and the period right after the openSUSE 12.1 release. Especially Coolo has used this to do a big cleaning up of our factory distribution touching most of openSUSE’s 4000+ source packages this way.
There are some new graphics from Andres [1, 2, 3] and packaging of new stuff, but then again we also find removals (discontinuing support for 32-bit Xen host in openSUSE12.1). The project is not as prominent as it used to be, so there is generally little activity there. The community manager will be at FOSDEM based on this post:
Oh, and yes, I plan to be at FOSDEM. And so should you – all your friends will be there!
Also about FOSDEM from another member of the project:
Our stand is going to be on the Ground Floor of Building K from 9am on Saturday 4th February till 6pm on Sunday 5th February
SUSE folks hope for Google funding:
I really hope most of the students will stay around and continue the amazing work they do if not openSUSE in FLOSS generally.
Michal Hrušecký writes about OpenStack in a few posts and also mentions MySQL in OpenSUSE. There is a new derivative of version 12.1 out and current usage of OpenSUSE is assessed by a member. Back in the old days (around SuSE 8.1, the distribution came with some neat Web development tools. Wolfgang writes about one of them:
I’m not a web designer really but I happen to be kind of responsible for packaging two web authoring applications in openSUSE which are SeaMonkey’s Composer and KompoZer. While the SeaMonkey integrated editor is somewhat limited (AFAIK) KompoZer (which was forked from Nvu at some point) has more advanced features. But KompoZer development seems to be pretty slow and it misses quite some of the new web stuff which is around nowadays. In addition the current version is BETA for quite some time now and seems to have a major issue in openSUSE 11.4 and 12.1.
last but not least, Novell is targeting Macs now, not GNU/Linux. To quote its latest announcement:
Novell Kanaka for Mac helps IT organizations eliminate manual work-arounds to integrate their Mac users. The plug-in uses native Mac* AFP protocol support making it the most comprehensive and advanced cross-platform server for mixed Windows*, Linux* and Mac clients.
Novell is not focused on what it said it would focus on. It’s just more proprietary software. So to those who wonder what happened to Novell, we’re keeping abreast and reporting. █
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01.16.12
Posted in Microsoft, Novell, OpenSUSE, Patents, VMware at 10:34 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: OpenSUSE is still being neglected, whereas the product it is used to promote (Microsoft Linux/Ballnux) gets promoted by former Microsoft executives who run VMware
THE OPENSUSE project is a PR sidekick of Microsoft Linux, which is one of the few distributions that Microsoft endorses (for they pay Microsoft a patent fee).
According to numerous reports, the download servers are down and the OpenSUSE site itself acknowledges this:
The SAN array of the backend server server seems to have lost 3 hard disk at once now.
That means the array with the built RPMs is broken atm. We are currently checking and replacing from backups – but since not all binary parts of the projects are in backup it means that we will need to rebuild some of them afterwards. This will take time until Monday, 2012-01-16.
That’s today. Well, previously when OpenSUSE had server issues it sought help from volunteers or donations/sponsors rather than Novell. This just comes to show how much the company cares about this PR front; letting it be down for such a long duration of time is truly a sign. Had it been SUSE (Microsoft Linux), things would be brought back up promptly (and also properly backed up with redundancy). Here we find another new article about the Microsoft Linux push that we mentioned the other day.
One news article says:
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server Now On Dell Cloud With VMware vCloud DC Service
SUSE has announced that SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is the first Linux distribution for Dell’s new VMware software-based cloud offering, Dell Cloud with VMware vCloud Datacenter Service. SUSE Linux Enterprise offers the broadest application portfolio, as well as optimisation with the VMware cloud infrastructure suite. Now, Dell customers can efficiently run a wide range of ISV applications, on demand with maximum performance, while receiving streamlined support from Dell and SUSE across the Dell public and private cloud offerings.
Here is another take which goes like this: “The new Dell Cloud Datacenter Service has embraced SUSE as its first Linux platform. The hidden twist: The Dell-SUSE announcement is likely built on the SUSE-VMware relationship, which seeks to counter Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization.”
As we showed in previous posts, Microsoft veterans run VMware and the monopolist seeks to hijack the competition wherever it may be, knowing that the days of Windows may be numbered. As one person put it the other day:
Not that this means Microsoft is going away. It just means they will become steadily less relevant, and steadily less required. Because people will want to work, and play, with handhelds and tablets, and they won’t put up with applications that require a desktop-with-Windows. And that’s good news.
Microsoft is busy trying to hijack or tax those who win in today’s market. The solution is to boycott those who serve as proxies of Microsoft. █
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01.06.12
Posted in Microsoft, OpenSUSE, SLES/SLED at 6:16 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Microsoft uses Azure to gain control over GNU/Linux, or at least the way it is deployed by those who need it
WHENEVER Microsoft becomes the loser, it then tries extremely hard to embrace (and extend) the winner. There are many examples of this throughout the recent history of computers (Java and the Web, to name just a couple).
OpenSUSE/SUSE is an example of Microsoft’s embrace of GNU/Linux — an embrace so detrimental that we called for a Novell boycott over 5 years ago. While there are harmless/benign elements in it, the most damaging element of this embrace and extend/control trick is patent tax. There are some other players that help Microsoft approach a position of control inside FOSS (this is a new press release). To quote, “OpenLogic aggregated data on customers purchasing support contracts from OpenLogic for each project, as well as projects that users deployed through OpenLogic CloudSwing, an open PaaS platform.”
OpenLogic is run by former Microsoft management, so its announcements should be taken with a grain of salt. Perhaps the biggest bit of Linux news as of late was another Microsoft “embrace” of Linux. SJVN is not really reporting what this means to GNU/Linux vendors and what Microsoft is trying to achieve here. Taxing Linux through Microsoft Azure might be the idea:
Here’s the reality: Microsoft is preparing to enable Linux to run on Windows Azure. But it doesn’t sound like Microsoft will officially offer “support” for Linux on Windows Azure. That’s where SUSE could potentially be an ideal Microsoft partner.
Microsoft and SUSE have a longstanding Windows-Linux integration relationship. Some conspiracy theorists in the open source market dismiss the Microsoft-SUSE relationship as harmful. But I think channel partners and CIOs have genuinely benefited from the Microsoft-SUSE work.
Microsoft might try to claim that SUSE “works best” with Windows and regardless of the distribution Microsoft will charge patent toll. Embrace and extend:
Despite the IT cognoscenti’s hankering to variously deride and dismiss Microsoft’s efforts into open source over the years, the company has (at times) produced some tangible advancements in the open computing arena – such as those seen during the Microsoft and Novell interoperability years, to name but one example.
That was a patent deal, allowing Microsoft to tax GNU/Linux indirectly, through Novell, which is dead now despite the continued Novelldemo uploads [1, 2]. SUSE is like a department of Microsoft now.
We can always hope that OpenSUSE volunteers will find other distributions to contribute to, but for the time being there are still volunteers there. Not many, but there it goes:
After the openSUSE 2011 Conference, we run a survey to gather feedback so that we can improve for the next conference. The overall feedback was very positive. Thanks a lot to the 134 people that participated in the survey!
134 people? That’s almost abysmal. SUSE loses in a major way and this must be bad news to Microsoft. SUSE is the last distribution that Microsoft has got left under its control. Let’s not give Microsoft the “embrace” it craves for the infamous “extinguish” phase. █
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01.01.12
Posted in Novell, OpenSUSE at 11:17 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: A new year’s post about the part of Novell which is not FOSS-hostile or parasitical
THE 'old Novell' keeps the lawsuit against Microsoft, which according to an update from Groklaw is not going to settle.
In a later post, Pamela Jones clarifies that:
Last we looked, Microsoft was breathing fire from its nose, telling the judge in the trial of the Novell antitrust complaint against it regarding WordPerfect and QuattroPro that it planned to renew its motion to dismiss as a matter of law by January 13th. This was right after the trial ended in a hung jury, but a jury made up of 12 people, all of whom indicated they thought Microsoft had behaved badly and one, or perhaps more, who couldn’t agree about damages. That letter made Microsoft sound confident about a second trial outcome. Or delusional. Take your pick.
When it comes to this case, we are on the side of old Novell of course. it is not the same Novell which Ron Hovsepian was running (into the ground). There is an innocent side here and it is not the side which conspired with Microsoft. Over at the OpenSUSE Web site we find this favourable new review of OpenSUSE and OpenSUSE won in a new comparison with Fedora, only to be further praises around Xmas time (‘OpenSUSE 12.1 a “Great Release”‘)
With some HOWTOs about this distro and even some new Xmas videos surfacing about it, we cannot really say anything negative at this time. Novell has been reasonably quiet and although some people struggle with OpenSUSE, quite a few seem to be happy with it now. To quote: “Installation takes 15 minutes or less, and then prompts you to either reboot or continue testing. You’re done!” Later on the same reviewer wrote to say that it ultimately did not work quite so well. But in any event, we try to start this year by being polite to the side of Novell which is not so harmful. Tomorrow is another day. This year we plan to put some more emphasis on Apple and its cult of patents. It’s not a new year’s resolution, but since this is the first year that Novell does not exist, we must refocus. █
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