Weird-looking Steve Ballmer with a small puppet tied to strings, eh? Think of the picture on the right as a depiction of the Novell-Microsoft relationship. When a company becomes financially dependent on another, it is natural to expect a certain bias that favours those in control. Over the past few months -- on several occasions even -- Novell has made certain statements which it later regretted, retracted, or claimed to have been misinterpretations. Here are a few examples of cases where Novell goes batting for Microsoft, whether intentionally and knowingly or not.
Miguel de Icaza, with a history or taking Microsoft’s side, states: “The EU Prosecutors are Wrong“ [on OOXML vs ODF].
In mid-November, shortly after the pact was announced, Microsoft chief Steve Ballmer said companies that sell or run Linux, but aren’t covered under the Novell deal, are illegally using Microsoft’s IP. “We believe every Linux customer basically has an undisclosed balance-sheet liability,” he said.
He said in a later meeting: “I do think it clearly establishes that open source is not free.”
I felt constrained to point out that for 20 years Unix, and then Linux customers, hadn’t felt the need to be protected by such agreements. It’s curious why customers should now suddenly need assurance.
Nat Friedman: I haven’t seen that until now, I mean there have always been flamewars in the Linux community, it’s part of the community culture.
So, rather than compete directly with their partner Microsoft with their award-winning "complete desktop replacement", Novell is instead encouraging other Linux vendors to also embrace Microsoft and is preaching peaceful coexistence with Windows.
Comments
GNU/Linux
2007-08-06 21:38:18
I just don't feel right blaming Novell for what they did all the time. I said it some time ago that it hurts mostly (if not only) openSUSE. I'm tired of all those really bad news (excluding "do-not-evil" days ;)). Enterprise guys don't care about ideologies/philosophy/freedoms. They will never care. And imho Novell won't loose market to Red Hat because market is still owned by MS so they both have a lot to take from this "Empire of Evil". Novell and Red Hat have a lot to do but they do it in different ways. Red Hat is more FLOSS oriented, Novell is not.
What I want to say is, is Novell really so big threat for FLOSS/Linux community? Do we really should care about what they did? Boycotts should have some strong reasons and I can't find enough reasons to boycott Novell. But maybe I just read about it too much and too often so my head can't handle it ;)
Roy Schestowitz
2007-08-06 21:47:44
By the way, I was very pleased to read the news about Novell getting SLED preloaded on Lenovo laptops. It sounds like old news due to what appears to be Microsoft pressure behind the scenes. Lenovo made an identical announcement last year and retracted within days.