--The sum of Microsoft’s fears (yesterday)
Remember Susan Hauser, who 'stole' the voices of customers and tried to 'override' their views? We will never forget this fear mongering technique. She did not impress much in the audiocast from last October and neither did Justin Steinman and the other Novell/Microsoft salespersons. To a great degree, these marketing folks are responsible for Novell's troubles.
“Microsoft needs trusted open source Web sited (not Redmond's Fort 25) to offer them room to speak out.”OStatic is an "open source" site, but there has always been something funny about it (not just posts advocating Windows and Mac software). Other than the fact that they publicly dismissed our views on Mono, it's part of the same network that at leas once in the past AstroTurfed for Microsoft (and got caught). It also employs OpenSUSE's community manager, who receives a salary from Novell.
At the moment, there are more reasons for cautiousness. OStatic has just interviewed 4 people from Microsoft, which as regular readers would know, is just trying to hijack and ruin "Open Source". In order to achieve this, Microsoft needs trusted open source Web sited (not Redmond's Fort 25) to offer them room to speak out. It's the path to people's minds -- especially people on the 'other side of the fence' (never preach to the cenverted).
Anyway, let's interpret Susan Hauser's response to OStatic. It's heavily filled with toxic words.
OStatic: What goals do you have for Microsoft's interoperability alliance with Novell, and what's behind the goal of converting Linux users in the Chinese market to SUSE Linux Enterprise?
Susan Hauser, General Manager of Strategic Partnerships and Licensing at Microsoft:
"We entered into this agreement because based on customer feedback, we believed that there was an opportunity to grow our business by working together and to show leadership in the industry and the community in the following ways."
"Customers want their vendors to embrace interoperability. Microsoft and Novell collaborated – and continue to collaborate – on technical solutions for their shared customers to address critical interoperability technologies such as virtualization and web services. The sales of SUSE Linux support certificates and feedback we’ve received from those customers affirms that choice."
"Customers want their vendors to manage IP issues for them. Both companies recognize that Microsoft and Novell intellectual property is relevant to their respective products and will be increasingly relevant over time. This agreement has provided customers with confidence these issues have been addressed. We have provided customers with IP Peace of mind. In addition, by having reciprocal respect for IP, we are able to collaborate technically and deliver technical collaboration solutions that benefit our customers."
"Microsoft wants to continue reaching out to the open source community. Microsoft has begun participation in some important OSS projects and the non-compensated OSS community is being encouraged to experiment and grow through a broad covenant not-to-sue that benefits individual developers."
"There is a growing recognition among customers – in many countries including China - that there are significant costs to the business by running an operating system that is not supported by a commercial vendor. These costs include the staff time to do manual patches and bug fixes versus leveraging the seamless updates that are provided by Novell for SUSE Linux Enterprise as part of a support contract."
"In addition, companies are realizing that with limited budgets, it makes much more sense to use valuable IT staff on strategic projects that support the overall business than on manual tasks that are easily automated when a support contract is purchased."
Comments
OJ simpson america
2008-05-30 19:50:36
Please, it's the "United States of Advertising" as Bill Hicks said. "Your freedom is speech is guarenteed if you have the money."
Michael
2008-05-31 00:21:01
Great 'open source' queries like 'what's good about visual studio 2008', and plenty of other proprietary software questions or suggestions. Or other jems like 'I hate google knowing too much, i've replaced blogger, how can i replace desktop search (with 'open source' software)'.
Roy Schestowitz
2008-05-31 02:45:45
gggggg
2008-05-31 09:03:24
Bob
2008-05-31 13:03:53
Shane Coyle
2008-05-31 14:09:00
GPL was the only thing that gave them a right to distribute in the first place, without its existence, they need individual licenses for every different copyright holder. Imagine what that would require just for the Linux kernel, for example.
Recently, a case (in Germany, maybe???) had the judge explain to the defendant (Skype, I think?) something to the effect that if a publisher's license required the product be distributed in a green envelope, they had no choice but to comply or seek alternative terms, just to demonstrate the point.
Copyright Law is very strong, just about the world over, and the GPL uses it's own weight against it in a very cool example of legal judo, ensuring that no one can strip away freedom to redistribute downstream. Brilliant.
Roy Schestowitz
2008-05-31 16:18:20
The criticism -- however weak this criticism may be -- is that they give the impression that the GPL was never tested in court. See this.
I see a lot of anti-GPL and GPL ridicule of this type in newsgroups and other circles ("the GPL is artistic"), so it's worth squashing the myths for good. :-)
Bob
2008-06-01 02:35:27
As for the anti-GPL rhetoric/ridicule such claims are made usually because they are confused about the purpose and the philosophy behind the GPL; that is, they don't understand it as well as the people that wrote it. It's easy for me to understand why people don't understand the number of different nuances that went into the GPL - it is usually because they don't understand the GNU project's definition of free software. Because of this misunderstanding, such people make all sorts of claims that are simply not true. Implying that the GPL is somehow a weak licence because it hasn't been tested in court is an example of ignorance that should be corrected with rudimentary knowledge of free software and copyright law.
Henry H
2008-06-27 16:18:57