Novell must realise that death of public trust can sooner or later result in the death of a company. There is a lot of choice in GNU/Linux and too little lock-in. Novell is stepping in quicksand if it believes that stomping on Red Hat (and 'small' guys like CentOS) using Microsoft's budget is going to get its SUSE brochures anywhere but the wastebasket.
Novell makes itself even harder to trust
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Novell seems determined to weaken the same Linux world by forcing it to fight with itself. This couldn’t be better news for competitors such as Microsoft.
A software patent agreement with Microsoft was also the first hint that Novell was just after a quick buck. This most recent plan pretty much seals that reputation.
It also suggests that Novell is struggling; struggling to convince users to deploy its software and struggling to get migration deals signed. So it turns on the community that helped it avoid an untimely death and devises new ways to destroy it.
As I said, the idea that software stacks will become a mixture of free and proprietary products is nothing new. Indeed lots of people are already using such stacks. Personally I believe that once freedom is introduced into a “market place” it will become harder to suppress until eventually it becomes the dominant licencing strategy. This is evident in the fact that a company like Novell not only bought a free software company (SuSE), but bought into the free software philosophy — well partly anyway. So while proprietary software may not entirely die out (more’s the pity) I feel (and hope) it will become the de-facto NON-standard way of licencing software.
“Mixed source” is a bad name for this — er — mix though. The source or openness of it is largely irrelevant if you ask me. When you mix free and proprietary systems in one application stack — like it or not — the entire stack has a proprietary effect. Obviously the degree of that proprietary effect will depend on how vital the proprietary software is to the stack. Use a free software database back-end with a proprietary front-end and your stack is largely subject to the whim of front-end’s vendor.
Joint Windows/Linux support is something that a lot of businesses need. That said, Novell working hand-in-glove with Microsoft doesn't go over at all well with many Linux users. Boycott Novell, after all, which serves as the lightning rod for resentment against Novell and Microsoft working together, is a very popular site.
Novell: the black widow of Linux
Comments
Todd Razuri
2008-11-16 02:47:30
Just saying it doesn't look particularly good *shrug*
Roy Schestowitz
2008-11-16 09:48:50