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While Helping Microsoft, Novell Harms Linux Companies and Instead Markets Proprietary

Novell Tux



Summary: The company which impedes cloning of SLE* spreads resentment against Red Hat for addressing the clones dilemma; Novell also puts proprietary software before Free/libre and Open Source software

EARLIER this month we showed that Novell was gunning for Red Hat customers, not Microsoft customers. We wrote about statements from Novell's Applebaum, which are further fuelled by a press release and timely copies that say: "Support program adds more platforms, lengthens server lifecycle support time to 10 years; final service pack for SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 packages improvements and supports latest hardware" (also see notes about service pack 4 of SLED 10).



"When it comes to Open Source stuff like OpenSUSE, Novell just sticks it in some wiki somewhere, almost as though it's something to be embarrassed of."Novell is not targetting (to harm) Microsoft but targetting Red Hat instead. As Gareth Halfacree put it in his article "Novell reveals its tactics for taking on Red Hat", there is veiled belittling that we never see from Novell against Microsoft (a Novell ally). Halfacree writes: "A blog post made by Novell late last month - accusing one of its largest competitors in the commercial Linux space, Red Hat, of deliberately obfuscating its code to hamper third-party support efforts - raised some eyebrows in the community, so we sat down with the post's author, Michael Applebaum, to find out what's what." Guess which server distribution has many clones and which one has none? As we explained some years ago (a series of posts, e.g. this in 2007), Novell impedes access to SUSE source code, but do not let the FUDmeisters have such facts slap them on the face.

Novell never disrespects Microsoft like this. It chose a side and that side includes IE8 and promotion/videos about Windows. Posted by Novell accounts we find stuff like this and some other videos [1, 2] which make no mention of GNU/Linux. Ross from Novell started advertising videos about Vibe [1, 2, 3], which is proprietary software made out of Open Source software (Novell turns free into proprietary). Proprietary software is definitely something which Novell can put its weight behind, even with paid press releases and extremely shallow coverage [1, 2]. When it comes to Open Source stuff like OpenSUSE, Novell just sticks it in some wiki somewhere, almost as though it's something to be embarrassed of. The same goes for Novell vulnerabilities, which one needs to pursue by reading non-Novell sites [1, 2].

Novell is a shameless parasite. People who support GNU/Linux should give their money to other companies.

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