A Microsoft Gold-certified Partner (Attachmate) remains a proprietary software company

Summary: Microsoft's partner, Attachmate, still refrains from commenting on GNU/Linux efforts that are not being taxed by Microsoft; proprietary products from Novell are seemingly unaffected

TECHRIGHTS returns to its normal schedule after an extended weekend (Bank Holiday in the UK). We have been looking into more Novell news recently, only to find more of the same trends that we discussed earlier this month, namely that staff is leaving and OpenSUSE gets no commitment of substance. The official site speaks of progress, but there is really not much of it except profiles and other more distracting, off-topic bits of news or something on the borderline between SUSE and OpenSUSE (the gap is blurred a bit sometimes). Notice what Attachmate continues to say about SUSE. There is no mention of OpenSUSE, still. The new manager of SUSE expresses commitment without mentioning OpenSUSE even once.

The VAR Guy was particularly curious about Hawn’s views on SUSE Linux. The reason: During Attachmate’s discussions to potentially acquire Novell, SEC filings indicated that the initial dialog did not include buying Novell’s SUSE Linux business. But Hawn says Attachmate was simply reacting to Novell’s initial strategy — which involved potentially selling Novell’s assets in pieces to multiple bidders. Says Hawn: “Our desire from the outset was, if possible, to acquire the whole company.”

Sascha Manns continues to deliver some news while the OpenSUSE brand gets weakened for the following reason: "It became quickly apparent to me that while the service was called “openSUSE Build Service” the name didn’t give enough due credit. The build service’s capabilities meant so much more than simply creating a tool for the openSUSE distribution."

This has not been a problem for over a year, has it? Why it is being renamed at such a late stage? Not a healthy sign for this trademark.What is Attachmate going to do?

Novell is generally no more (as an independent company). Attachmate has shelved its pertinent part where it saw that as suitable and threw the rest -- including Mono -- out. Nonetheless, some YouTube accounts continue to spew out Novell promotion, not just SUSE promotion which is at least a live product.

Parts of Novell that are still being advertised are characteristically proprietary, Vibe for example [1, 2, 3]. These three video and about a dozen more from "Novelldemo" are the type of stuff coming from Novell, which still sells and promotes proprietary software [1, 2, 3, 4]. SUSE for Novell is a carrier with which to sell Novell's proprietary addons, not just proprietary software from third parties (largely a strategy at Red Hat and Canonical).

Speaking of SUSE, there is this new Dell video about its Novell alliance with Microsoft. It does not mention patents or any sneaky language like that and we have wondered about it for almost 4 years.



Remember that buying SUSE means paying Microsoft. It means paying a lot more than HTC pays Microsoft for Android, perhaps ten times as much.