Summary: Banshee booster has history trying to put Mono inside Fedora and a new file format, ‘LOOXML’, is said to be pushed into LibreOffice possibly because of Novell’s influence

A FEW DAYS ago we wrote about OMG!Ubuntu! announcing that Banshee had been added to Ubuntu after a lot of insistence from Mono boosters. Over at Groklaw, Pamela Jones spotted the news and wrote, “Can Canonical find any more ways to stuff Mono into Ubuntu?”

Jones and Groklaw members — like many others including the FSF — have repeatedly warned that Mono should be avoided, and to quote one such opinion on it, “Banshee is just being pushed now in the latest Ubuntu Natty downloads, bad news.”

If one checks where the immense promotion of Banshee came from to OMG!Ubuntu!, it’s this person who says in his profile that he is “maintaining primarily Mono packages including Banshee.” He was to Fedora what Shields et al. are to Ubuntu — Mono pushforce. To quote a mail message sent to him from Matthew Woehlke and posted in his blog:

I’m going to guess a lot of that “disrespectful personal mail” revolves around the use of mono? And why shouldn’t it? Lots of people (myself included) have a special hatred of Microsoft’s Trojan Horse, and good reason to question the honesty and motives of people that push it. (Which is not to say I don’t believe there are honest people that are either deluded or simply don’t care.)

If you’re going to promote the technology of a Linux-hostile, GPL-hating, monopolistic bully of a company that regularly engages in racketeering, encourages people to violate the GPL, and is currently suing against Linux… well, some people aren’t going to like that .

Personally, the only thing I would want to do with mono code would be to port it to !mono. YMMV.

This came around the time Fedora leaders were discouraging his lobbying for Mono inside Fedora by putting it more gently: “Red Hat Enterprise Linux continues to not ship mono. Draw your own conclusions.”

Another source of Mono advocacy is Microsoft MVP Miguel de Icaza, whose promotion of Mono extends to CES and it’s not surprising that anti-Linux trolls support de Icaza. Microsoft advocates who for years troll and harass people in Linux forums are celebrating news about Mono for Android because they know it’s bad for GNU/Linux (there is only who person there who is a GNU/Linux advocate, others are rude trolls who thrive in an unmoderated forum, one is a Microsoft MVP).

The inclusion of Banshee in Ubuntu extends further into the panels, which are always running and usually within sight. They is increasing dependency on Mono at more levels, as this post helps show:

An update today finally sets Banshee as the default music player in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal. Since Banshee is now default, it has replaced Rhythmbox in the Ubuntu Sound Menu…

Mono is of course property of Novell (to be AttachMSFT), which received a lot of money from Microsoft in order to advance Microsoft’s agenda. Mono is part of this agenda and the relationship to Novell’s SLES can be watched in this new video. Novell helps Microsoft in turning GNU/Linux servers into .NET hosts and one of the main people from the FFII seems concerned about LibreOffice, perhaps because of the Go-OO connection. We are currently investigating just how much influence Novell has in this fork because Novell staff (including one whom the OpenOffice.org team rejected repeatedly) dominates the IRC channel/s and the gentleman from the FFII, who fought against OOXML, is concerned that LibreOffice is going to support LOOXML in spite of spin. He wrote: “Expect a fresh format flavour would then be named LOOXML, that’s a perfectly silly silly silly nerd pun on LOL (laugh out loud), XML (extensible markup language), LO (libreoffice) and OOXML (office open XML) and possible other British phrases of general interest. LOOXML is an OOXML-inspired format intended to approximate the OOXML-O10 which eventually is known as ISO/ECMA OOXML transitional. LibreOffice 3.3. will be released January 10. Feel free to put to popular vote if LOOXML or LOOOXML or LO-OOXML suits you best.”

Ubuntu was alleged to have adopted LibreOffice, but Canonical denied this later. All in all, yet again we see the toxic poison from Novell (paid by Microsoft) having a bad effect on Ubuntu and other projects. Boycott Novell to defend GNU/Linux. █

Summary: The Document Foundation and LibreOffice are formally announced, beginning an era of a vendor-independent office suite with ODF support, no copyright assignment requirements, and a clear direction with long-term commitment

The Document Foundation has just been announced and Techrights was briefed about it weeks in advance. Basically, OpenOffice.org is being forked, and that is probably a positive thing, although it may depend on one’s perspective.

Oracle Does Not Understand Software Freedom

Oracle cannot be trusted with and around Free software. Its boss does not understand software freedom. To quote some old interviews:

• Larry Ellison: “If an Open Source Product Gets Good Enough, We’ll Simply Take It.”
• Larry Ellison: “We Have to Exploit Open Source.”

Remarking on more recent events, Matthew Aslett wrote: “Only a few hours in to #oow10 and already detected a subtle but important change in how Oracle describes its relationship with open source. [...] Out goes “we have no open source strategy” in comes “we are are proprietary company that believes there’s an important role for open source””

Is this a company that can be relied on in the long term? Well, as part of Oracle’s recently-announced transition to Fog Computing it was announced that the company would make better use of JavaFX to incorporate the Web and commitment to Java gets extended, just not quite in the way which preserves freedom. Zonker says that there is more than GPL compliance to stay true to and thus Oracle is failing. To quote: “The GNU General Public License (GPL) and other open source licenses dictate the things you’re allowed to do with code. Simply because the GPL allows parasitic behavior, doesn’t mean that Oracle can’t be called out when it’s not being a good community citizen. Some see the GPL’s reciprocal requirements as restrictive — but even the requirements to give back changes and share code only go so far. Open source licenses leave a lot of room for companies to behave poorly while still complying with the license. Oracle could ship GPL’ed code on DVDs in wallets made out of the finest baby seal pelts housed in ivory boxes, and it wouldn’t be against the GPL. But that doesn’t mean the house that Larry built should get a pass if it chooses to do so.”

On the OpenOffice.org side, new Developer Snapshots recently arrived, e.g. (from GullFOSS):

• New: OOo-DEV 3.3.x Developer Snapshot (build OOO330m8) available

  Developer Snapshot OOo-Dev OOO330m8 is available for download.

  OOO330 is the development codeline for upcoming OOo 3.3.x releases.

• New: OOo-DEV 3.x Developer Snapshot (build DEV300m88) available

  Developer Snapshot OOo-Dev DEV300m88 is available for download.

  DEV300 is the development codeline for upcoming OOo 3.x releases.

• DRCSs don’t quite cut it (yet)

Beyond this release, the future of OpenOffice.org is unknown, whereas the future the LibreOffice is very much certain, thanks to the backing from many committed parties.

Oracle’s Bad Direction for OpenOffice.org

Here is an insight into Oracle’s plan for OpenOffice.org:

As such, it competes against Google Docs and the browser version of Office, Microsoft Office Web Apps.
The narrator in the Oracle Cloud Suite video touts the integration with Oracle Open Office (natch), the open document format (ODF) and is compatible with Microsoft Office. And Oracle Cloud Suite is accessible to the industry’s increasing mobile workforce.
But the International Business Times pieces raises a few questions about how viable the Oracle threat is.

“Oracle preps Google and Microsoft Office challenger,” says another headline:

The Reg understands Cloud Office is a closed-source product developed by Oracle, rather than a part of the OpenOffice Project.

Oracle has promised that Cloud Office uses web standards, but it will also use JavaFX – the currently closed Java scripting language for rich-internet applications and UIs Oracle inherited from Sun Microsystems.

With an imminent OpenOffice.org Hackfest, it is clear that OpenOffice.org is not being abandoned by Oracle, but increasingly it is taken in a proprietary direction where Oracle gains greater control. From Roberto Galoppini’s blog:

Few days ago I shortly mentioned the OpenOffice.org Hackfest, and today I asked my friend Florian Effenberger – OpenOffice.org Marketing Project Lead – to tell us more about the event, to be held on the 6-7 of November at the Attraktor in Hamburg.

How many will attend now that LibreOffice is where all the action is at?

Fork Announced

So, OpenOffice.org is being forked and here is what people need to know. The press release is appended below and documentfoundation.org contains more information as it has only just come live (9 AM Paris/Berlin time).

First of all, the fork is backed by many vendors, as well as non-commercial entities such as the GNOME Foundation. The licence will be LGPLv3 (and no copyright agreement is required, which is now one of the various pressures Oracle is putting on the community). The details are all at the bottom.

Why is it so necessary? To quote someone from the Steering Committee, the “situation with Oracle inside Openoffice.org is untenable… they don’t even want to commit after the 3.3… they refuse to communicate on roadmap… are getting insolently crazy on trademarks… are shutting down portions of our open development process…”

Asked about OpenSolaris as an analogy, we we told that it’s “a bit like that, but with less hostility… they don’t want to shut it down, they want to have it their way exclusively, so we are forking…. we [as in] Novell, Red Hat, Google, the Brazilian Government, its banks and largest companies, several international OOo associations (forming the backbone of the community), and we’re awaiting some more supporters such as the SFLC, the FSF, the OSI, the FSFE… in fact SFLC, Debian, OSI and FSFE are more or less already acquired… Canonical and Red Hat will ship our own binaries in their next version of Ubuntu and Fedora.”

Asked about the role of Novell, it turned out that they are included in this. There was “no choice”, but “the source code will be OOo vanilla (no go-oo patches) [...] but we’re using the ooo-build system (well, everyone on Linux uses it except Red Hat who made the decision now to switch to us).”

All the infrastructure was made ready about two weeks ago when they were “in the process of registering the trademarks”. Later on it was decided that “the Foundation will be named The Document Foundation [...] the office suite named LibreOffice.”

“Libre” is good in the sense that it conveys something better than just “open source”.

As Glyn Moody put it some days ago, “We [May Be] Entering the Golden Age of Forks”. OpenOffice.org was named by Moody:

Oracle’s high-handed approach to open source is fast making it Public Enemy Number 1 as far as free software is concerned (yes, even relegating Microsoft to second place). This means that people working on the MySQL or OpenOffice.org projects are going to be far warier, and more distrustful of the company’s moves in future.

Let’s get this ball rolling and the word spread as far as possible. In order for LibreOffice to succeed in a major way, people all around the world need to be aware of it. █

OpenOffice.org Community announces The Document Foundation

The community of volunteers developing and promoting OpenOffice.org sets up an independent Foundation to drive the further growth of the project

The Internet, September 28, 2010 – The community of volunteers who develop and promote OpenOffice.org, the leading free office software, announce a major change in the project’s structure. After ten years’ successful growth with Sun Microsystems as founding and principle sponsor, the project launches an independent foundation called “The Document Foundation”, to fulfil the promise of independence written in the original charter.

The Foundation will be the cornerstone of a new ecosystem where individuals and organisations can contribute to and benefit from the availability of a truly free office suite. It will generate increased competition and choice for the benefit of customers and drive innovation in the office suite market. From now on, the OpenOffice.org community will be known as “The Document Foundation”.
Oracle, who acquired OpenOffice.org assets as a result of its acquisition of Sun Microsystems, has been invited to become a member of the new Foundation, and donate the brand the community has grown during the past ten years. Pending this decision, the brand “LibreOffice” has been chosen for the software going forward.

The Document Foundation is the result of a collective effort by leading independent members of the former OpenOffice.org community, including several project leads and key members of the Community Council. It will be led initially by a Steering Committee of developers and national language projects managers. The Foundation aims to lower the barrier of adoption for both users and developers, to make LibreOffice the most accessible office suite ever.

The Foundation has chosen the LibreOffice brand as an alternative to OpenOffice.org, and will coordinate and oversee the development of the software, which is available in beta version at the placeholder site: http://www.libreoffice.org. Developers are invited to join the project and contribute to the code in the new friendly and open environment, to shape the future of office productivity suites alongside contributors who translate, test, document, support, and promote the software.

Speaking for the group of volunteers, Sophie Gautier – a veteran of the community and the former maintainer of the French speaking language project – has declared: “We believe that the Foundation is a key step for the evolution of the free office suite, as it liberates the development of the code and the evolution of the project from the constraints represented by the commercial interests of a single company. Free software advocates around the world have the extraordinary opportunity of joining the group of founding members today, to write a completely new chapter in the history of FLOSS”.

FSF President Richard Stallman welcomed LibreOffice release and it’s stated policy of only recommending free software. “I’m very pleased that the Document Foundation will not recommend nonfree add-ons, since they are the main freedom problem of the current OpenOffice.org. I hope that the LibreOffice developers and the Oracle-employed developers of OpenOffice will be able to cooperate on development of the
body of the code”.

“The Document Foundation supports the Open Document Format, and is keen to work at OASIS to the next evolution of the ISO standard”, says Charles Schulz, member of the Community Council and lead of the Native Language Confederation. “The Document Foundation brings to the table the point of view of developers, supporters and users, and this might accelerate the adoption process of ODF at government and enterprise level”.

Chris DiBona, Open Source Programs Manager at Google, Inc., has commented: “The creation of The Document Foundation is a great step forward in encouraging further development of open source office suites. Having a level playing field for all contributors is fundamental in creating a broad and active community around an open source software project. Google is proud to be a supporter of The Document Foundation and participate in the project”.

“Viva la LibreOffice”, said Markus Rex, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Open Platform Solutions at Novell. “We look forward to working with the Document Foundation to help develop a solid open source document software offering. Ultimately, we hope to see LibreOffice do for the office productivity market what Mozilla Firefox has done for browsers”.

Jan Wildeboer, EMEA Open Source Affairs at Red Hat, has commented: “All over the world, users, companies and governments are moving to truly open solutions based on Open Standards. LibreOffice delivers the missing link, and at Red Hat we are proud to join this effort”.

Mark Shuttleworth, founder and major shareholder of Canonical, the makers of Ubuntu, has declared: “Office productivity software is a critical component of the free software desktop, and the Ubuntu Project will be pleased to ship LibreOffice from The Document Foundation in future releases of Ubuntu. The Document Foundation’s stewardship of LibreOffice provides Ubuntu developers an effective forum for collaboration around the code that makes Ubuntu an effective solution for the desktop in office environments”.

“The Open Source Initiative has observed a trend back towards open collaborative communities for open source software”, said Simon Phipps, a Director of the Open Source Initiative. “We welcome The Document

Foundation initiative and look forward to the innovation it is able to drive with a truly open community gathered around a free software commons, in the spirit of the best of open source software”.

Additional information, including the mission, are available on the web site of The Document Foundation: http://www.documentfoundation.org

Biographies and pictures of the founding members of The Document Foundation are available here: http://www.documentfoundation.org/foundation/.

There is a specific page for people interested in contributing to the development of the code: http://www.documentfoundation.org/developers/.

The Document Foundation has a Twitter account: http://twitter.com/docufoundation and an Identi.ca account: http://identi.ca/docufoundation.

The announcements mailing list is at: announce+subscribe@documentfoundation.org.

The discussion mailing list is at: discuss+subscribe@documentfoundation.org.

The Document Foundation

The Document Foundation is an independent self-governing democratic Foundation created by leading members of the former OpenOffice.org Community. It continues to build on the Foundation of ten years’ dedicated work by the OpenOffice.org community, and was created in the belief that an independent Foundation is the best fit to the Community’s core values of openness, transparency, and valuing people for their contribution. It is open to any individual who agrees with our core values and contributes to our activities, and welcomes corporate participation, e.g. by sponsoring individuals to work as equals alongside other contributors in the community.

Media Contacts

Florian Effenberger (Germany)
Mobile: +49 151 14424108
E-mail: floeff@documentfoundation.org

Olivier Hallot (Brazil)
Mobile: +55.21.88228812
E-mail: olivier.hallot@documentfoundation.org

Charles H. Schulz (France)
Mobile: +33 6 98655424
E-mail: charles.schulz@documentfoundation.org

Italo Vignoli (Italy)
Mobile: +39 348 5653829
E-mail: italo.vignoli@documentfoundation.org

APPENDIX

STEERING COMMITTEE MEMBERS

Sophie Gautier

Francophone project co-lead, former Project Lead Education Project, former Community Council Member for Native Lang projects category

I’ve been deeply involved in the OpenOffice.org Community since its very beginning in 2000. First I participated to the Documentation Project, then I’ve been the lead of the French-speaking project from 2002 to 2007, then the co-lead in 2009 until now. I’ve represented the Native Language Confederation at the Community Council since its launch until last year. Now I’m managing the French localization of the OOo product and satellite sites and participating to QA, Documentation, User Support and Marketing. In my daily job, I’ve worked as an OpenOffice.org consultant and trainer on my own first, then for the Linagora Group from 2006 to 2010 and I’m currently unemployed.

Thorsten Behrens

GSL Project co-lead, OASIS ODF TC / ECMA TC45 / ISO SC34 WG4 participant

Thorsten was part of OpenOffice.org almost from the start, when he joined the then-Sun-Microsystems development team back in early 2001. He’s a computer scientist by education, and a Free Software enthusiast by heart, a geek from early childhood – and someone who was lucky enough to turn a hobby into an occupation.

During his now nine years of tenure in the project, he’s spent most of his time hacking the code, in areas ranging from build system, platform abstraction libraries, Impress and Writer. Thorsten is currently co-lead of the graphical system layer project, member of the OASIS ODF technical committee, the ECMA TC45, and technical advisor on the ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 34 working group 4.
He’s sponsored by Novell to work full-time on OpenOffice.org.

Florian Effenberger

Marketing Project Lead and German MarCon, Distribution Project Lead

Florian Effenberger has been an open source evangelist for many years. He is lead of the international OpenOffice.org marketing project as well as a member of the management board of the non-profit OpenOffice.org Deutschland e.V. He has ten years’ experience of designing enterprise and educational computer networks, including software deployment based on free software. He is also a frequent contributor to a variety of professional magazines worldwide on topics such as free software, open standards and legal matters.

Caolán McNamara

Former Writer Project co-lead and member of the OpenOffice.org Engineering Steering Committee

Caolán is a Senior Software Engineer at Red Hat, Inc, and has over 10 years experience in developing OpenOffice.org. Starting 2000 in Hamburg as an employee of Sun Microsystems developing StarOffice before its subsequent release under the LGPL as OpenOffice.org later that year. From 2000 to 2005 Caolán specialized in improving the the binary MSWord import/export filters, building on his prior experience developing libwv, libwmf and other free software projects to parse Microsoft binary file formats.

From 2005 to present Caolán has been employed full-time by Red Hat, Inc. to maintain, improve and enhance OpenOffice.org, typically focusing on GNOME desktop integration, font and glyph replacement, Indic text layout, linguistic components, tooling to improve overall code quality, debugging the type of problems no one wants to touch, while retaining an interest in MSOffice compatibility.

Olivier Hallot

BrOffice.org CFO, Community Council Member, Main translator for pt-BR

Graduated Electronic Engineer in 1982, MSc in Digital Signal Processing in 1985 and MBA in Oil&Gas industry in 2001.

I initiated my career as Assocate Researcher for digital signal processing in the IBM Scientific Center in Brasilia, Brazil, for the Oil&Gas industry in seismic data processing and high performance computing. Later I moved to marketing and sales for the same industry all over Latin America. In 1998 I joined Oracle Brazil in sales for the Oil& Gas industry and later as Alliance relationship manager for large hardware manufacturers as well as with the Oracle academic initiative. Since 2002 and on my own, I have participated actively in FLOSS projects notably in OpenOffice.org as one of the translators for
Brazilian Portuguese and volunter CFO of BrOffice.org NGO. I am now senior consultant in OpenOffice.org technology for large corporations on migration projects.

André Schnabel

Coordinator for German localization, former Project Lead QA Project, former Community Council Member for accepted projects category

André is involved in the OpenOffice.org project since 2001. Being a software developer in his professional live he focused his voluntary work for OpenOffice.org on user support, documentation and quality assurance. He has been Co-Lead of the Germanophone project as well as project lead of the Quality Assurance project and member of the Community Council for several years. Today he is maintaining the German localization and working on a translation process based on open standards. André is also founding member and chairman of the board of the German non-profit OpenOffice.org Deutschland e.V.

Charles-H. Schulz

NLC Lead, Community Council Member (Lang Representative)

Charles-H. Schulz (The “H” letter standing for his second name “Henri”) is a French technologist, Free Software and Open Standards advocate. As a long time contributor to the OpenOffice.org project he helped grow its community from a few mostly european communities to over a hundred communities and teams of various sizes. In the end of 2009 he was elected at the Community Council of the OpenOffice.org project. He is currently the lead of the Native-Language Confederation and a member of the Community Council. He also contributed to the development and adoption of the OpenDocument Format standard through the company he co-founded, Ars Aperta. Member of several international organizations he helped to create the Digital Standards Group and is part of the OASIS standards consortium, of which he is now one of the directors.

Italo Vignoli

Italian MarCon, President of Associazione PLIO (Italian National Language Project)

Italo Vignoli is president of PLIO, OpenOffice.org Italian National Language Project, a not for profit association that represents the community of volunteers who promote the free office productivity suite. In everyday life, is partner and president of Quorum PR, a public relations agency with a strong bias to the integration of traditional media and social network. He has almost thirty years of experience in marketing and communication of high-tech companies in Italy and at international level, and is responsible for the social networks practice within the Italian Federation of Public Relations.

Since 1984, it is connected to the network with a portable PC and a messaging or e-mail system despite a degree in humanities from the University of Milan, where he has been a researcher on urban geography. He is working as a freelance journalist since 1972, writing about sports, music and IT. He blogs in Italian about libre software at http://www.cwi.it/blogs/sistemaperto/.

MESSAGE FOR ORACLE

Gentlemen – as founders and principle supporters of the OpenOffice.org Community during the past decade, we’re giving you advance notice that we will shortly be announcing the launch of an independent Foundation to take the Community forward into its next decade.

You will be aware that this has been discussed many times over the years. We now feel the time is right to make the move. We believe it will be more powerful if the move is initiated by the Community itself, which is why we are launching this initiative.

We do of course hope that you will be able to move with us on this exciting new journey. As custodians of many OpenOffice.org assets, your continued support will be most warmly appreciated.

Signed on behalf of the group:

Sophie Gautier
Thorsten Behrens
Florian Effenberger
Olivier Hallot
Caolan McNamara
Christoph Noack
Charles-H. Schulz
André Schnabel
Italo Vignoli

MESSAGE FOR THE COMMUNITY

Dear OpenOffice.org community members,
Dear leads of the native-language projects,
Dear project leads,

Today, we would like to introduce you to an idea that has grown very concretely during the past weeks. We ask you to NOT share it with anyone else at this moment. There will be plenty of time to discuss and work on it soon.

Over the past decade, thanks to your great help, support and enthusiasm, OpenOffice.org has grown to a important open source projects.

Now that we are approaching our tenth birthday, it is time to mark a major step in the evolution of OpenOffice.org. For the last ten years, the idea of an independent OpenOffice.org foundation has been existing (see http://www.openoffice.org/white_papers/OOo_project/openofficefoundation.html) but has never been realized.

We feel now is the time to make the vision from the very beginning of the project a reality. Therefore, a group of long-term community contributors, is about to establish a foundation called

“The Document Foundation”
(http://www.documentfoundation.org from September 28th on)

and will publicly announce these plans on Tuesday, September 28th

Our mission is to facilitate the evolution of the OpenOffice.org community into a new open, independent, and meritocratic organizational structure within the next few months.

We invite you to join us in these efforts. Help us to bring our community and our software to a new level and shape the next logical step of its evolution.

As it is yet uncertain whether we will get the OpenOffice.org trademark from its owner, Oracle Corporation, we plan to establish a new brand for the product, called
“LibreOffice” (http://www.libreoffice.org from September 28th on)

We have invited Oracle, which we owe much respect for all the good things that they have done in the past years, to become a member and partner of our initiative, and we hope they will join us together with the Hamburg development team, so that LibreOffice indeed is a temporary placeholder, which is our true wish.

We have already seen wide support from companies like Google, Novell and Red Hat as well as our friends from the Brazilian BrOffice.org community. Others are in favour of our plans and might actively join our initiative soon.

As of today, about 25 well-known and long-term contributors to the OpenOffice.org community are part of our initiative. We have formed an interim Steering Committee to drive things forward.

We currently work hard to put all the needed infrastructure at your disposal, to be able to quickly communicate with the community.

All this and maybe more will be announced on

Tuesday, September 28th

You are invited to join our

* official mailing list by subscribing at discuss+subscribe@lists.documentfoundation.org

* IRC channel at #documentfoundation on irc.freenode.net (irc://irc.freenode.net/#documentfoundation)

* initiative by signing the manifesto at http://www.documentfoundation.org

All the above addresses will be available from September 28th on.

We are here for any questions and suggestions that you will have. We hope for your support in this next major step and are sure that you will as be thrilled by this new project as we are, which is in fact the continuity of our community.

Yours truly,

the members of the Steering Committee and founders of the Document Foundation
Sophie Gautier, sophie.gautier@documentfoundation.org
Thorsten Behrens, thorsten.behrens@documentfoundation.org
Florian Effenberger, floeff@documentfoundation.org
Olivier Hallot, olivier.hallot@documentfoundation.org
Caolán McNamara, caolan.mcnamara@documentfoundation.org
André Schnabel, andre.schnabel@documentfoundation.org
Charles Schulz, charles.schulz@documentfoundation.org
Italo Vignoli, italo.vignoli@documentfoundation.org

Summary: While Novell is looking for a buyer it also reduces spendings on Free software projects which are essential

NOVELL INC., a forker of OpenOffice.org [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6], no longer pays anything to sponsor an annual OpenOffice.org conference. Brian has attempted to find out why, but he cannot get an answer. His summation says that things don’t compute and his summary is: “Why isn’t Novell a sponsor at the upcoming OpenOffice.org Conference?”

If you’re waiting for information on OpenOffice.org from Oracle, you may need to wait a little bit longer.

[...]

Sources inside the company cite that as the main reason why they are not willing to discuss business issues, such as OpenOffice.org, at this time.

[...]

When checking out the conference sponsors, I noted that Novell was nowhere to be seen on the list. I did dig into the conference program, and found that Novell has a presence in the participations, so they will be there.

This is notable to me, at least, because lately Novell has been sending out little hints that they’ve been less than thrilled with how collaborative the OpenOffice.org community has been. This is nothing new, mind you: they were complaining about the same thing when Sun was the big OpenOffice.org backer.

There is no taking away that fact that Novell is a big contributor to OpenOffice.org, but their absence from financially sponsoring the major OpenOffice.org event of the year is something to note. Is Novell about to take their ball and go home? Were there more transparent ways Novell was involved in this particular conference? Or is Novell worried about the future direction of OpenOffice.org, too?

What is going on at Novell? █

Summary: OpenSUSE 11.3 and OpenSUSE Build Service 2.0 are nearly ready, but Novell’s situation casts some doubt

LATER on today, Novell will possibly speak about an acquisition (if not on Friday, well after market close). OpenSUSE should pay careful attention because not every possible acquirer has an interest in Free software as a strategic direction.

“Why not try OpenSuSE 11.2,” asks one writer and the answer might be, “because it’s tied to Novell.” Had the OpenSUSE community forked the project, that would be a different situation. With automated testing and adoption in schools, the future of OpenSUSE matters to all of us and it’s dangerous to make it rely upon Novell, whose days are numbered.

A few years ago the LUG opensuse-nicaragua has the project named “Escuelita opeSUSE” this project was to provide basic courses for the people opensuse.

And the last week, we finally made it!!!

OpenSUSE 11.3 and OpenSUSE Build Service 2.0 are coming out soon [1, 2]. OpenSUSE should think carefully about what will have happened by the release dates.

Novell’s openSUSE developers have been a busy bunch this week.

Today openSUSE 11.3 milestone 7 is out which is the last stop ahead of a Release Candidate in June and a final release in July. The openSUSE Build Service 2.0 Beta 1 came out yesterday with a final release now set for June 10.

A fork would increase this project’s sustainability, not reduce it. █

Reuters has been the leading source so far when it comes to Novell acquisition news. It reported the number of bidders and about 3 months ago it also broke the news about Elliot. Novell is still up for sale and another new article from Reuters reveals a possible parallel. “It’s picking the Sun technologies that are commercializable and focusing on those,” said Larry Ellison, “and ignoring those that are not. They are just science projects.”

“It’s picking the Sun technologies that are commercializable and focusing on those and ignoring those that are not.”
      –Larry Ellison, OracleThis leads to the question, would Novell’s buyer be committed to the Free software projects inside the company? Oracle has already suppressed or shut down some Free software projects that Sun created and/or maintained. The same can happen to Novell when it gets bought. So regardless of raves about Novell’s proprietary software, it is time to think what would happen to Mono, Moonlight, and OpenSUSE. SLES and RHEL are quite swappable, so there is no risk for GNU/Linux as a whole, but what about OpenSUSE?

Novell’s Markus Rex speaks about the mainframes this week, but there is no risk there because Red Hat would be better off kicking Novell (with Microsoft tax) out of those IBM mainframes anyway.

The big question is, should OpenSUSE volunteers already begin forking OpenSUSE (there was at least one major derivative before)? OpenSUSE is owned and controlled by Novell, which also owns the trademark. A few days ago we stressed this point and expanded on it. █

Summary: Response to disinformation about Gnote, a substitute to the Mono-encumbered Tomboy

OVER the past few weeks we’ve come across all sorts of unsubstantiated claims that Gnote would not carry on being developed and maintained. To those who say it, this is a prophecy they wish to fulfill using smears. Microsoft calls the broader scheme of this strategy “the Slog” [PDF] and there are recent examples of another strategy called “whisper campaign” — damaging and false rumours being disseminated [1, 2]. Boycott Novell too has totally false accusations brought against it in an attempt to shoot the messenger because of the message which cannot be refuted (regarding Mono). Needless to say, these injurious false accusations and smears come from proponents of Mono who carefully cherry-pick things and take them out of context.

Going back to Gnote, Stefano Forenza took it upon himself to present refutations to the whispers/rumours regarding Gnote. Here is an overview:

In a thread on the ubuntu-devel mailing list, where Danny Picirillo asked to consider replacing Tomboy with Gnote, a long discussion followed. Ultimately Mackenzie brought up some points that the Gnote developer, Hubert Figuiere felt needed to be answered.

Stefano summarises his post as: “Putting an end to the disinformation about Gnote in the Ubuntu community.” To give an example of scare tactics, Canonical’s Scott James Remnant writes:

One of my principal concerns would that Gnote is simply a code port of Tomboy from Mono to C++, with little development of its own. This means that should the maintainer tire of converting C# to C++, the project could quite quickly die.

This type of logic can be applied to any project, even Microsoft Money [1, 2]. If it had, then where would today’s projects come from? All projects start small and to refuse acceptance of GPLv3-licensed software is somewhat dubious (the licence is actually better than Tomboy’s in the sense that it secures ownership and control by its respective users). The code is right there.

“This type of logic can be applied to any project, even Microsoft Money.”As for Tomboy, it is merely “the hobby” of a Novell employee (to use the wording of those close to the project), so the same logic could be applied to it. Figuiere, on the other hand, appears to be working on Gnote full time and it will be included in Fedora by default this December. Perhaps Red Hat should hire him.

Scott Grizzard wrote to explain the point of view of Mono skeptics (“anti-Mono” is too strong a phrase because we believe that Mono can have a place in the repositories, just not included by default and thus imposed despite risk).

The basic conclusion the anti-Mono crowd reaches (and if I am wrong, please let me know) is this: you shouldn’t use Mono, because Microsoft could come back later (after it has gained wide acceptance) and claim patent violations, gaining control (or at least significant influence) over open source software that uses it. They are especially vehemently opposed to using Mono for any core packages (or packages that gain widespread use), because that places Linux at considerable risk from Microsoft.

[...]

As the anti-mono people are right to point out, you shouldn’t use Mono for new Open Source projects, especially core projects – the potential threat from Microsoft is just too large. But, remember that Microsoft’s power is market power first, and its political power is derived from that. Anything that reduces that market power should be seen as a “good thing”. Mono in the core of Linux distributions has the potential to endanger Linux, but used properly, Mono makes Linux viable for many more people, giving them more choice, and more choice is “good”.

Here is another new post on the subject:

So why can’t Mono just be moved to the repositories? Why is Ubuntu remaining silent on this issue? How come other Linux distributions don’t have to use Mono?

There is no reason to ignore the performance advantages of Gnote, let alone the other important factors. █

OVER AT Identi.ca, gdk writes: “Yay! #Gnote is in !Debian”

seraphyn adds: “Surely better than the mono-litter on !debian. I dislike mono”

This was probably inevitable and Ubuntu might soon swing the same way. Fedora already has it as well, not to mention Debian Sid.

“Fedora already has it as well, not to mention Debian Sid.”Someone wrote about Novell’s iFolder and Mono in relation to UbuntuOne, stating wrongly that “The client side seems to be free software and based in mono.”

This is not correct. If one looks at the source code, then it’s clearly all wrong.

The problem with Mono is old news to many. Applying some simple logic and considering what’s at stake, here is one way to put it. To repeat a message I sent elsewhere, if Microsoft hates something, it means it’s bad for Microsoft. Examples may include GNU/Linux advocacy, critics, and law enforcement. When Microsoft assists something, it’s means it’s good Microsoft. It might help to think along the lines Mono, Moonlight, OOXML plug-ins, Hyper-V support, and SLE*.

Microsoft openly states (both Ballmer and Ozzie) that open source and/or GNU/Linux are the biggest threats to Microsoft.

Does anyone really think Microsoft will help its biggest threats?

Microsoft is a business. It operates for shareholders. It works to defeat its competitive threats.

This is obvious, but Mono and Novell apologists just ignore the warning signs. Microsoft has already sued Linux (probably SCO to an extent, then TomTom, maybe others). What more proof does one need that Microsoft does battle this so-called “cancer” and so-called “IP” is its weapon of choice? It’s only rational to react responsively. █

Summary: Increasing proximity between Microsoft and Novell across publications this week

LAST WEEK, the smaller Australian press suggested that Microsoft might buy Novell. This week, news.com.au cites a top Microsoft executive and here is the summary in bold:

MICROSOFT plans to spend its way out of the recession by developing new products and services but has ruled out buying a Linux company or increasing its stake in Facebook, a senior executive said.

[...]

For now, it doesn’t make sense for Microsoft to acquire a firm that deals in open source-based software such as Linux.

But Microsoft had great partnerships with companies such as Novell through interoperability agreements, he said.

A few months ago, Microsoft admitted that Novell was more or less its GPL labourer. Novell is applying changes to GNU/Linux and Free software so as to advance Microsoft’s goals. In return, Novell receives generous payments from Microsoft. It is therefore quite unnerving to find the following in yesterday’s news:

Oracle-Sun deal renews calls for OpenOffice.org’s independence

[...]

Michael Meeks, a developer at Novell Inc. who is overseeing Novell’s custom branch of the OpenOffice.org software, is more blunt. “We need to fix the deeply conservative, entrenched group think around development process in the project,” he said. “Currently, we have a total mess in this regard.”

Novell has already begun seizing control of the project [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7], to which it inserted components that strengthen Microsoft’s position in the market.

This involvement from Novell is something to watch out for. Novell wants to do to OpenOffice.org what Monty wants to do to MySQL, but Novell — unlike Monty — is serving the equivalent of Oracle, which competes against Free software.

Let’s not kid ourselves. Microsoft is aggressively boosting Novell and it already gets things in return. Looking at the news, there is some more new evidence this week.

Last week, Sys-Con (Microsoft's anti-Linux PR or planters), the Redmond/Microsoft press, and IDG [1, 2, 3] all promoted Novell and Microsoft. Now we find a new addition to a Microsoft-bent site bearing the headline/title “Advantages of Building Virtual Appliances on SUSE® Linux Enterprise Server.” In the main branch of the same Redmond publisher we find another article that compares Novell to Microsoft (as well as promotes Novell).

The company is also trying to tailor its program to different categories of partners, and if some of what Novell is doing sounds similar to Microsoft’s current and forthcoming partner efforts, that’s no accident-the recently appointed Hale says he’s taken lessons from Microsoft into his new gig.

More of the same in Sys-Con, which has just published:

• Porting UNIX Applications to SUSE Linux Enterprise 11
• Porting .NET Applications to SUSE Linux Enterprise 11

This vicinity between Novell and Microsoft makes it hard not to become suspicious. Are any more announcements imminent? █

“[The partnership with Microsoft is] going very well insofar as we originally agreed to co-operate on three distinct projects and now we’re working on nine projects and there’s a good list of 19 other projects that we plan to co-operate on.”

–Ron Hovsepian, Novell CEO

Direct link

Summary: If Oracle tried this before, why would anything change?

IN ORDER to keep our stories sufficiently unique, we did not bother writing much about Oracle and Sun. Other publications did this to the point of fatiguing readers.

Having watched this deal closely for a week (and discussed it endlessly in IRC), one issue worth bringing up is Oracle’s path of destruction against MySQL. They bought companies/projects that MySQL depended on. Observers must not forget this. They essentially bought some trouble and disruption for a competitor, proving that ‘free’ (unregulated) markets hardly work. It’s a fantasy that permits (if not invites) corporate abuse and/or harassment.

So what can be concluded with respect to Oracle’s plans for MySQL? They really deserve the benefit of the doubt, but people who are closest to the project (like Monty) should know better than all of us. Unfortunately, they are pessimistic.

No matter if MySQL forked, neglected by Oracle or who knows what, the project is likely to suffer from what Oracle did. Who benefits? Oracle of course, despite being the owner of MySQL.

The matter of fact is that MySQL gets disrupted, but Sun took the first hit at it by losing key staff. As John Dvorak put it:

The elephant in the room is MySQL. Exactly why Sun ever wanted to “own” an open source database manager is beyond me, and apparently beyond the open source community that only tolerated the situation because it had to.

From a perspective in Information Week:

If the MySQL team decides to scatter because Oracle doesn’t look like the kind of place where they want to work, I don’t blame them. And I’ll blame Oracle for wrecking a perfectly good product.

From the community manager of OpenSUSE:

So what’s going to happen to all this R&D? “So far, Oracle has been fairly quiet about their intentions regarding Sun’s open-source projects,” OpenSUSE Community Manager and former Linux Foundation evangelist Joe “Zonker” Brockmeier of Novell wrote eWEEK via e-mail.

And finally, says the SFLC quite dramatically, “fork well: it could be the last, best hope for community.”

I have faced with much trepidation the news of Oracle’s looming purchase of Sun. Oracle has never shown any interest in community development, particularly in the database area. They are the largest proprietary database vendor on the planet, and they probably have very simple plans for MySQL: kill it.

That’s why I read with relief this post by Monty (co-founder of the MySQL project) this week, wherein Monty plans (and encourages others, too) to put their full force behind a MySQL “fork” that will be centered outside of Oracle.

Monty is undoubtedly correct when he says “I don’t think that anyone can own an open source project; the projects are defined by the de-facto project leaders and the developers that are working on the project.” and that “[w]ith Oracle now owning MySQL, I think that the need for an independent true Open Source entity for MySQL is even bigger than ever before.”

Could the company’s core people rebuild MySQL AB under a different banner outside Oracle? The MySQL trademark was sold to Sun and now it’s Oracle’s, but brand recognition can be re-obtained. Most of the code is GPLv2-licensed, but unfortunately not all of it because of extensions. This just comes to show why that business model which a few people call “open core” (or whatever) is utterly pointless and dangerous.

Oracle is not foolish though. If former employees of MySQL (some of whom have considerable capital because of the sale to Sun) regroup as an independent company and steal the engineers from Oracle, then Oracle loses. So Oracle won’t allow this to happen. But how hard will Oracle try to improve MySQL? And why does it constantly avoid bringing up the subject (until very recently)? █

Summary: The trailblazing route away from Mono seems clearer thanks to GNote

A NEW Free software project called GNote has received a lot of deserved attention recently [1, 2]. It rescues GNOME from some of the unhealthy Mono dependency it has developed (Tomboy) and it comes at a good time because Señor de Icaza is running a series of posts that he calls “Embrace and Extend.NET” (his friends and colleagues at Microsoft sure would be proud). In the German press by the way, an article titled “Novell in coopetition with Microsoft” presents the words of Philippe Desmaison from Novell. It was published a few days ago and it confirms what a reader of ours has just called “the Novell-Microsoft vision.”

“GNote is GPLv3-licensed and nothing in its development involves Microsoft or Novell.”In order to prevent Novell from hijacking (‘embracing’) GNU/Linux using its own software which is ‘licensed’ by Microsoft, namely Mono, more projects like GNote are needed and apparently they are coming. The Mono proponents are unhappy to see their projects ported out of Mono and they miserably cling onto misunderstandings about copyright assignment.

GNote is GPLv3-licensed and nothing in its development involves Microsoft or Novell. Tomboy might not like this competition (or co-opetition, as Ray Noorda would have called it), but if Tomboy is Mono dependent and the licence is unattractive, then the project is bound to be forked. That’s just what Free software is about; it enables the community to take over in case it feels dissatisfied with the direction a project is taking.

If anyone is looking for a fast-growing project to contribute to, this may be it. GNOME is used by tens of millions of people and many are candidate users of GNote. The project just needs more contributors (in case Johan Sørensen welcomes them), promotion and support in order to gain momentum and leapfrog its Mono-based counterpart, Tomboy. It could, as a matter of fact, even replace Tomboy in default GNOME desktops and thus eliminate the heavy and controversial Mono stack.

The initiator of GNote is already working on an f-spot replacement too, so there may be a pattern here — a pattern of rewriting Mono applications in languages that are more appropriate and make use — as well as distribution — considerably safer (especially after the TomTom case). GPLv3 is the icing on the cake because it defangs patent aggressors. █

According to two independent sources, namely The New York Times and Bloomberg, an IBM takeover is likely to come shortly (SJVN seems to believe in a Monday announcement). This would mean that IBM becomes the benevolent dictator behind GPL-licensed Java and also the owner of OpenOffice.org, which it might as well merge with Lotus Symphony. As for MySQL, IBM has already got some database software, but as a former investor in MySQL, it is likely to find room for more.

“Sun’s products are not at risk.”IBM too has come to the realisation that money is to be made from services and hardware, so digital scarcity where duplication is possible (e.g. software) has had its shelf life expire, much like software patents to an extent. It’s the same when it comes to book publishers, newspapers, and other industries where duplication is possible, so its inhibition is a moot fight that can never be won. One can die trying.

Novell’s War on OpenOffice.org

Sun’s products are not at risk. “If IBM doesn’t invest similarly to Sun, people will likely fork,” says Jose X. The trouble that may arise is that forks are coming from Microsoft or its GPL slave, Novell. Go-OO[XML] is just one such example [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]. “That’s just a fork,” says Jose, “to add Microsoft’s embracing into it… [they] can do that to any product out there… will do that to any FOSS product that gains traction.”

Microsoft has already used Novell to harm ODF, which Sun and IBM promote.

Novell’s War on Java

Novell will never admit this, but it harms Java by promoting its direct rival. This is just one type of harm. Another is the patent trap which Mono has become, as Jose explained in this LinuxToday comment that cites private E-mails from Microsoft.

LinuxToday’s Managing Editor wrote a short essay which discusses this endless controversy because it keeps coming up in that Web site. The crowd which opposes Mono by far outweighs that which defends its existence.

Opinions on whether Mono is dangerous, and on whether it should be avoided or accepted fly thick and fast. If you’re bored with the whole deal feel free to go read something else, but I suspect that the controversy is going to grow as more Linux distributions, such as Ubuntu, ship with Mono applications by default.

To quote a couple more comments from LinuxToday, one says that “the controversy just won’t quit. Microsoft has a lot of chum and other bait. Their house in the middle of the forest is made up of lots of types of candy. No matter how many times we shun their advances, they keep coming back, each time coming from a different angle.”

“It is worth emphasising that Java is still the leading choice among programmers, as measured in several different terms or criteria.”Microsoft has already tried to 'extend' (or ‘fork’) Java and it failed badly, also for legal reasons. So what it is doing right now is substituting Java with .NET using Mono, which can be thought of as the equivalent of early attempts to derail Java. It is worth emphasising that Java is still the leading choice among programmers, as measured in several different terms or criteria. And as Microsoft’s CEO said, it’s all about “developers, developers, developers, developers.”

To quote one last comment from LinuxToday, “After the TomTom affair, the patent threat hidden in Mono must be considered much more seriously than it has been before. There’s no reason why Microsoft would not try and cash from their .Net patents the same way they have been doing with their FAT patents. At the moment they are probably just waiting for Mono to gain a significant userbase, when more people have been locked in they’ll come. As the TomTom case has shown, it doesn’t really matter whether their patent claims are actually valid or not. Most people will simply bow and pay rather than undertaking a very long and expensive legal journey.” █

‘We had some painful experiences with C and C++, and when Microsoft came out with .NET, we said, “Yes! That is what we want.”‘

–Miguel de Icaza

“Every line of code that is written to our standards is a small victory; every line of code that is written to any other standard, is a small defeat. Total victory [...] is the universal adoption of our standards by developers, as this is an important step towards total victory for Microsoft itself: “A computer on every desk and in every home, running Microsoft software.””

–Microsoft, internal document [PDF]

NOVELL IS A LARGE company with many different teams. Only a small portion of Novell (maybe about 10%) is directly associated with free/open source software and there are many who are stuck in between, including those who capitalise on what Novell labels “mixed-source” [1, 2, 3, 4]. Apart from those who build Free software (Greg Kroah-Hartman comes to mind, although there are downsides) and those who build hybrid software at Novell, there are those whose task seems to be to contaminate GNU/Linux with Microsoft’s intellectual monopolies, which only Novell is permitted to share (with paying customers). Miguel de Icaza is a prime suspect because he is helping Microsoft fight Free software while at the same type harming several companies that compete against Microsoft. He advances Microsoft APIs that are a trap.

Neil McAllister, who writes for IDG [1, 2], has defended Mono in a new column that they put in Slashdot’s front page. What gives?

Miguel de Icaza is himself something of a controversial figure these days. He’s a heavyweight among open-source developers, yet he works for Novell, the company that soured the Linux community by signing a patent-licensing agreement with Microsoft. Worst of all, he seems to have all but dedicated himself to projects related to Mono — in other words, to copying Microsoft technologies.

Yes, that is precisely what he is doing with Microsoft assisting his every step. Why would Microsoft help? Because it makes GNU/Linux stronger? Of course not.

Corporations help themselves, they don’t promote or support betterment of their competitors. As Microsoft's internal presentations indicate (required training to staff), “We are here to help MICROSOFT.”

So how does Mono harm Free software? It’s possible classify the issues as follows:

• Control. Mono is inclined to evolve along the path of .NET, which gives Microsoft great control over its competitor/s (c.f. API wars mythology).
• Dependency. Whereas many applications that mimic functionality can be interchanged easily, Mono resides beneath multiple applications, so its removal or change would have a cascading effect.
• Software patents. We have it from the mouths of multiple Microsoft seniors (some public statements and some private which antitrust litigation exposed) that patents are part of the control mechanism.
• Java/Sun. As hostile as Sun may have been towards GNU/Linux in the past, it is muchly required these days for its good work on projects like Java and OpenOffice.org. By wooing developers away from Java, Microsoft hopes to starve Sun along with its contributions to Free software.
• Latch. Mono brings with it a raft of other technologies that permit Microsoft to control developers and control the Web (i.e. access to data). Moonlight is one example of this.
• DRM. The war around de facto DRM standards is no secret because antitrust exhibits exist that shed bright light on it. Mono empowers .NET, which in turn enables and facilitates more widespread Windows DRM (denial of access to media).
• Security. Mono inherits architectural issues not only from .NET but from Windows as well.
• Philosophy. We are aware of GNU/Linux developers who are disguised by technological assimilation to a company that committed many crimes (the criticism of Microsoft has nothing to do with scale but mostly with behaviour). This repels and sometimes discourages development, not just casual use.
• Novell. Copyrights and trademarks are to be owned by Novell; principal Mono-based projects are sponsored by Novell too. It would not have become a serious concern had Novell not expressed its commitment to Microsoft, to "IP peace of mind" (i.e. software patents as a selling point), even to OOXML. Mono gives Novell great control (leverage) over the desktop and its direction.

There are more points and we covered some of them last year.

Mono’s impact can transcend GNU/Linux. It’s an API war, not just a platform war. Novell is a privileged party. To whit:

“There is a substantive effort in open source to bring such an implementation of .Net to market, known as Mono and being driven by Novell, and one of the attributes of the agreement we made with Novell is that the intellectual property associated with that is available to Novell customers.”

–Bob Muglia, Microsoft President

Novell employees are doing the same type of thing to OpenOffice.org [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. Rather than going strongly in defense of Sun’s Java, Novell is going against it. It also goes head-to-head against Sun’s OpenOffice.org with its Microsoft-esque fork, Go-OOXML. They are still stirring things up to generate dirt which harms the OpenOffice.org brand.

A second thing is what I think could be called the Too Many Evangelists syndrome. The way Michael [Meeks of Novell] put it, the major stumpers for Linux, like Alan Cox or Linus Tovalds, are themselves programmers. “With OpenOffice, the exact opposite is typically the case. Most the leads have had intangible contributions, and I think that’s a big part of the problem with OpenOffice in terms of attracting developers — that there are so many people who are not developers who are also very eager to tell everyone what to do.” The code base isn’t even the real issue, in his purview: every project has a potentially messy, outsized code base.

This has already been refuted. Novell is good at having its employees turn to their supposedly ‘personal’ blogs where they slam Microsoft’s competitors, including Java. █

Picture by SubSonica

Quite a few people were unhappy with what Novell had done. And yes, Michael Meeks cannot magically disassociate himself from Novell and use the “I’m just a hacker” defence (ironically enough, Meeks has obtained software patents, which he filed with Novell). As critics of the cannibalistic approach taken by Novell, we decided to approach other people who are affected, merely reaching out for their opinion.

We had the opportunity to do an interview with one of the better-known OpenOffice.org people and — just to clarify in advance — it ought to be stated that:

1. He does not work for Sun
2. He’s an independent OpenOffice.org contributor (lead of the native-language confederation of OpenOffice.org: http://projects.openoffice.org/native-lang.html )
3. His view are solely his

BN: As a bit of introduction, please tell us about yourself and your latest activities.

Charles-H. Schulz: My name is Charles-H. Schulz, I’m French and I live in Paris. I’ve been contributing to OpenOffice.org for over eight years now, and I started doing so around the launch of the 1.0 release. I am presently lead of the Native-Language Confederation of OpenOffice.org, which is the category of worldwide communities localizing and providing support, documentation, QA and marketing in languages other than English. I recently got involved in the ODF-at-WWW project that is a fantastic place in OpenOffice.org where you can really work on bringing OpenOffice.org to the next level and that includes, among other things, the Web.

I’m a founding parter of Ars Aperta (www.arsaperta.com) — a small, independent consultancy in the fields of corporate strategy and management related to FOSS and Open Standards.

I’m also working with FFII, and the Digital Standards Organisation (aka Digistan), of which I’m a founding member.

BN: How receptive has Sun been to contributions from the outside, based on your experience?

CS: I think this deserves both a simple and a complex answer. The simple answer is that Sun has built a fully open source — even Free Software — project though OpenOffice.org. By this I mean that contributions, code contributions among others are tested and integrated in the software we release. The source code is out there, the binaries as well, development process is done by collaboration through mailing lists and wiki, CVS (and now SVN).

“…independent contributors outnumber Sun engineers by 10 to 1 inside the QA project.”Going more into details, Sun has the technical leadership in the OpenOffice.org project. I personally don’t have a problem with that. What this means is that sometimes, patches are refused on purely technical merit. Whether those decisions are technically debatable might perhaps be the case sometimes. But generally speaking there is no problem. It is — I believe — quite easy to find both corporate and independent contributors who submitted patches, code or anything you can find in the way of contributions who were able to do so without any difficulty, provided they were following the guidelines and that their contributions were technically acceptable. That being said, OpenOffice.org has a very, very complex code base. This in turn causes a problem that is often overlooked: you need to study the code and the architecture, and thus devote a significant amount of your time doing so before efficiently contributing to OpenOffice.org. That’s why we always find it hard to recruit engineering resources: you don’t contribute code with your left foot when you’re patching OpenOffice.org. But I agree that everything should be done in order to lower the barriers of participation to our project.

BN: What role does QA play in the lifecycle of OOo development?

CS: Since we’re developing an end-user software suite we cannot tolerate leaving our software at a low level of quality. Of course, there are always bugs and we have ramped up our QA teams and resources significantly over time. QA gets to register the builds, test them at various levels according to the development, localization and QA processes. It also approves and decides whether the builds should be released or not. So to answer your question directly: QA and the QA project play a central role in our development and release process. By the way, it should perhaps be noted that independent contributors outnumber Sun engineers by 10 to 1 inside the QA project.

BN: Would you classify Go-OO as a branch or a fork?

CS: Both. I would have rather liked to answer: a branch, mostly, but some recent developments about Go-OO have obviously changed this situation. What should perhaps be reminded is that Go-OO is a Web site that hosts a concurrent build system to the one existing on the OpenOffice.org web site, called “ooo-build”. This build system has been around for ages. In fact, it’s been used by many Linux distributions that found it more convenient for various reasons (basically, the builds were optimized for Linux).

“That furiously looks like someone is ready to fork by diverting and duplicating development resources from the original project.”At the same time, this build system was also used (even by Sun) to test new patches. The common conception here is that while the OpenOffice.org -Sun- build system (simply called “vanilla” for convenience purposes) is sometimes more conservative in that it does not integrate all the patches that fast. The reason for that is simple: QA. The ooo-build does not really test the patches it integrates, while the vanilla build system does. In short, the ooo-build is faster and easier to use, but produces builds that crash more often and have more bugs. You can experience that if you use any *Suse distribution or Ubuntu. Most of the other distributions have gradually stopped using it, precisely because of a certain lack of reliability that was experienced. The OpenOffice.org project now provides OpenOffice.org packages in .rpm, .deb and .tgz formats. We are also looking to improve our packaging on Linux: While straightforward anywhere else, the OpenOffice.org installation is still complex for an inexperienced end-user on Linux.

But the ooo-build has its own relevance and its own use. In this sense, it was a branch for a long time, and there was a widely-held view among the OpenOffice.org community that its existence was actually helpful.

The way you transition from a Web site with a separate build system to a fork is in fact quite easy. And what is only needed is the will for those Web site owners to decide to create a fork. At this stage, we can still keep a status quo, make sure we work out on any technical issues we can to have the two kinds of builds produced compatibly (that means mostly directly upgradeable from one another) and there, there will not be a fork, mainly a branch. Unfortunately go-oo has turned from an “annex” web site where several specific resources were available to a development platform parallel to what exists on OpenOffice.org: mailing lists, patches, builds, etc. That furiously looks like someone is ready to fork by diverting and duplicating development resources from the original project.

BN: Would you feel more comfortable if it was a project like Debian that deviated and managed a derivative of OOo?

CS: Anyone has the right to fork. It’s Free and Open Source Software anyway. But I don’t think a fork is a solution as it does all but adding up resources. Rather, it divides them, duplicates efforts and confuses users. There is worse stuff: in our case, I don’t think that the forker would have the necessary resources to maintain the development efforts and have a coherent roadmap. At this stage, I would even be curious to know how bug squashing and issue management would be properly handled. As an example, I wonder how some of the large deployments of this particular flavour of OpenOffice.org would react if they were told that their own feedback was going to a fork of OpenOffice.org.

There is another couple of things that are of importance to me. Go-OO, if we are to believe its credentials, belongs to Novell. Now it is worth pointing out that at no point in the history of OpenOffice.org we ever got anything in the way of an official statement about Novell. That means that this is a silent fork. There is, if that is the intent of this company, no word, no declaration, nothing that basically says: “we feel we’re doing a better job than you do” or “ we feel we’re being unfairly treated”. That is something I find odd. The second element of importance is that we should get some sorts of governance structure and charter by Novell. You don’t send your code in the wild and not asking yourself some questions. I know that OpenOffice.org was fiercely criticized by some people employed by Novell for having a copyright assignment, something Novell often demands in its own sponsored projects. But this legal vagueness of sorts is a bit odd: whom does your builds belong to? What happens in case of a legal problem? Is there a code steward? You don’t need to be a consultant to ask those questions. And so far we have no answer.

BN: What role has the Novell-implemented OOXML translator played in allowing Microsoft’s plot against ODF to carry on?

CS: Common work on OOXML and a translator was part of the Novell and MS agreement, as far as we know. Having played a role in the OOXML standardization “adventure”, Novell was being constantly taken as an example of “another open source implementation” of OOXML. Sometimes, as it was the case in Mexico we had Novell employees, such as Miguel de Icaza, sitting on the Mexican standards organization and strongly advocating for OOXML to be standardized. To me it looks like Novell has been vassalized and under the influence of Microsoft to the point where they had to defend the indefensible. Now, I was not born yesterday, and I know that in theory as well as in practice, corporations’ primary role is to generate revenue. Hence you will find several corporations out there who will help FOSS with the right hand and promote the exact opposite with the left. Novell strikes me as different: it blurs the lines, puts a little bit of this in a little bit of that, calls a cat a dog and delivers software that is open source with conditions.

BN: What role, if any, do you believe Novell/Microsoft patents play here? What about Sun?

CS: It’s very hard to tell. My personal view is that Microsoft does not have many patents and that most them are low quality assets. In short, when Microsoft makes claims about owning some significant amount of IP inside Linux for instance, it spreads FUD, and does just this. Anything further directly coming from Redmond would be very unlikely, because they have nothing. In short, it’s “all hat no cattle” as they say in Texas. But they keep on applying pressure and make extravagant claims about their supposed ownership of every bit of open source code out there. I am in favour of full disclosure. Open Source code is, well, open source. It’s out there. Anyone can grab it, freely modify and redistribute it. Proprietary code? I’m sure we would find some code blurbs that could turn out to be funnier than Easter eggs.

I have read, reread, and read again the Novell/Microsoft agreement. I think it’s not clear whether this is an outright violation of the GPL in spirit or a legal flaw that has been exploited in it. But it surely changed the strategy of Novell in a way that poses a certain number of threats to FOSS users. It is also easy to notice that Novell’s behaviour changed inside the OpenOffice.org community right after that agreement.

BN: Going forward, how do you suggest that the projects target their main competitor, Microsoft Office, rather than one another?

CS: First, remember that Novell acquired both Suse and Ximian. The Ximian team is still working inside Novell, and it looks like the Ximian business model got ultimately translated inside Novell’s own strategy. Basically, when it comes to its open source offerings, Novell implements the Ximian strategy of taking the code, branching it, repackaging it and generating revenue from it. The way Ximian was doing it was a bit problematic, as it was not really beneficial to the communities it was deriving the code from and the value proposition to their customers wasn’t clear either. I guess it’s not my business, but such a mindset has partly led us to where we are today.

“We want to take OpenOffice.org to the next level, because we don’t use office suites the same way were using them five years ago.”At this stage, I don’t see any plans -nor any relevance- for the OpenOffice.org project to target go-oo. It just doesn’t make any sense: what would be talking about? Different patches? I don’t think the market even cares about that, I don’t think it’s even an audible message. I know that some people send messages out there, “my build is better than yours, I don’t like your community”, but these same people should think: does it really benefit customers?

In regards to Microsoft Office, which is the true competitor to OpenOffice.org, our value proposition is clear: we are a full-featured office suite that brings its users the benefits of true open standards, quality, stability and Free Software. We want to take OpenOffice.org to the next level, because we don’t use office suites the same way were using them five years ago. So we will increasingly interact with the Internet and on an online level, becoming the hub for creative writing, design and office work for everyone. That’s what we stand for, and we will remain true to our mission and to our soul. █

We haven’t the time (nor the desire) to do a full rebuttal right now, but a few points are worth making:

• Byfield repeatedly uses the term “anti-Novell lobby” to daemonise critics, but he never bothers to name them or to link to these critics. He wants to present his own version (or rendition) of their voice without giving readers the opportunity to interpret or judge for themselves. Over at OStatic, Sam Dean went on and deleted (censored) a polite and informative comment from me, which was about 30-40 lines in length. It explained what Novell was doing with Go-OO[XML].
• Regarding patents, Byfield writes: “And considering that OOXML is now an ISO standard — no matter what dirty tricks might have made it one — the idea that it, at least, could now be used in patent violation cases seems logically inconsistent.” Byfield may not understand patents and the OSP from Microsoft, which does not elude RAND. Being an ISO standard does not prevent patents from being an issue. As always, there is also disregard for more idealogical considerations, which passively endorses corruption.

There are many more points worth making, but we lack the time to address them.

The author has a long track record of defending Novell and that, by association, means badmouthing “Boycott Novell”. Frustration is probably not a factor here, but let’s remember that Byfield mostly writes for Linux.com, which is no longer publishing articles (for now). That can’t be good news to him because that’s how he makes a living. █

“There is nothing more that can be done. Everything we do is now available to licensees as well.”

–Horacio Gutierrez, Microsoft’s Imaginary Property Officer

WHILST one person pushes Novell's Mono into Ubuntu, another lobbies to push Novell’s fork [1, 2, 3, 4] of OpenOffice.org into Ubuntu. Why? We wrote about this phony controversy earlier.

I was considering filing a bug for package request or creating a spec
for Go-Ooo.org for inclusion in Ubuntu, or possibly as a replacement
for OpenOffice.org vanilla. Start-up time is faster and feature set
is expanded.

There seems to be some contention between the world in general and Sun
over OOo; people have forked or threatened to fork the project several
times, and Go-OOo seems to be the most active as far as I can tell.
I’m not sure where this will lead in the future– possibly to a
stagnating OOo from Sun and then to a completely different office
suite, or possibly to a new fork, or possibly to Go-OOo, or possibly
to some improvement in community view and/or management of Sun’s OOo–
but I think the current political atmosphere and the availability of a
more featureful fork warrants some investigation.

Has anyone else tried this thing? I’m curious to know any opinions
(political and technical, but please if you must pick one than go more
technical than political) on the software, as well as any “better” or
“more active” forks out there, or other viable alternatives entirely.

The followup states:

Aaaand some more googling around brings up claims that the version in
Ubuntu’s repositories -is- Go-oo …

https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/openoffice.org/+question/14965

That threw me, because Go-oo purports to not be Sun branded, and
Ubuntu’s OOo splash screen uses Sun’s branding last I checked…

Ah well. The question still stands.

It’s important not to give Novell control of the office suite in Ubuntu. Novell already has virtual control of many applications in Ubuntu (through Mono, on which they are built) and Mark Shuttleworth does not respond to known risks, despite the fact that Groklaw's editor, for example, says: “What Shuttleworth may not understand is that a patent troll can be a proxy for someone else who does have something to lose.”

To an extent, Mono is a questionable first step because it 'wraps' many vital applications with an underlying layer whose evolution Microsoft pretty much controls (.NET is a model for Mono to follow) and legal terms are volatile.

“What if Novell was acquired? What if it was a hostile takeover?”One must remember that Microsoft need not necessarily sue as it can apply the “it’s too similar” [1, 2] argument (like SCO with UNIX versus Linux) to openly accuse Linux users/vendors of “stealing” Microsoft’s “innovations” without providing appropriate “compensation”. Evidence is less of an issue this way because less work is required to produce some, even if the evidence is largely perceptual.

It must never be forgotten that Microsoft continues paying Novell a lot of money (100 million dollar this year, depending on how one views it). Novell’s Linux business is still just a fragment of its overall picture (less than 20%) and Novell is operating at a considerable loss, so it very much depends on those payments and any strategic lifts it can receive from Microsoft.

Should we trust Novell? Short term? Long term? What if Novell was acquired? What if it was a hostile takeover?

On the other hand we have Sun. It’s no saint, but those who defend Novell typically resort to just exaggerating the issues with Sun simply because they find themselves unable to defend some of Microsoft & Novell’s shameless actions. Let’s remember how Novell marketed itself by offering "IP peace of mind" (for SUSE)?

Microsoft will try to put Novell in (greater) control of GNU/Linux distributions because Novell plays by Microsoft’s rules, namely software patents, Microsoft protocols/APIs and so on and so forth. This is dangerous and Jose_X explained why, independently expressing a similar point of view:

Sun is no angel, but in this particular battle of “evil” corporations (Sun vs Novell rivalry), they are the one offering checks on the biggest threat to FOSS by far (on Monopolysoft), and they aren’t doing too bad of a job with OO.o, either. Keep perspective, people. Let MicroScrooge spend real monopoly money. Give free help to other Office suites if not to OO.o (if you want to contribute to such software/community). If you don’t like Java, OO.o, Sun, etc, there are alternatives less influenced by Monopolysoft than what Novell produces.

Imagine Microsoft losing their huge leverage and huge MSOffice market! Free OO.o is a real threat. Neutralize it? Allow Microsoft to leverage it? Not a chance. Avoid Monopolysoft’s embrace and extensions. Petition Novell to dump their “partner”. They should be competing against Microsoft and not with them. Novell can play the same game Sun is playing by opening up Netware and beefing up their services. [One of evil Sun's saving graces is OO.o and Java to the extent these really do help free Linux/FOSS and/or dent Monopolysoft's levers and revenues.]

It all boils down to trust. A community divided against itself is the best thing Microsoft could hope for. It is the best thing Novell’s ally could hope for. It is the best thing Novell’s big funding source could hope for. It wants infighting and it wants to have a hand on the spigot of patches, even if only an intermediately does this trick. At least one journalist has described Novell as the role player who commits GPL code 'on behalf' of Microsoft, or for their own benefit.

“A community divided against itself is the best thing Microsoft could hope for.”As stated earlier on, we urge everyone to go to the go-oo Web site and read the first sentence. It’s all about OpenXML [sic] (OOXML) and VBA. Microsoft understands that by controlling mindshare and standards — usually de facto ones — it can win the war. Why else have Microsoft bloggers begun promoting Moonlight and — to a lesser extent — Mono too? Everyone ought to know that Robert Scoble, a former Microsoft evangelist, once wrote: “I saw that internally inside Microsoft many times when I was told to stay away from supporting Mono in public. They reserve the right to sue.”

Is OpenOffice.org without flaws? Of course not. But better the small devil whom we know than an ally of the Big Devil, who competes head-to-head with OpenOffice/StarOffice and has billions of dollars at stake. Office is one of the few Microsoft products that are actually profitable and by far the most profitable.

This is just the beginning of Novell & Microsoft, whose relationship gradually grows. Here are a couple of statements made in 2008. Ron Hovsepian, Novell’s CEO, said that their partnership with Microsoft continued to expand and more recently he said that “[the partnership with Microsoft is] going very well insofar as we originally agreed to co-operate on three distinct projects and now we’re working on nine projects and there’s a good list of 19 other projects that we plan to co-operate on.”

One’s trust in Novell must never be seen as totally separable from trust in its partner, which gets closer to it as time goes by. █

“I have lost my sleep and peace of mind for last two months over these distasteful activities by Microsoft.”

–Professor Deepak Phatak

SEVERAL Web sites accentuate issues of disagreement which are related to OpenOffice.org. Here is just one new example. They are using old news [1, 2, 3] and sometimes promote Novell’s fork the software [1, 2, 3, 4].

“It’s the same with GNOME and KDE; mutual damage helps nobody but the outsider, in this case Microsoft.”Infighting that’s led by Microsoft is an issue that we covered before, using examples. Those who look at Microsoft's "TE" material will find that causing ‘civil wars’ is one of their key strategies (finding sources of friction, then stirring things up), so by funding Novell and enabling/having them fork and insult OpenOffice.org they distract their competitors, who will fight among themselves rather than against Microsoft Office. It’s the same with GNOME and KDE; mutual damage helps nobody but the outsider, in this case Microsoft.

So where is it all coming from? Well, it mostly comes from Novell and it successfully penetrates and deceives some reporters, who fail to see the full picture:

And about this “we, the media” thing you brought up: Meeks has a conflict of interest that you don’t do a particularly good job of pointing out. If he works for Novell and Novell is in bed with MSFT, why should we simply take him at his word without questioning whether he has any vested interest one way or the other as to the corporate “sponsor(s)” of OpenOffice? Does this relationship have anything to do at all with Sun’s “difficulty”? As a managing editor of a news outlet, this is something I’d take my team to task for failing point out in reporting. By “we, the media” you’d better mean you and the mouse in your hand.

It would be interesting if Novell tried to seize control of other Free software in the future. CUPS, for example, belongs to Apple now, but that’s a wholly separate story. █

EARLY REVIEWS of OpenSUSE 11.1 were mixed, but the more recent ones were slightly better. There are several types that we rarely include here as that would be perceived as an ‘attack’ on a ‘community’ (never mind if OpenSUSE is truly controlled by Novell). To give just one example of OpenSUSE disappointments, there is this one guy who tried it before finalisation (GrandMastering):

…I sold my soul to openSUSE and then I stole it back…

I don’t know if it is the right place…
But I just want to renew my appreciation to Ubuntu…

I wanted to try something different, so I installed openSUSE 11…
It was a mess… shortly after the installation I could not update, because the update engine freezed up…
My viedo card was not recognized… so I installed the driver from the official site… It took me 3 hours to make it work..
And so on…

More interestingly, this Vista-themed blog claims that the OpenSUSE 11.1 Live CD can damage hardware. Is this true? Can anybody verify or falsify?

If you want to run the openSUSE Live CD, you must think about it twice. Because a critical mistake can ruin your PC. There is a configuration file “/etc/sysconfig/clock”, who sets the Hardware clock when the PC is rebooted or halts. The trouble is that some old motherboards do not update correctly (or the opeSUSE’s code is wrong). This “default” configuration can ruin the hardware and affect to other systems.

Meanwhile, someone in Digg has submitted old news that's a Novell attack on OpenOffice.org, but the modified headline is ugly. “The future of Open Office.org is at risk,” says the title and it reached the front page. It’s important never to allow Microsoft/Novell to destroy OpenOffice by taking control or momentum away from Sun to promote .NET and OOXML (with patents) at the expense of Java and ODF. That’s just what they want to achieve with the fork, Go-OO[XML][1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. Microsoft is once again controlling its biggest rivals via Novell. Other sites are well aware of this problem.

The issue with Go-OO is that it is badly influenced by Novell. In the name of interoperability, the dirty M$ technologies are infused to it by them. On the other hand, Sun’s OpenOffice is a heavily branded one.

We strongly advise people not to approach Go-OO[OOXML] or SUSE. Only this way Novell might get the message and reform its behaviour. █

Background

For Microsoft to provoke or to cause infighting is not something new [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. As the father of MINIX put it at the time (just a couple of years ago):

“A couple of years ago this guy called Ken Brown wrote a book saying that Linus stole Linux from me… It later came out that Microsoft had paid him to do this…”

–Andrew S Tanenbaum

As Microsoft’s top secret presentation reveals:

“Gathering intelligence on enemy activities is critical to the success of the Slog. We need to know who their allies are and what differences exist between them and their allies (there are always sources of tension between allies), so that we can find ways to split ‘em apart. Reading the trade press, lurking on newsgroups, attending conferences, and (above all) talking to ISVs is essential to gathering this intelligence.”

The emphasis in red is ours. This is from Microsoft’s own mouth (in obligatory training seminars).

Promoting by Demotion

We turn our attention to Novell’s fork [1, 2, 3, 4] of a Sun Microsystems crown jewel, OpenOffice.org. It’s bad enough that Novell does this to incorporate Java-hostile, Microsoft-serving technologies like Mono into its fork, but the press that accompanies this merely ridicules OpenOffice.org, thus helping Novell and Microsoft.

Go-OO: a fork is sometimes a pitchfork

Worth taking a glance at is this new Linux.com article about Go-OO (we don't trust Linux.com too much). It contains what seems like a promotional pitch. Not so long ago, Linux.com promoted the proprietary SoftMaker by dismissing OpenOffice.org as well.

Go-OO includes enhancements and functions that haven’t been accepted by Sun, and that may never be, because of licensing, business, or other reasons.

Low blow there.

Here is the first comment:

Since it’s Novell behind this move, I wonder if this is really an improvement or an attempt to get mono code integrated into OO.o
If so, no one with a functioning brain is wise to touch it. I don’t have much respect for Sun, but even less for the games Novell is playing on MS’ behalf.

Here is another comment among very many (they created some sort of a Sun/Novell flamewar):

The go-ooo fork of OpenOffice.org is very much a bleeding edge developers’ version, which has not been through the full QA process run by the OpenOffice.org folks. Reporting go-ooo bugs is a good way of winding up people on the genuine OpenOffice.org support forums

As has been stated above, open-source purists might also worry about go-ooo’s origins in Novell, with their close links to Microsoft (and getting closer every day).

I’m amazed why so many otherwise sane distros continue to ship go-ooo in preference to genuine OpenOffice.org.

“This is a classic Microsoft action. Divide your enemies (not that I’d call Novell an enemy to Microsoft). It divides the community,” says one of our readers. “Microsoft would be happy with something that echoes the Unix wars.”

Instead of OpenOffice.org fighting Microsoft Office, part of what remains here is Novell fighting Sun and OpenOffice.org. In the same vein, it has been said that Novell is now targeting Red Hat instead of Windows.

For what it’s worth, Boycott Novell never intends to aggravate or to divide. It points out areas where the friction exists. It’s companies (i.e. managers) that instruct programmers who do the damage for a paycheck. Why has Novell decided to focus on .NET, for example? They routinely use money and favouritism to hurt Freedom. █

Yesterday we wrote to mention very briefly Novell’s “attack” (not our word) on Red Hat. Given the people involved [1, 2], this should not be surprising.

In the press release, what does Novell mean by “third-party Linux distribution”? Is there now a distinction between Novell SUSE and some “third parties”, which is an insulting term?

Novell today announced the availability of a new subscription and support program designed to aid customers making the transition from their existing third-party Linux* distribution to SUSE(R) Linux Enterprise Server. The SUSE Linux Enterprise Server Subscription with Expanded Support program includes a three-year subscription to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server that provides technical support for a customer’s existing Linux deployments for up to two years while they make the transition to SUSE Linux Enterprise.

“Third parties” are mentioned again further down in the press release:

The new program is in response to growing customer demand for help as they make the strategic decision to transition their data center Linux infrastructure from existing third-party distributions, such as Red Hat* Enterprise Linux and CentOS, to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.

At the bottom it says:

Novell and SUSE are registered trademarks of Novell Inc. in the U.S. and other countries. *All third-party trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

What do they mean by third parties? That it’s merely a compromise? That it’s “unsupported” (another derogatory term)? That it’s inferior and foreign? It’s a very xenophobic term, as we explained before. We have already criticised the term "non-proprietary", which we saw repeated in [1, 2, 3]. It can sometimes be used when striving to suggest that there is something wrong with Free(dom) software and that it is “non appropriate”. Wording is always important due to mental and verbal connotations.

One of our regular trolls (a site heckler) accused us yesterday of inappropriately calling Novell’s latest tactics “predatory”. Well, when one GNU/Linux vendor antagonises another in this way (by cutting its revenue stream while still exploiting its product), then it’s bound to be called an attack, even in the ‘mainstream’ press. From IDG (NetworkWorld) comes the headline:

Novell lays out Red Hat attack plan

Matt Asay put a sarcastic spin on it, saying that “Novell builds bridges…from Red Hat to SUSE.” Wasn’t Novell supposed to accommodate migrations to GNU/Linux from other platforms, through so-called bridges to other platforms?

I continue to believe the real revenue opportunity for Novell (and Red Hat) is Unix replacements, not internecine competition between Linux vendors.

Why doesn't Novell compete against Microsoft Windows anymore? Could it be because Novell is now working with (and for) Microsoft? Well, not in the literal sense.

Novell is not only pulling such tricks against Red Hat. It’s doing something similar to Sun Microsystems, as well. Novell forked OpenOffice.org [1, 2] and Sam Dean unfortunately brings attention to this dangerous fork and promotes it with the headline “Go-oo: A Lighter, Faster OpenOffice, With Extras.”

Go-oo is a fork of OpenOffice version 2.4, for Windows and Linux.

“Be aware of this,” says longtime LinuxToday reader GreyGeek.

from a comment:

“by masoman on Nov. 11, 2008

Your readers need to be aware that the go-oo fork of OpenOffice.org is very much a bleeding edge developers’ version, which has not been through the full QA process run by the OpenOffice.org folks. It’s also paid for indirectly by Microsoft licence fees, through Microsoft’s funding of Novell (the home of go-oo).”

As another commenter said:
“Maybe I’m off-base, but it looks to me like MS-infected OOo. It’s coming from Novell (which I refuse to use), and is paid for by MS-license fees.

Sure, I’m paranoid, but I’m not touching this….”

We have already shown how Novell insults OpenOffice.org in order to market its own fork of the popular software and grab customers away from Sun. Shouldn’t Novell try to appeal more to Microsoft Office users (by far the majority), preferably by working together with Sun, as opposed to stomping it (along with ODF)?

Speaking of liaising with Microsoft, check out this new story from Ken.

In an effort to help proliferate the Linux Desktop, HeliOS Solutions has contacted a number of Big Box stores and smaller businesses throughout the Austin Metro Area and asked them if we could set up professional and attractive displays for Linux Live CD’s.

The response has been surprisingly positive…and I’m talking about some really BIG big box stores.

However, one of those stores asked me to meet with them and discuss some of the anticipated ramifications of them doing so.

They are concerned about Microsoft engaging them legally.

They are worried about Steve Ballmer coming in with a figurative ball bat and legally demolishing the displays….and then suing them amidst the rubble.

Is legal intimidation doing its harms now? If it’s related to patents, then remember company helped fuel this. Novell of course. █