http://techrights.org/2008/04/21/novell-ms-channel-partner/ Free Software Sentry – watching and reporting maneuvers of those threatened by software freedom Fri, 25 Nov 2016 09:41:40 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.9.14 http://techrights.org/2008/04/21/novell-ms-channel-partner/comment-page-1/#comment-8235 Mon, 21 Apr 2008 13:01:01 +0000 http://boycottnovell.com/2008/04/21/novell-ms-channel-partner/#comment-8235 Non-proprietary!, nice attempt.
They try avoid uttering the phrase “Free Software” by all means,as they want to replace it with “just-business-friendly-OpenSource” and then redefine the rules for opennes, of course devoiding the users of the possibility of re-distributing and passing the freedoms to others, and of course adding the compulsory patent-protection fee: In practice this is a way of proprietarizing Free Software, and it is what they are attempting to do.
Remember Novell always was a closed-source company, very much as Microsoft is, and they embraced Linux -by buying an European company: SUSE Gmbh- as a last attempt at salvaging their server software product which had been almost fully cannibalized by Microsoft.
They failed to do so as fast as they wished, and instead of resisting Microsoft threats as Red Hat (which has been a Linux company from the get-go) did, they sold out for some quick and easy injection of money.
These proprietary companies now struggle to sidestep and obliterate the very concept of “Free(dom) Software” with name-calling (we, advocates of Free Software are portrated as “freetards”, “communists”, “extremists”, “zealots”, “partisans”, “idealists”, “unrealistic” etc…) and by term-omission, since for them “free” it always has the “no money” connotation (the old-business-minded type couldn’t care less about Freedom).
They want to make sure nobody escapes their patent racketeering agreement and that there is no perception on potential customers that they can get software goods without spending money.

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