And, now Novell has their own "celebrity" spokesperson in a brilliant campaign that is sure to bring awareness of Groupwise to a whole new generation, I’m sure.
Enjoy.
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Here is a great write-up aptly entitled "nobody reads this stuff" on the Patent Covenant aspect of the Microvell deal, with a little input from Novell’s perspective, however clouded it may be.
The article provides further analysis of the covenant to Novell customers provided by Microsoft, ranging from simple things like misspelling Novell and some syntactical errors, to serious and seemingly unanswerable questions (either due to non-disclosure aspects of the deal, or due to lack of knowledge by the parties involved, no one can tell for sure) such as what exactly is covered by the covenant, and what is not?
The covenant makes distinctions between "covered" and "clone" products, even though the definition of a "clone product" is never provided. The author approached Novell for some assistance with this term, but all we have is Justin Steinman’s best guess:
Justin Steinman: “Two examples of what might be considered a clone product might be OpenOffice.org and Samba, to be specific. Both of those are open source technologies that mimic technology offered by Microsoft.”
But no, you don’t get a list of what is and isn’t a clone product, and Steinman says, “All the end customer really cares about is if they are using anything that is part of the SUSE Linux Enterprise platform they have a covenant not to sue from Microsoft.”
You have a Covenant, so you’re all squared away, right? But the Covenant says it covers Covered Products, and Covered Products doesn’t include Clone Products, and you don’t get a copy of the definition of Clone Products. Covered or not? You’re just as mystified about the answer to “Will Microsoft sue me?” as you were before.
So, what do you think a "clone product" is, and are there any in SUSE or your favorite distro? And, given Mr. Ballmer’s increased hostility and public statements ever since the deal, are you more or less uneasy about their disposition than before Novell approached Microsoft to make this deal on your behalf?
Update: Just wanted to add in this quote from Steve Ballmer at the press conference announcing the deal on November 2, as another instance of Ballmer’s threats (his response to the second-to-last question, scroll way down):
Steve Ballmer: Novell is actually just a proxy for its customers, and it’s only for its customers. This does not apply to any forms of Linux other than Novell’s SUSE Linux. And if people want to have patent peace and interoperability, they’ll look at Novell’s SUSE Linux. If they make other choices, they have all of the compliance and intellectual property issues that are associated with that.
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Recently, Steve Ballmer confirmed the real meaning of the Microvell deal, and in doing so he reiterated Microsoft’s mantra that " open source isn’t free" – a new slogan for the anti-Linux and Free Software FUD campaign that our friends at Novell are helping them to perpetrate, again.
So, these days, it’s more interesting when Novell makes a public statement or assertion that seems to contradict their benefactors. Novell is claiming that they are realizing millions of dollars in savings from their own internal transition from proprietary software such as Microsoft Windows to Open Source solutions.
The change to open source, Anderson said, was part politics but also had a real return on investment for Novell. "We see real benefit to our bottom line. We’ve had $900,000 in expense reductions per year versus our prior desktop operating system and office applications. The number is very conservative and it’s just the desktop side of things."
Anderson explained that when the transition started in 2004, Novell was running mostly Windows and now has moved to Open Office for its desktop productivity suite. Although the mandate was to switch over inside of three months, in practice, the IT group migrated their own desktops inside of one week.
"We terminated our agreements with Microsoft and that was a substantial part of the savings." By 2005, some 54 percent of Novell’s desktop users were running Linux, she added. "We had to understand how to enable existing business applications to run on the Linux desktop," Anderson said. "We’ve got that nailed now so that’s no longer an impediment."
And, don’t forget, they’re saving even more by outsourcing their direct sales.
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Red Hat and Microsoft seem like a new couple which gets some media attention. As disturbing as this may sound, at least to some of you, it seems likely that Red Hat will have an interoperability deal with Microsoft. Such a deal would most likely exclude patents, but there are many implications to consider. What would Microsoft’s stance be? How would Novell’s case be used throughout negotiation? Would it become a bargaining chip? Of course, it’s a case of hypothetical pondering.
In any event, all we have are rumours, speculations, and the bullish words from Microsoft. Red Hat declined to comment while Mary Jo Foley reports that we ought to keep our hopes (or worries) down. Red Hat does not seem gulliable. In fact, Red Hat was among the loudest protesters among the vocal opposition to Novell. But have a look at this bizarre article:
“We are vendors in the same marketplace. We have made it clear that we would love to have a deal similar to the Novell deal in multiple respects. Microsoft would very much like to do a deal with Red Hat.”
[...]
Microsoft indicated that it sees the Novell deal as a model for a potential Red Hat partnership.
There is another piece of coverage here, but I suppose that both precede Red Hat’s response, which debunks many of the ambitious arguments made by Microsoft. Their wishful thinking that’s uttered aloud may be a way of confusing Red Hat and its customers. It could be a a game of reverse psychology.
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It is becoming clear that, with or without more deals, Microsoft will use its deal with Novell as backing for IP threats and extortion. Red Hat is aware of this and it continues to show nothing but apathy.
Microsoft and Red Hat both have acknowledged that Microsoft has tried to get Red Hat to sign an all-encompassing technology/marketing/patent deal. But Red Hat execs have been quite plain in their disinterest in a Novell-type partnership — while, at the same time, telling customers to go ahead and take Microsoft’s Linux voucher money.
I understand why Microsoft would like to get another open-source vendor or two to sign a Novell-type deal. After all, there’s nothing like the smell of FUD to get customers ready to buy Linux to reconsider the wisdom of their decision. But I am doubtful Red Hat will be the one to cave.
Our little site poll — however biased it may be due to inclinations of the reader — indicates that the large majority wishes to see no more deals like that which Novell made.
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According to Lamlaw.com, the Novell/Microsoft deal is illegal as far as intellectual property and third parties go. This is not the first time such an argument is made.
When Microsoft agreed with Novell to cross their promises not to sue customers, Microsoft (and Novell) have likely violated the law
[...]
Intentional interference is an intentional tort. When you have parties A and B in a contract and a third party “C” comes along making an agreement with A with the intent to destroy the relationship with B (or cause A to breach the agreement with B), then you have the basis for such a charge
To cite Microsoft’s take, whether it is bogus or not:
“Novell actually saw the business opportunity, because there’s so many customers who say,
‘Hey look, we don’t want problems. We don’t want any intellectual property problem or anything else. There’s just a variety of workloads where we, today, feel like we want to run Linux. Please help us Microsoft and please work with the distributors to solve this problem, don’t come try to license this individually.
So customer push drove us to where we got’”
Several month ago we mentioned Novell’s abandonment of the Hula Project. Hula was seen as a competitor to Microsoft’s Outlook/Exchange, so shortly after the deal, Novell had no desire to continue and it official dropped it like a hot potato.
We are pleased to say that a Novell-independent fork/successor of Hula has just been born. To quote an early announcement from Digg:
The Bongo project was born out of the Hula project. Bongo is a mail and calendaring application not a “groupware” solution. It is completely independent of Novell, Messaging Architects and Hula. It aims to offer a great user experience, and revive the idea that mail and calendaring are useful tools rather than burdens.
Hula may not be alone. Remember Compiz? It turns out that Beryl was set up for similar reasons. This fork, which equips Linux with ‘eye candy’, sought independence from Novell, according to this very recent message, posted to the Compiz mailing list.
One assumption is that compiz is some kind of Novell controlled project that Novell will move in whatever direction it wants. This is completely wrong. I started the project and no one at Novell has ever told me in which direction it should go.
It was worth mentioning that Beryl was born before Novell had made its deal with Microsoft. Here is a nice demo of Beryl mimicking Windows Vista.
Red Hat is addressing the use of Microvell’s coupons, so-called ‘protection money’, and even their lack of communication on the matter.
“I think that there has been a strong amount of external communication by Microsoft and Novell on this topic,” he [Red Hat CEO] said. “We certainly expect that there will be those cases where customers will consume those coupons. We’re certainly encouraging one or two customers to consume all of them, let’s get this over with.”
As Jeremy Allison told us, the patents-related part of this deal was deliberately snuck in around the 90th minute.
My guess is that the negotiations for the useful parts of the agreement (the virtualization part and the federated directory interoperability part) had, as Ron says, been going on for months and just before Novell wanted to seal the deal Microsoft turned up with “there’s just this one more thing we want you to sign…” and in desperation to get the other parts of the deal done they rushed it through.
It is rather obvious that Novell was fooled. It swallowed the bait, which was shrewdly prepared by Microsoft lawyers. To err is human, but why didn’t Novell walk out of the deal? Ron Hovsepian response was too little, too late.
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