Having said that, there are a few issues with that thread and the background:

- The title sahnne used was from the linux-watch (or was it eweek, if forget) story. I think sahnne used it because he thought it would grab attention and wasn’t necessarily his point of view – of course people care about gplv3 – we’ve seen already that MS do. You could see the title as (unintentional?) flame bait that unfortunately you seem to have gone for, although your early responses were not unreasonable

- SUSE has never really been a FSF type distro (afterall, yast was proprietary before the Novell takeover). However, I and many other SUSE users – actually I’m a former SUSE user – don’t have anything against proprietary software and find RMS’s attitudes to that a little difficult to take. Of course, breaking the spirit of the licence under which you are permitted to distribute softwaer is another issue. There’s also the old FSF/KDE issues that a lot of SUSE users remember and so RMS and the FSF are not that well loved (validly or invalidly).

- After the Novell-MS deal happened there was a lot of trolling (from the point of view of many existing suse forum users) on the suse forums about the deal, therefore people there are very sensitive to this issue and it’s one you need to handle with tact (Roy has a point on this attitude, see the opensuse wiki at http://en.opensuse.org/FAQ:Novell-MS#I_won.27t_use_openSUSE_since_I_don.27t_want_to_support_Novell for some breathtaking doublethink).

For the MS deal, and the incompetence of Novell in handling suse, I’m now on debian and fedora.

The error returned was:
Sorry, you are not permitted to use this board
- unquote -

http://suseforums.net/

The deal was also a betrayal by Novell of its Open Source roots. Something it will recover from, unless it does something else as stupid, like letting MS buy them outright ..

By “root” he did not mean “since establishment”. Novell described itself as a company with open source ambitions for 3 years (watch the bottom part of their press releases). When it shook hands with Microsoft it introduced the “mixed source” phrase, which it has repeated again and again since then.

Also see: http://boycottnovell.com/2006/11/23/novell-mark-kent/ (on proprietary roots)

Right, they made a collective decision to move from Netware to Linux but are not an Open Source company. Rest of troll bait ignored.

“Novell has joined the Open Source Development Labs (OSDL)”

http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS5014211806.html

“In August 2003, Novell acquired Ximian, a developer of open source Linux applications (Evolution, Red Carpet and Mono). This acquisition signaled Novell’s plans to move its collective product set onto a Linux kernel”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novell#Linux_for_Business

“The company began in Provo, Utah as Novell Data Systems Inc. in 1979″
(…)
“In August 2003, Novell acquired Ximian”
“In November 2003, Novell acquired SUSE”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novell

So as you can see, Novell has been “open” just for few years. It has _no_ open source roots.
And I will say it again, IMHO kastorff has right, and you were behaving really bad, hence bad behave makes all your arguments pointless (when you play like child/troll they will treat you like child/troll).

‘SUSE (pronounced IPA: [suzə], properly (in German), “ZOO-za”, loosely “SOO-sa” [1] in English) is a major retail Linux distribution, produced in Germany and owned by Novell, Inc. SUSE is also a founding member of the Desktop Linux Consortium’

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suse

- quote -
from: kastorff
Re:Moderated Indefinitely, Yesterday, 05:56 PM

You simply don’t see reality as it is, do you?

First, there aren’t any “self appointed moderators” on the board. Every staff member is specially selected by existing staff, and has my complete support.

Second, you got where we are by your behavior, no one else’s. Stop blaming others and take a good look at yourself. You’re alone in your estimation of the situation…no one else believes you’re getting anything other than what you deserve. You misquote, ridicule, and post poorly supported (by the facts) rhetoric and then pretend you are mistreated when others hold you accountable for that. No one baits you; they’re just sick and tired of your posts.

So back off, let things rest for a bit, behave with some good, non-provocative posts, and we’ll happily restore your community rights. Or don’t, and keep bothering me about staff decisions, and get yourself banned. Your call.
- unquote -

Not allowed to post on a public forum, not allowed to msg privately. You know something, I think they are scared that Novell employees are reading this and might pick up unsound opinion.

See what i was responding to, my only mistake was in responding to the baiting from the administrators of that forum.

Take a look at the time line, notice I said ‘ I hereby declare this thread closed’ on Aug 2 2007, 10:13 AM. That was me agreeing to stop posting on that particular thread. Immediately following were responses’ from two admins yet again distorting what i said. Wilson Phillips accuses me of baiting and kastorff takes the opportunity to accuse the FSF of a quasi-religious approach.

On Aug 04 elsewhere decides to jump in. Remember I wanted to stop posting on Aug 02. Now when I respond to three separate messages directed to me – I GET moderated and THREATENED with permanent banning.

Remember they could have posted me private and not on a public discussion board. Now who exactly is doing the baiting. It’s patently obvious that free speech don’t apply on OpenSUSE forum, especially in regards to the GPL 3. It would be intersting to find out who exactly is setting the agenda there, and what topics exactly are verboten.
——-

Seeing as I am being censored over there I’ll lay out my position here. The MS/Novell deal is good for Novell as it get acknowledgment from MS that Novell Linux is a serious contender in corporate IT space and not just a hobbiest system made by some geeks in they bedroom, as fester and CO are given to describe it.

What was bad about the deal was it was made in secret and the terms of the covenant are essentially meaningless. It isn’t as if MS was ever going to sue the end users. What were the lawyers thinking of in signing away their rights to their own code. Remember the covenant don’t say that MS can’t ever sue Novell, and as usual there is a get-out-clause that says MS can cancel/revise the deal at any time. Not much of a covenant then is it. Where the lawyers asleep or on drugs when they signed this.

Lastly we come to how this affects OpenSUSE, well MS has so kindly introduced a new paragraph for the OpenSUSE license. You can work on YOUR own code as long as, you agree that it gets folded back to Novell, you don’t own your own code, YOU can’t make any money out of it and you cannot work on it in company time. Not much of a covenant then is it.

The deal was also a betrayal by Novell of its Open Source roots. Something it will recover from, unless it does something else as stupid, like letting MS buy them outright ..

http://www.suseforums.net/index.php?showtopic=36502&st=20&p=190522&#entry190522

alone justfies Emacsuser getting banned (so he’s lucky only to have got himself moderated). Up to that point he’d done nothing wrong, but from there it’s all downhill, such as:

http://www.suseforums.net/index.php?s=eca097ec160fba0d14fd64e5ecbddc6c&showtopic=36502&view=findpost&p=190619

Then, attacking a moderator on a forum anywhere is likely to be abd move. You’d better be very sure of your ground before you do that.

I was not implying that an “official” statement was made in this thread. I was only wishing to show that Novell has presence in such forums and that OpenSUSE users do not back the FSF on this one.