Bonum Certa Men Certa

Free Software Exploitation: Novell's Poor Business Strategy

"It is in Novell's interest - selfish interest, I will admit - to advance-remove whatever those inhibitors be to the advancement of Linux and open source."

--John Dragoon, Novell



N

ovell loves free software. Free -- as in "free lunch". It receives a lot of code without paying for it. It's free labour, so what's not to like? Novell admits that it is not willing to disengage from its proprietary past [1, 2, 3, 4]. It's not prepared to say goodbye to its roots. It's planning to just mix it all up; you know, just like its business partner, Microsoft. Novell takes pride in it, too. While the following article requires a subscription to read in full, the opening paragraph is too telling.

NOVELL HAS thrived by being able to offer customers a mixture of open source and proprietary software, even though it attracted the wrath of the open source community by doing a deal with Microsoft, according to chief executive Ron Hovsepian.


It would be interesting to read the remainder of this text and absorb the main messages of this article as a whole. Nevertheless, the Web site insists on living in the 'Golden Ages' when people always paid for the news. Groklaw, in the mean time, writes about Sun and NetApp, and therein also lies an important observation.

Releasing code is not all there is to it. Ethics, fairness, honesty -- it's the FOSS culture, and it's the value add. Any company that tries to play by the old rules undercuts that advantage. It's the one thing Microsoft can't embrace, extend, extinguish. They can't even offer Brand X, because we'd all laugh. It would, in any case, take decades to live down their rep. So players in this space need to morph that part of their way of doing business also. If you don't believe me, look at Oracle's play to try to undercut Red Hat. Blech. And Red Hat is doing fine, thanks. It always will, unless it starts importing proprietary tactics into the mix. The community is made up of brainiacs, you know. They know what is happening, and there are no secrets, long-term. So I would hope that all companies wanting to make use of openness as a model will scrape the proprietary crud off of them before they enter. We want to keep things clean in here.


That is exactly why Novell became a black sheep. Add to this the possibility that Novell is just IBM's attempt to dilute the values of GNU/Linux and elevate intellectual monopolies at their expense. Novell has already admitted its selfishness and Sun appears to have acted in a similar fashion. Microsoft's talk about open source is too obviously a self-serving (for Windows) affair.

Such companies, which brought themselves up in a non-Free software environment, cannot properly reform themselves; they hardly seem willing, partly due to shareholders' expectation and analysts' targets.

Sadly enough, a forceful community project, OpenSUSE, will continues to suffer from Novell's and Microsoft's shadows. Just watch how Sam Varghese puts it:

OpenSUSE 11: nice kid, bad custodians



[...]

More good news: you can still remove Mono, the infamous attempt to clone Microsoft's .NET development environment, and all its insidious dependencies without breaking anything in OpenSUSE. I had to remove a total of 39 files, both applications and libraries, to get it off my system. Anyone who is planning long-term usage of the distribution would be well advised to remove Mono as it could lead to problems down the line.

OpenSUSE has all the applications that an average desktop user needs. It is a distribution with an excellent pedigree. If only it had better custodians.


OpenSUSE could be today's market leader in the Linux world had it not been for that blasted Microsoft deal and unnecessary affiliation with Novell. For the time being, some people who experiment with OpenSUSE just run back to Ubuntu. Here are two new examples:

1. Fun with openSUSE 11.0

I’m told that because of Novell/Microsoft ties, OpenOffice as shipped with openSUSE has more features than the stock OO.o shipped with Ubuntu. I need to investigate this further to have an opinion on the matter (although I can say right away that I don’t have an issue with the politics of this deal …).

I still have a lot of investigating to do, however, in the interim I think that if I had to choose between Ubuntu and openSUSE, Ubuntu would be the winner - familiarity is a key factor.


2. My OpenSuse 11.0 experience. OpenSuse or Ubuntu? I have made my choice.

I will make a list of the things which I didn't like about it.

1. The smoothness of ubuntu is still lacking in opensuse-11.0

2. On my Dell Latitude D600, the visual effects were not running as smooth as ubuntu.

3. I would agree that they tried to make the interface look better and more user friendly but it still doesn't come close to Ubuntu.

4. I didn't find much online support for the new release of openSuse-11.0

5. The start-up/loading time was at least 10 to 15 seconds more than Ubuntu.

6. I checked the system monitor and the programs were running slower in openSuse.


So he moved back to Ubuntu at the end. To many people, OpenSUSE just doesn't shout out "Freedom" anymore. Not with Microsoft's and Novell's presence anyway. Mind mind users; developers appear could be affected similarly. OpenSUSE would reach a broader community of developers, drive-by patche offerers and bug reporters if it became Novell-independent (it's currently just an illusion). People prefer contributing to projects, not corporations that liaise with a sworn enemy of libre software.

Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) Has Un-cancelled the Best People, Just in Time for the Big 4-0
Mr. Oliva should have been there all along (since 2019)
Most "Modern" Technology Makes You Slower and Dumber
Because proprietary software makes you worse off
"What Comes After Free Software?" Wrongly Insinuates We've Reached the Goal (Prison is Not the Goal)
The oil tycoons use similar tactics against environmentalists, giving them fake "wins"
Making More Work Space
I learned the hard way that less is more in circumstances where more means distraction
MAHA is a Lie, Public Officials Never Valued Citizens' Health (They Still Value Private Businesses, Their Sponsors)
Reject demagogues
New Techrights Turns 2
Today starts the third year of the SSG-based Techrights
What Scares Them the Most is Independent News Sites That They Cannot Control and Censor
Wikileaks was a good example of this
If You Don't Control Your Online Platform, Then Someone Else is Controlling You
be (or become) independent
 
Links 23/09/2025: Japan Limits Uses of Skinnerboxes ('Smartphones') With Toxic "Apps", Fentanylware (TikTok) Tapped by "MAGAts"
Links for the day
Brett Wilson LLP Has Just Been Sued (by Their Own Clients!)
Vladimir and Alla Yanpolsky sued Brett Wilson LLP in BL-2025-001167 at the end of last week
The Complaint About Brett Wilson LLP - Part II - UK SLAPPs for Americans, SLAPPs for Profit
Brett Wilson LLP has a track record of this kind
Mayday: Optus emergency calling crisis
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 23/09/2025: Massive Data Breach, Slop Versus Productivity, and Vista 11 Update Breaks Things Again
Links for the day
Code of Censorship
Extortion is peace
Free Software Foundation (FSF) Has a New Press Kit for the Weekend After Next Weekend (40th Anniversary)
miles better than social [sic] media [sic] quips, moderated by narcissists and oil tycoons.
Microsoft Had Two Waves of Mass Layoffs This Month (That We Know of) and It'll Get Worse for Microsoft Soon
Will the axe fall again by month's end?
Gemini Links 23/09/2025: Happy Equinox, Photronic Arts, and Perception Cognition
Links for the day
Lessons We've Learned After 17 Years of American Hosting
GAFAM is "all-in" with the "Trump agenda"
Back to Normal Now, We Plan to Do More In-Depth Series (or Multi-part Stories)
Articles (or series thereof) that contain philosophy are important to us
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, September 22, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, September 22, 2025
Microsoft Media is Panicking Amid Mass Layoffs Every Month, H-1B Fees, and "Seattle’s Tech Scene in Trouble"
In "late stage Microsoft", copyleft becomes proprietary
The Next Wave of IBM/Red Hat Layoffs Being Discussed Already
Red Hat is sort of disappearing the way Tivoli did
Oracle Started This Year With Slop. Then It Stopped.
Passing fads are like this
Distros That Run on PCs Made 20 Years Ago and Don't Use Systemd
Betas for now
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Has a Policy on Racism and Sexism
In then future we'll show the misogyny and racial slurs
The Complaint About Brett Wilson LLP - Part I - Abusing British Women on Behalf of American Men Who Abuse American Women
Transparency is important to us, so we've decided to make this series
Slopwatch: Google News and the Evident Slopfarm Infestation
This is what people get about Linux when they query Google for Linux
Links 22/09/2025: Murdochs Might Join Fentanylware (TikTok) 'Investors' (Masters), United Kingdom Recognises Palestinian Statehood
Links for the day
Gemini Links 22/09/2025: Esperanto Music History and Apps For Android
Links for the day
Links 22/09/2025: More American 'Censorship' (Retaliation for Journalism), Cheeto "Might Be Losing His Race Against Time"
Links for the day
The Blob Slop
Give me more words, give me some text
The 50-Pound Note Experiment and the "War on Cash"
Britain is actually seeing a rebound in cash payments, and it's not a temporary phenomenon
Slopwatch: Blaming the Victims for Microsoft's Failures and Plagiarising Phoronix
That's what Google has been reduced to: slop and slopfarms
Links 22/09/2025: Breaches, Windows TCO, and Arrests
Links for the day
Gemini Links 22/09/2025: Rabbit Hole and DeGoogling Fairphone
Links for the day
Links 22/09/2025: Russian War Planes Invade NATO Airspace While Dihydroxyacetone Man Escalates Attack on Free Speech Because of Critics
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, September 21, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, September 21, 2025
Links 21/09/2025: "Hey Hi" (Hype) Under Fire, Fakes Identified; Tesla Burns Family
Links for the day
Google's Software is Malware and Malware in Mobile Devices
Originally posted by Rob Musial
Links 20/09/2025: Hegemony Coming to a Close, Luigi Mangione Ruled Not Terrorist
Links for the day
Gemini Links 21/09/2025: "Charlie Kirk Was a Hateful Piece of Shit" and Slop Code Attempted by Microsofter
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, September 20, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, September 20, 2025