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Question of the Day: Have you ever been to an airshow?
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mancombseepgood
Executive Member
What patents
Where does Novell get off selling Linux...
I would like some opinions on what the significance of the whole deal is... how does a firm like M$ get to sell whats not theirs...
oh... i forgot... the story of M$
Where does Novell get off selling Linux...
I would like some opinions on what the significance of the whole deal is... how does a firm like M$ get to sell whats not theirs...
oh... i forgot... the story of M$
I really really do not see the problem with this. I think the Linux community in its usual infantile manner has overreacted without grounding itself in the facts.
Firstly this is just a patent deal, nobody is selling their soul. All that this says is that if M$ finds a patent that is infringed by Linux, then Novell and SUSE users would not have compensate M$ for that patent infringement and vice-versa.
This also says that M$ will sell SUSE Linux to its current Windows customers as their preferred Linux distribution. M$ will also work to make SUSE and Windows more interoperable. So basically Novell has aquired a sales partner and a technical assistant for interoperability issues.
What exactly is the issue here? Whose soul has been sold to the devil? This is the first step towards a future where Windows and Linux work together, it's inevitable.
The Linux community needs to understand this, and not react to anything from M$ like a rabid dog foaming at the mouth.
This is good for M$ and even better for SUSE Linux. Congratulations Novell, while the rest of the Linux community is arguing over BitKeeper, GPL3 and Tivo you have taken a great stride towards the future and also helped your business immensly.
Now, back to installing the new IBurst driver on SUSE 10...
Firstly this is just a patent deal, nobody is selling their soul. All that this says is that if M$ finds a patent that is infringed by Linux, then Novell and SUSE users would not have compensate M$ for that patent infringement and vice-versa.
This also says that M$ will sell SUSE Linux to its current Windows customers as their preferred Linux distribution. M$ will also work to make SUSE and Windows more interoperable. So basically Novell has aquired a sales partner and a technical assistant for interoperability issues.
What exactly is the issue here? Whose soul has been sold to the devil? This is the first step towards a future where Windows and Linux work together, it's inevitable.
The Linux community needs to understand this, and not react to anything from M$ like a rabid dog foaming at the mouth.
This is good for M$ and even better for SUSE Linux. Congratulations Novell, while the rest of the Linux community is arguing over BitKeeper, GPL3 and Tivo you have taken a great stride towards the future and also helped your business immensly.
Now, back to installing the new IBurst driver on SUSE 10...
eremos
Senior Member
The question is .. do you think that, for example, a better version of Samba for Linux will come out of this, GPL'd as before? Or do you think they will develop some closed source thing that will only work on SUSE?
If the latter, it's bad for Linux because it goes against all the principles of free software. Here instead we have Novell exploiting everything that Linux has given them, and not giving anything back.
Geddit?
SUSE/Novell has given their closed source YAST configuration tool (widely acknowledged as the best configuration tool) to the community under the GPL before. Novell also has open sourced parts (all?) of its Netware protocols etc to allow better Linux interoperability. Under Novell you now have OPENSUSE, which you never had before and an easy way to install the "free" version of SUSE in ISO format which you never had before (it was FTP hell).
Now lets consider their biggest competitor in the Linux space, Redhat. What is Redhat giving or has given to the community? Much much less than SUSE/Novell. Redhat basically assembles a Linux distro and sells support for it. It no longer provides a supported desktop version of Linux - Fedora is not an officially supported distribution. It no longer provides a server edition of Linux for the community, RHEL is not free and you are getting milked for support - just speak to Oracle, so in my and a lot of people minds it is living off the open source community.
Now coming back to SUSE/Novell, SUSE will not re-develop SAMBA, nor will it attempt to close source SAMBA (GPL licenced) or any other Linux products. The first option would be a strategic blunder and the second would cause it to be sued into oblivion. So we can safely say that the irrational fear that SUSE is going to abuse or sellout Linux is unfounded.
What I expect SUSE to do is as follows, it will be calling M$ for support with SAMBA. Something like hey M$ listen, SAMBA does not want to mount a Vista share, why? M$ will help debug the code and provide the solution. SUSE will take the M$ solution and tell its SAMBA developer to create a patch and submit it to the SAMBA developers. Those SAMBA developers will make the final call on whether or not to include the patch in the source tree.
That's how I see the future, one where we embrace interoperablility. It's either that or we go back to sniffing packets...
It's still a deal with the devil.and when you deal with the devil you get burn't! Linux is and should stay open and free!
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mancombseepgood
Executive Member
So does this mean that M$ can deliberately do what they want with the code and not be sued?
No, it just means that the chances of you getting sued by M$ because they found out your SUSE Linux distro "infringed" one of their patents went down from 0.0000000000000000001% to 0%
The GPL is still the GPL, that licence still stands and nobody in the world can own or close the code.
This deal is a sign of increasing M$ maturity when dealing with Linux, and hey lets face it, it took them a while and they have a long way to go.
The Linux community needs to follow this lead and better it, just like they do with their software.
mancombseepgood
Executive Member
Maybe it's a sign that uncle bill has left
eremos
Senior Member
Of course not, that would be illegal
Or alternatively, MS will make SUSE developers sign an NDA, give them the CIFS spec and let them write a closed-source Samba replacement.
Enterprises wouldn't wish to run Samba because it's not officially supported, so they would run Suse as the only way to get the supported implementation.
Thereby Novell drowns out the other distributions, gets nice and cosy with MS and never has to give back to the community again.
That's all I meant. I don't suffer from the irrational fear that MS will steal Samba code and close-source it.
I doubt you do, but some others seem to...
Anyway I do not think that SUSE will go that route. These will lose all credibility in the Linux community and that will impact negatively on their Linux business. Also, when CIO's/CTO's realise that they have effectively been locked down into a specific version of Linux from a specific vendor, that will bring back bad Windows memories.
I think (and hope) that this deal will be good for the Linux community.
IMO a storm in the teacups of SUSE fans.
I'm sticking with Gentoo Linux and M$ can do whatever it wants to, but I will get my way & there will [eventually] be no open or closed Windoze with which to inter-operate on my LAN!
I'm sticking with Gentoo Linux and M$ can do whatever it wants to, but I will get my way & there will [eventually] be no open or closed Windoze with which to inter-operate on my LAN!
mancombseepgood
Executive Member
Hopefully you won't be left alone when the rest of the linux community start sucking up to M$ for more "open" interaction with windoze