Responding to comments on Novell-Microsoft agreement
Del.icio.usI know this agreement has raised a lot of questions in the community, particularly around legal and procedural issues. We are working on answers to those questions. We’ve posted some of those today here. We’re continuing to work on others. Some of the questions that people have raised have been with very strong language: words like “betrayal” and “crazy”. While I understand the emotion that surrounds an agreement with Microsoft, I do encourage everyone to read the FAQs. Once you are aware of the facts you will see that we have been loyal to the principles of the open source community.
Beyond legal issues, another comment concern raised has to do with the historical record of partners who’ve worked with Microsoft. Some are arguing that anyone who signs a deal with Microsoft suffers as a consequence. In addressing this issue, I need to start by reminding everyone the source of the agreement.
For Novell, the sine qua non is the marketplace and customers. Our customers have been demanding for quite some time that we develop solutions to make Linux and Windows interoperable. This is a reflection of Linux’s growing importance and frankly, we believe that this interoperability will grow Linux’s importance further.
As we prepared our first-to-market Linux implementation of XEN, suddenly there were new opportunities. The customer demand for interoperability morphed into a stronger possibility: supporting both SLES and Windows in a virtualized environment. This would help server consolidation in a mixed shop. Moreover, as we have heard from the CIO of the City of Seattle at the press conference on Thursday, it provides a new method to bring Linux applications into an all Windows shop. With the market as our driver, we approached Microsoft to create a joint solution. With all due respect to this “historical record” of companies that partnered with Microsoft, Novell’s intention is to let the marketplace and customer needs be our driver.
Moreover, as my colleague John Dragoon says, it’s important to be informed by history, but not bound by it. Novell, as well as any other company in the industry, knows how fierce a competitor Microsoft can be. We are certain that they will compete fiercely. But that is not sufficient reason not to create solutions that customers want.
November 7th, 2006 at 6:53 pm
It is becoming clear that Novell is making a huge effort at making this look like a good-faith effort on Novell’s and Microsoft’s part, and it is to be hoped that it IS one – rather than simply looking like one. It is NOT yet clear, however, whether MS’s moves in the past few months (including partnering with Novell) are in good faith, or are an attempt to subvert Novell and/or Linux in general.
I would draw your attention to the discrepancies in what Novell calls the “joint letter from novell and Microsoft”, which microsoft refers to as the “letter from novell”. More discrepancies are contained within, for example where the Novell text says “irrevocable”, the MS text says “reserves the right to revoke”.
So, good luck Novell, but let’s hope you haven’t consigned Linux to oblivion.
November 8th, 2006 at 12:14 am
Just a gut feeling but I think Novell made a mistake.
November 8th, 2006 at 3:25 am
Well, Moglen has already weighed in with his argument that if this “patent agreement” covers GPLed software, then Novell has violated the GPL.
If so, Microsoft is presumed guilty of an act of inducing Novell to commit an act of copyright infringement. Microsoft has worked hard to criminalize copyright infringement.
Of course, if Microsoft wishes not to be hoist on its own petard, and if Novell wishes not to be caught in the backfire, Novell and Microsoft might wish to publish the full text and letters, etc, of the full agreement, to some site such as slashdot. And then both parties might wish to undertake an extensive and public revision of sections found incriminating and/or offensive by the authors of the software both parties have potentially infringed the copyright of.
November 8th, 2006 at 9:59 am
Hey, Novell, when are you going to release M$ SUSE Linux? I want one…. NOT! This is all about who’s the top Linux company. You see that you can’t beat Red Hat on your own so now you make “partnerships” with the Devil himself. Remember, when you play with the Devils, the Devil doesn’t change, he changes you
Oh, well, I ditched SUSE now and installed Fedora Core instead
November 8th, 2006 at 11:14 am
Our company has used successful the SUSE products for many years now, but this deal between Novell & MS teaming up is the worst news I have heard so far. As a system admin I will propose to our company to switch over to Red Hat products.
I’m very disappointed the road Novell is taking and the lack of respect it has for its community
November 9th, 2006 at 8:57 am
As we prepared our first-to-market Linux implementation of XEN, suddenly there were new opportunities. The customer demand for interoperability morphed into a stronger possibility: supporting both SLES and Windows in a virtualized environment.
We can already do those two things – via VMware. Some technical things, mostly to do with hardware support, need to be achieved before that option becomes anywhere near viable. Xen also needs the management tools, both command line and graphical, before anything like that is contemplated as well.
I’m still not clear on how a deal between Novell and Micrsoft helps in any way.
This would help server consolidation in a mixed shop.
Yer………… People are doing that today.
…it provides a new method to bring Linux applications into an all Windows shop.
What exactly provides a method to do this? Is it some unnamed secret technology that Microsoft and Novell are going to release, or is it just an……..agreement?
With all due respect to this “historical record” of companies that partnered with Microsoft, Novell’s intention is to let the marketplace and customer needs be our driver.
History should also teach you that it never works like that. Besides which, Novell don’t exactly have the best software.
But that is not sufficient reason not to create solutions that customers want.
At the expense of Novell’s survival.
November 16th, 2006 at 10:05 pm
It seems that Steve Ballmer has stated the following at a Microsoft product conference:
“We’ve had an issue, a problem that we’ve had to confront, which is because of the way the GPL (General Public License) works, and because open-source Linux does not come from a company — Linux comes from the community — the fact that that product uses our patented intellectual property is a problem for our shareholders. We spend $7 billion a year on R&D, our shareholders expect us to protect or license or get economic benefit from our patented innovations. So how do we somehow get the appropriate economic return for our patented innovation, and how do we do interoperability. The truth is, because of the complex licensing around the GPL, we actually didn’t want to do one without the other.”
He obviously believes that Linux currently includes Microsoft patented intellectual property. In those hours of discussion on this agreement with Microsoft did you by chance get any indication what that intellectual property might be? The more we get information on this deal the worse it looks. Linux and other GPL software is not supposed to have other people’s patented intellectual property in it. It makes no sense that Novell would simply take Microsoft at their word an pay them money. What if I tell you that something in Linux violates a few of my patents… will you give me some money too? I understand wanting to protect your customer and that part of the deal I can agree with. However, if Microsoft is claiming patent infringement Novell shouldn’t be seeming to jump to agreement that there is an infrigement and should be providing as much evidence of infrigement to the community as possible. The community needs to know what materials the accusations are about. It is unacceptable that after paying $40 million the community still doesn’t know what the problem needing a fix is.
November 21st, 2006 at 12:51 pm
In response to Segedunum:
“We can already do those two things – via VMware. Some technical things, mostly to do with hardware support, need to be achieved before that option becomes anywhere near viable….”
Yes in fact VMware has the capability to manage both Linux and Windows virtual machines. The focus of our solution is truly on enterprise system management from phsyiscal to virtual and managing the inter‑dependencies between physical and virtual compute nodes.
The strength of our offering is in heterogeneous virtual machine management. The user is not tied to VMware technology and can freely choose a hypervisor layer from VMware, XEN or in fact Microsoft. In addition Novell strongly supports interoperability by driving open standards in the systems management space. This in essence, gives the customer freedom of choice in selecting virtualization technology that best suits the need while avoiding vendor lock‑in.
November 29th, 2006 at 7:23 am
I for one will never use a Novell product again. This is a huge mistake for open source and Linux and in my opinion seems to be driven by money. I cannot and will not support this and I would urge linux users to look at the many other options available. I have gone back to Ubuntu.
December 5th, 2006 at 11:33 pm
I am no end sad, Novell, to read about any collaboration with Microsoft. You know how everybody in the Linux community “likes” and trusts this company and its products. I work with SuSE Linux for the past 9 years after moving to a new place from a Unix environment, and have managed to completely replace all Windows applications I need with the corresponding Linux ones (I am not a game player). So I do not see why do you care so much about their operating system. It works just fine under VMware or XEN if you really need it, which happens more and more seldom nowdays. I believe I won’t be able to trust SuSE Linux any more if Microsoft would any way influence on its development.
December 10th, 2006 at 2:51 pm
Interesting is to see what will be the long term implications on the project Mono. There are some interesting postings on the net about what this agreement means to this particular project.
December 11th, 2006 at 10:02 am
Serge, our favorite customers are customers like you that are in a total Linux environment. The reality is that many large I/T organizations have Windows deeply entrenched and we need to address their interoperability needs. But don’t worry, Microsoft is not going to influence Suse Linux. Suse Linux will continue to be an Open Source product. We are continuing our investment in the community, and will continue to rely on the community to deliver an outstanding Linux product.
November 20th, 2009 at 2:35 am
There are much more important things to worry about. This is a small issue but you have spent some time with it so it must be important or Joe, otherwise it is a Joe **** This is technically a good thread without Jeff or Joe.