Quote:
Originally Posted by microchip8
Ubuntu - got its fame due to excellent marketing, not so much due to technical superiority. That's all
....bad PR due to mother company being faggy and striking deals/patent covenants with the devil which gave bad taste in a lot of people's mouth, especially the fanatics' mouths. Still suffers from disorganization and sometimes lack of vision (ie, is virtually never the first to incorporate ground-breaking new stuff. Often Fedora does it first, then openSUSE follows) |
The deal with Microsloth (Microsoft) turned an immediate page in Novell's management history and injected a significant and vital financial return into Novell's balance sheet. The agreement also put off a potential legal conflagration which would have added a large chunk of liability to Novell's balance sheet at a dangerous time when Novell needed a shield and not a sword.
That "faggy" company saved SuSE from the fate Mandrake/Mandriva seems to be facing on a quarterly basis. That "faggy" company also has been a driving force in promoting a large number of initiatives in the Open Source world which have benefited everyone in the Linux world. The One exception might be Richard Stallman who has taken Novell off his May-Day card list. I assume Novell still sends Richard a Christmas card; which I'd bet will be returned unopened.
As for corporate wars against Microsoft. The war against Microsoft and Novell has been going on long before SuSE entered the scene. The war goes on and Novell is fighting it everyday. Novell and Microsoft are mixed up in a number of legal tangles and those fights will continue for years. If you want details on those ask the Groklaw pin-up chick for all the details. Send her a snail mail requesting a signed swimsuit shot in a court room: Include a Self Addressed Stamped Envelope and 7.50 USD for shipping and handling. I don't see any altruistic OpenSuSE proponents or Linux advocates offering to organize an effort get us all to send Novell 10.00 USD contributions to assist Novell in paying for the SCO battle or to help it
battle Microsoft. Eventually some of us assume Novell will end up on the same side as IBM, Red Hat, and the other Linux distributions when we end up facing off against Microsoft, Apple, and Berkeley. I'm sure the count down will begin once SCO is dead and gone. Then all the real fun begins.
Due to the state of chaos and confusion caused by the United States patents, intellectual property rights, and controls system we're stuck in a nasty period of uncertainty waiting for the day when Microsoft, Apple, Oracle, IBM, or Computer Associates pull the right trigger. I love to make analogies: we'll compare the SCO case to the Spanish Civil War and I'm sure there will be lawyers, historians, and politicians building careers out of researching the causes, effects, and results of Patentgeddon (World War IV). Not only is the United States Patent system in a state of kerfuffle; the entire Intellectual protection mechanism globally is in a state of chaos. Not just in North America it is an issue all over. Patentgeddon will spill all over the place. The results will bring into question the state of a number of business agreements, business relationships, and partnerships many companies have with others on a global scale. Patentgeddon will also kill off a number of organizations and I'm sure it will bring us to another period of corporate evolution, amalgamation, and streamlining of the IT industry as companies merge, some die off, and others get fragmented.
If the OpenSuSE 11.2 experience is as fun as the 11.1 experience; all of the above it will be academic because the distribution will continue to shave off it's own market share and Novell will simply become a foot note in the history of the evolution of networking and UNIX. This isn't something I'm looking forward to seeing come to fruition.
Call me one of the fanatics of hope encouraging Novell to get it's act together and push forward into battle carrying our OpenSuSE/SuSE standard to triumph!