Hopefully this doesn’t start too much of a disagreement but in the past few weeks I’ve been reading about Novell teaming up with Microsoft. I’ve read many articles and am quite confused on what will come out of this. What do you guys think? Heres a few articles:
Yes, in fact that person should take caution to ensure that are not using any the projects listed on this page.
That individual might as well stop using linux altogether.
Kinda silly to me…if at some point you don’t
agree with how things are…just leave. Same
thing I did with Red Hat long ago. Nice thing about Linux
is you can’t really get tied to any particular distro.
It’s not like you can’t compile and run somewhere else.
If you feel you are getting tied down by any particular distro, then
I think you have a case for considering a move.
superppl wrote:
> john_hudson;1871663 Wrote:
>> Anyone who is serious about boycotting Novell has to boycott Gnome, KDE
>> and lots of other Linux programs to which Novell employees have
>> contributed.
>
> Yes, in fact that person should take caution to ensure that are not
> using any the projects listed on ‘this page’
> (http://tr.opensuse.org/Novell_Supported_Projects).
> That individual might as well stop using linux altogether.
>
>
It’s funny that the one project they missed on that list is the kernel
itself via Greg Kroah-Hartman so your last sentence really applies. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Kroah-Hartman
The fact is that Roy “Crackpot” Schestowitz who runs BoycottNovell is in need of serious psychological help - I personally believe that he suffers from at least two distinct psychological conditions - one of them being antisocial personality disorder in which he seems to have taken Novell as his primary target.
I find it sad that no one has yet been able to find him any professional counseling because he’s in dire need of it.
>IBC drunk wrote:
> I knew that Novell supported many projects but I never knew that it was
> that many.
Well if Novell is basing its business on Linux and usability and stability
is important to sell a product…only makes sense they would throw money
where work is needed. Many companies are contributing to various pet
projects which in turn helps the ecosystem as a whole.
In short, while Novell is treading a dangerous line in this deal, the only loser so far in it is Microsoft. Red Hat continues to thrive. So does Novell’s Linux business. Microsoft’s Windows server business has shown no signs of slowing, either, but $340 million into its efforts to cripple Linux it has yet to demonstrate a dime’s worth of return. I used to rebuke Novell for its complicity in helping Microsoft with this deal, but I’m having second thoughts. Novell has never dampened its enthusiasm for Linux, though it has occasionally let its hunger for greater Linux revenue lead it astray in its marketing messages. People make mistakes. On the whole, however, Novell is playing Microsoft against Microsoft to its own profit, and has thus far done so with aplomb.
Since 2005, I haven’t seen anything negative coming out of the deal, except for all the bad press. On the flip side, I haven’t seen anything positive come out of it for the average Linux user either, so in all, I’d say it’s been a wash.
I’ve never understood why someone (I’m switching to first person to pretend to be this someone) would decline to download for free (as in, “It didn’t cost me one red cent!”) from a server that someone else maintains that I don’t pay anything for, with a bunch of added features since the last time I installed the software that, once again, I’m not paying for and that will read documents created by other folks products (again, not paying for this feature) and then have the gall to say that I’m doing this in order to not support Novell.
If anything, if I really wanted Novell to feel my wallet decision I’d put OpenSUSE on everything! “See, Novell, I’m using the doggie excrement out of your product and you aren’t making a dime! Nananabooboo!”
My wife always claims that I have no social understanding of anything, so maybe I’m missing some key point to why someone could possibly think that not using a free (once again, as in “free beer”) product would cause any impact whatsoever to the provider of said free product.
Maybe Chrysantine is right and such people need help. Help far beyond that which our little forum here can provide.
> On the flip side, I haven’t seen anything
> positive come out of it for the average Linux user either
Well, for one thing, it’s putting money in Novell’s pocket so they can
continue to contribute to Linux which the average Linux user has benefited
from so that’s one positive.
Didn’t Excel macros under OpenOffice happen at least partly due to this business agreement?
Of course, we can discuss who the “average Linux user” is - my definition would likely discount anyone who doesn’t use Fortran code on a regular basis.
I just used some Excel with VBA Macros in it. It stunk. I had to re-write the BASIC code so much because something as simple as “Activesheet.paste” did NOT work!
Honestly I think I’d rather have a large Linux dealer like Novell close to Microsoft to help “advise” them and keep them in some line than a more FOSS - zealous company like Red Hat that could potentially insult Microsoft enough to make them catapult chairs from Redmond!
The idea of openSUSE playing nicely with Microsoft Windows moreso than other distributions is one of the things that attracted me because between work and my wife’s computer usage, Windows is in my picture whether I like it or not.
If you can’t replace them, then you have to play with them.
I personally find the deal very benefiting to the Linux community. Just look at how many enterprise certificates Microsoft has sold for Suse. In my view Microsoft and Novell doing what they did made companies and individuals seriously look at Linux as a replacement to Microsoft. Instead of most just looking at Microsoft and apple.
The other upside was while many people were bitching about OpenOffice not opening Office 2007 files, those of us using OpenSUSE were already able to do so, thanks to the deal.
Look, in this world you can take things and not give credit to the owners of what you take. Novell and Microsoft decided to go the other way and give credit to each company for what they use of each others.
I personally see a time where microsoft will port software to linux because of this deal, because of the growing corporate users that are moving to linux.
