11.24.06
Shuttleworth: Welcome SUSE Developers
Calls are coming from all over the community for users and developers to turn their backs on Novell. The latest entreaty is from Canonical’s Mark Shuttleworth, the folks behind the Ubuntu flavors of Debian.
If you have an interest in being part of a vibrant community that cares about keeping free software widely available and protecting the rights of people to get it free of charge, free to modify, free of murky encumbrances and “undisclosed balance sheet liabilities”, then please do join us.
Now is the time to show Novell and their shareholders the negative impact of this self-serving deal, OpenSUSE users and developers must walk out and Fork Novell. Projects should follow the lead of projects such as LiVES, who note on their download page:
Suse
LiVES no longer supports Suse, since Novell signed a deal with a certain well known company. If you are using Suse, please consider moving to another distribution.
Novell must not be supported, boycott Novell.
Update: Apparently Mr. Shuttleworth also posted his invitation to SUSE developers on the OpenSUSE mailing list, which in my opinion is somewhat tactless and certainly it is not befitting of Ubuntu’s “leader”.
Highlight: Novell was the first to acknowledge that Microsoft FUD tactics had substance. Novell then used anti-Linux FUD to market itself. 
Highlight: Xandros let Microsoft make patent claims and brag about (paid-for) OOXML support. 
Highlight: Linspire's CEO not only fell into Microsoft arms, but he also assisted the company's attack on GNU/Linux. 
Highlight: Microsoft craves pseudo (proprietary) standards and gets its way using proxies and influence which it buys. 
Highlight: The invasion into the open source world is intended to leave Linux companies neglected, due to financial incentives from Microsoft. 
Analysis: Xen, an open source hypervisor, possibly fell victim to Microsoft's aggressive (and stealthy) acquisition-by-proxy strategy.
ed neville said,
November 24, 2006 at 4:32 pm
heh, like i didn’t see that coming
Though i was expecting them to migrate to rh/fc/cent naturally…
Shuttleworth has a good business plan. I am sure the Novell developer community will migrate. They are more than likely to be frustrated at the moment with diminishing loyalty.
Stewart said,
November 28, 2006 at 8:01 am
Well I’d have to disagree.
Debian has a better “business” plan.
Mark Shuttleworth (through Ubuntu) seems content with benignly taking credit for the Debian folks hard work over the last 10+ years, whilst at the same time detracting luster of working on Debian directly.
If you are a SuSE developer who is going to switch, don’t switch to Ubuntu or it’s derivatives. Switch to Debian.
The Ubuntu folks can copy it to their hearts content once it’s in Debian, and you’ll have the satisfaction of bringing your talents to a base operating system and *ALL* it’s derivatives (Knoppix, Adamantix, Ubuntu and co, any and all other Debian derivatives, any and all future Debian derivatives).
Roy Schestowitz said,
November 28, 2006 at 10:53 am
Stewart, I agree with you to a degree. I even thought about gNewSense.