07.08.07
Novell’s Management Hurts Opensuse’s Image (Corrected)
Occasionally I come across Opensuse reviews where non-technical aspects of the product affect the overall impression. Linspire and Xandros now suffer from the same problem. It’s an image problem. Novell signed a deal with its aggressive, long-time rival. It also made mockery of Free software in the process.
Shane and I have said dozens of times before that at BoycottNovell.com we try to appreciate the developers’ work (Opensuse). We only blame the executives for taking the money and allowing their developers to get a bad name. I was among those in the opensuse community at the time. I felt betrayed.
To repeat old facts, the developers were not part of the this decision, with the exception of a few prominent ones such as Miguel de Icaza, who is a VP. It was all done secretly. Jeremy Allison knew about it and he protested against the sneaky, 90th-minute inclusion of patent elements [update: see clarifications/corrections]. These elements were not part of the original deal, which had been negotiated for months.
As for Nat Friedman and de Icaza, their story remains a mystery. It is believed that they are among the drivers in this deal. As you may already know, de Icaza has strong ties with Port 25 and the ‘Microsoft culture’ (he even had a job interview there). It is my opinion that he does not necessarily represent Opensuse developers as a whole, although he just might. Not all of them care for Mono (.NET), which is a patents-encumbered development technology and a controversial framework to many Linux distributors other than Novell. The validity of these patents is a different matter altogether, but only yesterday, Slashdot reminded us why it’s hard to fight for sanity.
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.
Miguel de Icaza said,
July 8, 2007 at 1:12 pm
Wow, quite the conspiracy theory you got there.
I learned about the deal the same day that Jeremy Allison learned about it. At the time all of us felt that it was not great, but it was not terrible. Jeremy’s position on this would changed in the following days, when the deal went public and as the Samba folks took a stronger position.
Your regular attacks on Mono on every forum in the world are tiresome but at least they reflect your opinion. You have now crossed into false accusations without having any evidence to support them, and that is just defamatory. You need to make a public retraction.
Miguel.
Roy Schestowitz said,
July 8, 2007 at 9:01 pm
Miguel,
Can you say with confidence that Red Hat, for example, can change its stance on Mono and include such applications in their distribution?
shane coyle said,
July 10, 2007 at 10:17 am
So, when Stafford Masie indicated that Nat and Miguel were acquired to help give Novell guidance in their embrace of Open Source and Free Software, that means that they get told of management decisions after the fact? I thought Nat and Miguel had more influence at Novell than that…
It’s never been more clear to me that Novell’s management made a "unilateral" decision to join forces with Microsoft, regardless of what the "grunts" wanted or advised.
gpl1 said,
July 10, 2007 at 1:46 pm
“You have now crossed into false accusations without having any evidence to support them, and that is just defamatory.”
I’ve heard that several times on Groklaw, too in regards to thoughts and facts on Novell and Microsoft, so thanks for outing yourself Miguel. You might want to point out why that is, when Microsoft memos themselves pointed out a few years ago that many licenses for C# and .NET are non-commercial only. You really are heading into SCO “gagging” territory here.
Ah court documents, the bane if MS the only thing that stops Microsoft from crushing everyone full stop.
I also want to thank Shayne and Roy for this wonderful site.
snowboard said,
August 21, 2007 at 8:53 am
in fact, it was interesting. I like it! P.S.: cool