12.21.07
The More SUSE You Buy, the Richer Microsoft Gets
Novell has just released its annual report. There is a lot of information tightly compressed inside this report and it makes some good reading for the holiday. To pull just one bit of text:
Microsoft made an upfront net balancing payment to us of $108 million, and we will make ongoing payments to Microsoft totaling a minimum of $40 million over the five-year term of the agreement based on a percentage of our Open Platform Solutions and Open Enterprise Server revenues.
So, if you needed a reason to avoid Novell products, this is it. Microsoft is collecting software patent tax from Novell, just as we have known from the start. This is just an explicit acknowledgment from Novell.
The more Novell gets paid, the more Microsoft collects. █
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.
DOUGman said,
December 21, 2007 at 10:24 pm
Question: What about OpenSUSE?? Is that distro worth while? or should it be dumped as well? Given the the choice I would *most* definitely choose RedHat server products over Novell’s SLED.
I had hopes for Novell until they went and pulled this crap.
D.
Roy Schestowitz said,
December 21, 2007 at 10:39 pm
Helping OpenSUSE is indirectly helping Novell. See this older explanation.
htrztr said,
December 22, 2007 at 10:29 am
Absolute and irresponsible nonsense.
Roy, are you trying to divide the community again? Despicable enough if you continue to insult developers and, in a broader sense, everyone working on GNOME; but please, leave the community alone.
Note: comment has been flagged for arriving from a known (eet), pseudonymous, nymshifting, abusive Internet troll that posts from open proxies and relays around the world.
Victor Soliz said,
December 22, 2007 at 2:20 pm
So, you mean Novell is not rewarding MS for patent trolling ?
I notice that there’s a group of people that would like the deal to go unnoticed and blame the people that talk about it for dividing the community or being irresponsible. I must state that the non-sense is coming from you, the division nature of the Novell-MS patent deal and , the imitations that followed and Novell’s own attitude against Linux after the deal are harmful. Threatening people that go reporting the wrong doing by calling them divisive or poisonous is not going to make the deals go away.
Gnome foundation has made a mistake, I am glad that the Linux community is not a bunch of sheep that would avoid criticizing its leaders just avoid some “division” ghost.
I am not sure if your message is just some irresponsible copy paste, this blog post does not seem to have anything to do with your holy community.
Roy Schestowitz said,
December 22, 2007 at 3:10 pm
Novell is actually capitalising on it. Masie (Novell head), for example, described Microsoft FUD as a competitive advantage and Novell continues to use that as a selling point.
Last week I was told that GNOME was going to use OOXML ’support’ as a competitive advantage as well. I haven’t seen any concrete proof of this claim, but IIRC, it’s sometime that Jeff (or somebody else) said in Slashdot.
Everyone wants to be a friend of “Big Mike” (to borrow Bruce Peren’s story), then hope to receive a shiny penny in return.
Be aware that you are replying to the pseudonymous, nymshifting ‘eet’, which is patrolling Novell blogs on the face of it. I don’t think he’s astroturfing though.
arrgh said,
December 22, 2007 at 6:00 pm
Eh, the linux community is a bunch of idealistic students, once students and wished-were-still students. The people that make Linux popular in the “real non-student” world are corporations. Wake up, smell the greenbacks!
Victor Soliz said,
December 23, 2007 at 9:24 pm
All right, that’s just an empty and baseless ad hominem.
Open source and free software methods have been tested on the real world with success multiple time, to call them idealistic stuff is not serious talking now in 2007 - soon to be 2008.