[sllug-members]: Asking Novell what's up

[Robert Lewis]

Speaking for myself, who else, I wish to thank Marc for taking time to
send this out.

Bob

Marc Christensen wrote:
> Hey everyone,
>
> I just saw this posted on http://www.planetsuse.org/ (a good place to
> read what people inside Novell think of everything).  Ted Haeger (he
> presented on XGL/Compiz last SLLUG meeting), who hosts Novell’s
> podcast Novell Open Audio, will be doing an interview on the
> Microsoft/Novell announcement.  He's asking for listeners to provide
> questions to ask.
>
> Here's a link to his posting about the interview:
>
> http://reverendted.wordpress.com/2006/11/03/microsoft-novell-and-novell-open-audio/
>
>
> So, just as a disclaimer, I work for Novell and therefore I'm not
> going to go into much detail about my feelings.  However, I do think
> that many in the OpenSource community are painting this in the worse
> possible light.  I also knew nothing of the announcement before it was
> made and can't and don't represent Novell in anything I say here.
>
> Like I just said above, I think that the OpenSource community has
> taken this in the worse possible light before knowing the details of
> the agreement.  There's sure been a lot of jumping to conclusions
> going on and Red Hat has already started to capitalize on this
> sentiment.  Of course, it's in their best interest to make Novell,
> their competitor look as evil as possible.  As an example of things
> taken differently than their original intent, as I understand (and
> IANAL!!!), the agreement about patents and not suing each other was
> just that, an agreement not to sue each other's customers.  As I've
> heard, Novell and MS have absolutely no interest in getting anything
> out of anyone else, just in making their own customers feel OK about
> running each other company's software in a mixed environment. 
> Personally I don't think it should have been emphasized much in the
> press releases.
>
> No one outside (and most people inside, like me) know much about the
> agreement yet.  I'm sure the details of the announcement will be made
> more clear in the coming days.  I really can't comment in any official
> capacity on what Novell does or how I feel about Microsoft since I
> work for Novell but I will say that the picture being painted inside
> the OSS community is completely opposite from what has been said so
> far about the intent of the agreement within Novell.  They understand
> the GPL and they *do* understand *where* the product they are basing
> their future on comes from.  They have no intention to disrupt,
> inhibit or destroy Linux, the OSS movement, the GPL or any other FOSS
> license.
>
> I have no idea what Microsoft's intentions are but they have customers
> who want to and are running Linux.  I imagine that they want to get
> support contracts ($$) for those customers since they *will* be
> running Linux regardless of what Microsoft wants them to run.
>
> So, that being said, the Novell Open Audio interview should be a good
> one to participate in if you have a question to ask.  It should be
> educational to listen to as well.  Again, I don't and won't represent
> Novell and therefore will pretty much try my best to abstain from
> participating in threads regarding this matter any further but I am
> interested in seeing what people think and say so have at it...
>
> -- 
> Marc Christensen
> http://blog.mecworks.com
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