Novell

A collection of 55 posts

GPLv3

Microsoft takes on the free world

Some thought it was inevitable, while other thought it would never happen.  From a recent Fortune article: Free software is great, and corporate America loves it. It's often high-quality stuff that can be downloaded free off the Internet and then copied at will. It's versatile

Linux

Novell confirms that patent deal gave it access to Microsoft IP

Matthew Aslett has some more information from Novell on the patent agreement with Microsoft.  From the article: Last week I noted that a new explanation had emerged as to why Novell entered into its patent agreement with Microsoft: because Novell engineers “required sanctioned access to Microsoft’s code in order

GPL

Torvalds 'pretty pleased' about new GPL 3 draft

The 3rd draft of the GPLv3 has been released, and it's great to see that Linus is "pretty pleased" with it.  Despite what same are saying, I think that Linus' opinion on this matters quite a bit.  He started one of the most successful GPL

Fedora

Enterprise Apps Header Red Hat Plans Linux Desktop Offering 'for the Masses'

Speaking of Linux on the Desktop, it looks like Red Hat is getting back into the Desktop Linux market.  From the article: Red Hat is planning a packaged Linux desktop solution that it hopes will push its Linux desktop offering to a far broader audience than exists for its current

Linux

Novell's Link to the Microsoft TCO Linux Message

Stephen illustrates (via this post) something that I've tried to put into words several times on my blog.  His picture does a really good job of getting the idea across though.  From the post: Red Hat began messaging at least a year ago around the use of Red

Linux

Yes, sometimes Linux costs more than Windows

While poorly timed for Novell, I'd agree with this post.  Sometimes Linux may indeed cost more than Windows.  Putting aside that everything isn't about cost, look at the parameters involved here: f you look at the details of the announcement you’ll see that the reason

Linux

Hopefully my last Novell Microsoft Agreement Post; or Nobody reads this stuff

I wasn't going to post any more about the Novell Microsoft Agreement.  I don't have anything else to add and really what else can be said.  Don has posted on this issue after Novell contacted him as a result of him comparing the deal to "

Linux

Ballmer repeats threats against Linux

Novell execs must cringe when they see things like this: Steve Ballmer has reissued Microsoft's patent threat against Linux, warning open-source vendors that they must respect his company's intellectual property. In a no-nonsense presentation to New York financial analysts last week, Microsoft's

Linux

Red Hat joins Microsoft interop initiative

A post in CBR points out that Red Hat has joined Microsoft's Interop Vendor Alliance.  As the article points out though, this seems to be related to JBoss only (remember that JBoss was already working directly with Microsoft on interoperability).  There is no mention of any other Red

Linux

Free Linux Driver Development Questions and Answers

A quick follow up to this post.  It's wonderful to see that Greg's Linux driver announcement got so many responses that he had to write a FAQ.  I'd like to highlight one point from the FAQ: Q: This is a lame publicity stunt, Linux

Google

Novell-Microsoft pact not about interoperability, says Open Source leader

Don Marti recently posted an outstanding interview with Jeremy Allison.  One item covered in the article was rumors that some companies have been paying Microsoft for patent licensing to cover their use of Open Source, even previous to the recent Novell deal.  From the interview: LinuxWorld: One of the persistent

Linux

It's all in the wording

I wonder if any hardware manufacturer will take Greg up on his offer of Free Linux Driver Development.  From the post: Yes, that's right, the Linux kernel community is offering all companies free Linux driver development. No longer do you have to suffer through all of the different

Linux

Red Hat CEO on Microsoft, Novell customers

The Red Hat stock continues to increase (RHT up almost 30% on the month), mostly as a result of beating Wall Street expectations last week.  During the earnings call with analysts, Red Hat CEO Matthew Szulik was asked about Microsoft's announcement of three joint customers with Novell this

Linux

Novell Linux Certificates

One of the parts of the Novell/Microsoft deal that hasn't been getting much press is the 70,000 SLES certificates that Microsoft purchased for distribution.  I was a bit surprised to see that 16,000 of them have already been doled out.  Three major companies have even

Linux

Novell: Hubert Mantel Returns, Jeremy Allison Resigns

Quite a bit going on at Novell over the last couple days.  We have Hubert Mantel returning and Jeremy Allison resigning.  For those that don't remember, Hubert is one of the Suse founders and had resigned from Novell a little over a year ago, saying: ""Too

Linux

Stallman Comments on Legality of Microsoft Novell Patent Agreement

As promised, here's an update on the official word regarding the FSF's opinion on the legality of the patent portion of the recent Microsoft Novell deal. However, there's another way of using software patents to threaten the users which we have just seen an

Linux

Novell Boosts OpenOffice.org and Microsoft Office Interoperability

The previous post covered an article about Open Standards that ended with the following: When Gutierrez announced his resignation as Massachusetts CIO in early October, he cited the legislature’s failure to pass a bond bill that included funding for key IT projects. Since the bill also would have funded

Linux

Q&A: Novell CEO gives behind-the-scenes account of deal with Microsoft

In a previous post I wondered what was on the mind of the execs at Novell after the recent Microsoft agreement.  Computerworld has just posted a Q&A with CEO Ron Hovsepian.  From the article: How did the agreement with Microsoft come to pass? Who approached whom, and when?

Linux

Credit Suisse Writes Off Novell

A quick follow up on Novell.  While I expected them to take a bit of punishment from the Open Source community for the recent patent deal some previous coverage, I didn't expect them to take any punishment from Wall Street.  If anything, I expected them to get rewarded

Linux

Novell Dumps the Hula Project

Conspiracy theorists of the Open Source community unite; Novell has just dropped official support for Hula shortly after announcing their agreement with Microsoft.  For those unfamiliar with Hula, here's a snippet from the original press release just over 18 months ago: BOSTON (LinuxWorld Conference& Expo 2005) — Feb.

Linux

Linux users to Microsoft: What 'balance sheet liability'?

Continued coverage of a story I've been watching closely.  Computerworld has an article the covers the reactions of a couple CIO's to the recent Microsoft-Novell agreement.  From the article: "I do not believe that my company has an "undisclosed balance sheet liability,"

Linux

Open Letter to the Community from Novell

Novell has released an Open Letter to the Community.  From the letter: Our interest in signing this agreement was to secure interoperability and joint sales agreements, but Microsoft asked that we cooperate on patents as well, and so a patent cooperation agreement was included as a part of the deal.

Linux

Microsoft CEO says Linux "uses our intellectual property"

That didn't take too long, did it.  From the article: In comments confirming the open-source community's suspicions, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer Thursday declared his belief that the Linux operating system infringes on Microsoft's intellectual property. In a question-and-answer session after his

Linux

Samba Team Asks Novell to Reconsider

More on a story I have been closely watching, it looks like the Samba team has officially requested that Novell reconsider the recent patent agreement they made with Microsoft.  From the Samba site: The Samba Team disapproves strongly of the actions taken by Novell on November 2nd. One of the

Linux

Is Microsoft Going to Start a Linux War?

On the topic of misunderstanding the GPL, we have this doozy.  From the article: Microsoft has been leery of doing too much with Linux because of all the weirdness with the licenses and the possibility that one false move would make a Microsoft product public domain at worst, or subject