Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments
Search

News for nerds, stuff that matters

Slashdot Log In

Log In

Create Account  |  Retrieve Password

Red Hat CEO on Microsoft-Novell Deal

Posted by CowboyNeal on Sat Dec 23, 2006 12:28 PM
from the saw-that-one-coming dept.
Novell Businesses Red Hat Software Microsoft The Almighty Buck
VE3OGG writes "The Seattle PI is running an interesting blurb from the Red Hat CEO on the current Novell-Microsoft deal that has been so lately lamented. According to Red Hat CEO Matthew Szulik, the deal is 'old news.' 'Those were existing accounts and there is at least one of them that I can speak definitely that is also a Red Hat account,' Szulik said. 'So those were older engagements and we were not involved in competitive situations with those two or three years ago when they became Novell accounts.' The common client that Szulik speaks of would likely be Credit Suisse. The story also makes mention that while Deutsche Bank's chief technology officer, Clemens Jochum, praised the deal, the firm has been an early investor in SUSE from the beginning."
+ -
story

Related Stories

[+] Eben Moglen To Scrutinize Novell-Microsoft Deal 102 comments
An anonymous reader writes "Novell is providing Eben Moglen's Software Freedom Law Center with confidential access to the legal terms of the Novell-Microsoft partnership, allowing to organization to verify if the deal is compatible with the GPL2 and GPL3 licenses. Moglen in the past has alleged that the patent license between the two companies could be in violation with section 7 of the GPL. Novell on Tuesday published a document on its website, explaining that they circumvented the GPL provisions by providing a patent license to the end user rather than between the two companies."
[+] Why the Novell / MS Deal Is Very Bad 367 comments
jamienk writes "PJ from Groklaw has taken the time to really explain the big picture of the Novell/MS deal and how it all fits into the SCO case and the strategy some have employed to attack Free Software. If you thought PJ was becoming too shrill before, or if you haven't understood what the big deal is with Novell's agreement, it's really worth a read." From the article: "This is Groklaw's 2,838th article. We now have 10,545 members, who have worked very hard to disprove SCO's scurrilous claims, and we did. We succeeded, beyond my hopes when we started. But here's the sad part. As victory is in sight, Novell signs a patent agreement with Microsoft..."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

Red Hat CEO on Microsoft-Novell Deal 25 Comments More /

 Full
 Abbreviated
 Hidden
More
Loading... please wait.

  • Novell... who? (Score:5, Funny)

    by NewToNix (668737) on Saturday December 23 2006, @12:34PM (#17348390) Journal

    Didn't they used to be a Linux company?

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by 10scjed (695280)
      They still are, according to Stafford Masie [boycottnovell.com] at the CITI forum. As you can see from the quote, Masie is also adept at inspiring confidence in Novell's closed-source proprietary products:

      "...Y'know, we're a Linux company, we do identity management, but we're a Linux company. Identity management, there's so much happening there to open source alot of the APIs, which we've already done, the only thing we haven't open-sourced in the identity world is kinda our directory, and I can tell you what, we proba

  • Of course he considers this "old news"; I would say the same thing if my largest competitor (SEL) committed a blunder like Novell did. Is it any surprise that Red Hat turned in the numbers they did last quarter?
  • Perhaps they have an interest in validating the deal?

    Deutsche Bank fund bets on patents as asset class [reuters.com]

    Boycott Novell [boycottnovell.com].

  • Misleading headline and summary (Score:5, Informative)

    by Schraegstrichpunkt (931443) on Saturday December 23 2006, @02:12PM (#17348810) Homepage

    RTFA. The Red Hat CEO isn't commenting on the Microsoft-Novell deal. He's commenting on the "three joint customers" that are apparently covered by the Microsoft-Novell deal. Novell is still fully to blame for their own actions.

  • I like Red Hat's attitude (Score:4, Interesting)

    by MikeRT (947531) on Saturday December 23 2006, @03:04PM (#17349006) Homepage
    They're winners, not losers like Netscape and to a lesser extent, Sun. They don't go running to big mama regulator to help them out from the mean old Microsoft bully. Instead they shrug stuff like this off and fight harder. That's why I expect them to be around in the next decade as a strong contender. They understand the rules of the marketplace, one of which is that it's easier to win if you focus on building a product rather than trying to sell a sob story to regulators about the unfairness of having to compete against bigger companies using their influence to attack you.

  • Deutsche bank, that name sounds familiar (Score:3, Insightful)

    by bl8n8r (649187) on Sunday December 24 2006, @08:29AM (#17352994)
    Q: And where have we heard that name before?
    A: http://www.google.com/search?as_q=sco+Deutsche+Ban k [google.com]

    --
    Ron we smell ponies: http://www.techp.org/ [techp.org]

    • Re:It's too late to close the barn door (Score:5, Insightful)

      by pembo13 (770295) on Saturday December 23 2006, @01:29PM (#17348596) Homepage
      Well in all fairness, some people went to Linux purely on its tech. strong points. I for sure may have never discovered Linux were it not for the extreme suckness of Windows which drove me to look for something better.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by eMbry00s (952989)
      No, I do believe it was to get far away from expensive as fuck Unixes. Microsoft's take on those wasn't very successful.

    • Re:It's too late to close the barn door (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Cyno (85911) on Saturday December 23 2006, @01:52PM (#17348698) Journal
      Long, deep memories, like elephants? What are you smoking? Don't know about you, but my memory is like a human's who has been psychologically traumatized by their government and corporations for 5 years, and spent a good deal of that time stoned.

      I'm a Linux zealot, and I try not to forget, but forgiving is easy. All you have to do is see the light, learn how to coexist, etc. I forgive Sun. GNU software can replace the old commercial way of doing things, but it doesn't have to.

      I love feeling the power in simple things like Intellectual Property Rights and Free Speech and these Copyleft Licenses.

      This supposed enemy of Free Software is capitalism and it will be more than happy to adopt Free Software when it becomes more profitable than the alternatives. Microsoft knows this. That's why they're shakin in their booties. The only hope they have is to prolong the inevitable.

      • been there, done that (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 23 2006, @03:33PM (#17349150)

        "I once preached peaceful coexistence with Windows. You may laugh at my expense - I deserve it." Jean-Louis Gassée [birdhouse.org], CEO Be Ince.

        The 1990's called and want their naivite back. Attempts at "peaceful co-existance" with MS is for the gullible. The market place is littered with the husks of those chumps dumb enough to try. A free market is what MS fears most.

        Free Software, Open Source Software, and closed source software can all co-exist, with the exception of MS. The basic foundation of MS business model, that of leveraging monopolies not making software, is diametrically opposed.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by skeeterbug (960559)
        i'm wondering if your post was modded "interesting" due to your confusion. msft didn't try and make friends with linux, they claimed ownership. let me draw an analogy... big jim makes friends with your girlfriend. no problem. this ISN'T what msft did. big jim declares OWNERSHIP over your girlfriend and says you must contact him and pay him in order to talk to her. this *IS* what msft did. okay, i've lost 3/4 of slashdot b/c i mentioned "girlfriend," but the other 1/4 get the idea. msft has claimed

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Cyno (85911)
          Its always time to build Linux, but not into a fortress, into a Free Marketplace. No point waiting for Microsoft to come around to our way of thinking. We can do it with or without them. I am not interested in making Linux work with Windows anymore. I'm interested in making Linux work well with itself and my hardware.

          If Microsoft were more open minded about cooperation then the efforts to make Linux and Windows interoperable over the years would have been a huge success. But obviously, they are not. W
          • I mean, it would be good to get Samba, Cedega, Wine, OpenOffice, etc. fully functional, but what if we spend 20 years trying to make Linux 100% Windows XP compatible and still have problems installing apps or working with documents? They are just going to make it exceedingly more difficult to interoperate.

            I wouldn't be surprised if they eventually Tivoized the OS so you had virtually no access to the raw binary data for the OS or DRM protected apps at any level. That seems to be the direction we're headed
        • Look at what Microsoft has done to Vista. They've turned it into a Fortress. Designed to keep the competition out, and help their partners lock you, the customer, in to DRM and their ideology of greed.

          But that's not a good thing. That's not a good model for Linux to follow. We need to learn when to say enough is enough and simply forget they exist. Because, without them, without their stupid opinions about DRM and profits, we could make a lot more progress.

          Want to solve the interoperability problem? C

    • Re:It's too late to close the barn door (Score:4, Insightful)

      by theshowmecanuck (703852) on Saturday December 23 2006, @01:57PM (#17348736) Journal
      Szulik wasn't saying everything is OK now, he was just stating a set of facts. This story doesn't really have to do with the original Novell-Microsoft agreement story. It was about Szulik saying the news about "Microsoft's announcement of three joint customers with Novell this week" is really non-news.
      • It's not "an inkling of working together" when it violates the GPL.
          • It's not a violation of the letter, but it's a violation of the spirit, and it will be a violation of the letter of GPL3(which is desperately needed despite what companies that want to exploit loopholes in GPLv2 and the Von Braun-like Linus Torvalds say). Oh, and Steve Ballmer has essentially pledged to sue non-Novell customers.
              • Actually, all the GPL says about selling stuff is that the source can't cost more than the binaries plus a small amount for physical distribution. Whereas it has a clear clause against this sort of community fragmentation. It's why the Novell deal talks about Novell customers rather than Novell itself--if it talked about Novell itself it would be a GPLv2 violation. Good thing Microsoft doesn't understand how community forks go in the world of GPL.

All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2009 Geeknet, Inc.