Some Time On Earth (Or Something Like Earth)

Tuesday, November 07, 2006

More fretting about Novell-MSFT deal

I was truly dumbfounded by this move by Novell, but things like this don't happen over lunch, obviously this has been orchestrated in the background by Microsoft's Linux guy Bill Hilf for some time now, sold the idea to Steve Ballmer, who now looks like a genius to the stockholders. The terms of the con as far as I can figure out, is practically the same as SCO's initial blackmail terms to the Linux world, except I don't see any money or licensing deal, just promises not to sue over "patent infringement", which is horse hockey and a promise of "interoperability" between Windows and Novel's brand of Linux.
Is Novell making a calculated bet that their company can make a serious dent Red Hat's business and eventually subvert Microsoft's business through this "Non-agression"pact? I've been a fan of SuSE, now SUSE for seven years, and I don't have a server, but something really stinks here. The sheeps and goats in this quagmire will be the GPL purists vs the any code that works pragmatists. And will Microsoft start WWWIII by dropping a patent lawsuit on Red Hat, Ubuntu, etc if they don't sign similar deal, like Novell? Maybe the decks do need to be cleared once and for all - otherwise the cold war will continue.

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