Good-bye Mr. Noorda (Linux-Watch) [LWN.net]

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols remembers Ray Noorda. "Indeed, not long before he retired because of the onslaught of Alzheimers, Noorda believed that Linux was the future for Novell and supported Bryan Sparks and Ransom Love in an internal Linux skunkworks project. Novell, by then under Bob Frankenberg, killed off the Linux project. Soon thereafter, Noorda cut his ties with Novell. Noorda wasn't done with Linux even if the Novell of the mid-90s was. He used his investment company, The Canopy Group, to bankroll Caldera Systems, one of the first Linux companies."

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Trust people, not corporations

Posted Oct 11, 2006 4:09 UTC (Wed) by bignose (subscriber, #40) [Link]

It sounds like Ray Noorda was a fine man, with good intentions that he put into action.

This story is an object lesson, then, in how a corporation headed by someone good can suddenly do bad.

> One of the tragedies of his later years was that, after Alzheimers left him unable to direct Canopy, his Canopy successors presided over the attacks by Caldera, soon to be re-named SCO, on Linux.

Just because a corporation is doing good things at one point in time is no reliable predictor of that corporation's future good action. They are accountable only to their shareholders, and a change in direction can be fast, invisible and apparently irrational, with no compassion for those who previously benefited from the corporation's actions.

Free software relies on trust in people, and should be isolated as much as possible from the whims of corporations or any unaccountable organisation. Remember Ray Noorda.

Trust people, not corporations

Posted Oct 14, 2006 16:25 UTC (Sat) by kevinbsmith (guest, #4778) [Link]

Actually, Free Software doesn't rely on trust in people, as explained by Linus: "Because if we are shown to not be trustworthy, somebody else can always replace us--so you don't have to be able to trust us." (http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?ar...)

And the idea of trusting people, not corporations doesn't really work either, as people run companies. Bitkeeper comes to mind immediately.

Don't trust corporations. And don't put too much trust in people...make sure you have anything you care about in writing. Just because someone lets you "get away with something" today doesn't mean they will do so tomorrow.

Trust people, not corporations

Posted Oct 17, 2006 4:37 UTC (Tue) by bignose (subscriber, #40) [Link]

> And the idea of trusting people, not corporations doesn't really work
> either, as people run companies.

People have a much higher investment in having people continuing to trust them than do corporations; hence, a person's past good actions can be a reliable indicator of future good actions -- at least, far more so than a corporation.

> Don't trust corporations. And don't put too much trust in people

Yes. Perhaps I should have been saying that free software, to be effectively free, needs to be insulated as well as possible from the whims of any entity, real (person) or imaginary (corporation), so that the ideal in Linus's statement can hold true.