Red Hat downplays Novell/Microsoft deal (ArsTechnica)

Red Hat downplays Novell/Microsoft deal (ArsTechnica)

Posted Nov 9, 2006 9:17 UTC (Thu) by grouch (subscriber, #27289)
Parent article: Red Hat downplays Novell/Microsoft deal (ArsTechnica)

"In response to a recent agreement between Microsoft and Novell, Red Hat's corporate secretary Mark Webbink has predicted that Red Hat "will be the dominant player in the Linux market" a year from now, and that "by that time there won't be any other Linux players." In light of Microsoft's partnership with Novell and Oracle's ambitions of Linux support dominance, Webbink's statement doesn't seem all that realistic."

Obviously, the author is a newbie and never received the memo about world domination. Mr. Webbink is generously providing ample notice of the revised, advanced timeline for that world domination. There is no excuse, now, for anyone missing the party.

BTW, if "Red Hat's corporate secretary" responded by saying Red Hat was collectively depressed, demoralized and simply closing up shop because [em]Ballmer was rattling chairs, er, sabers, er, agreements, I suspect Red Hat would by now have a new corporate secretary.

"They both enter into a deal that involves basically licensing patents back and forth. They hand money back and forth at high levels and then, sprinkled on top of that, some technical collaboration with virtualization. Think back to the Microsoft/Sun announcement from a couple years ago; today, you haven't seen any of the promised technical collaboration from that partnership whatsoever.

[...]

"Novell has fallen into the trap of allowing Microsoft to do exactly what it wants to do, which is to trumpet IP (intellectual property) solutions and promises."

-- Mark Webbink

I think Mr. Webbink makes sense. He just misspelled "Debian GNU/Linux" as "Red Hat", but no one should quibble over such details.

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