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IRC meeting about Novell/Microsoft deal
Hi as promised in the last IRC meeting we will have a dedicated IRC meeting about the Novell/Microsoft deal. We already had questions in the regular IRC meeting last time, but there might be some questions which are not answered because of the short time we had, or new questions came up ... Nat Friedman, Holger Dyroff and AJ are happy to answer all your questions in the chat this Thursday at 18:00 CET (17:00 GMT). Please check out the information we have so far, many questions should be answered there: http://www.novell.com/linux/microsoft/openletter.html http://www.novell.com/linux/microsoft/faq.html http://www.novell.com/linux/microsoft/faq_opensource.html http://www.novell.com/news/press/item.jsp?id=1196 If you can't participate and have a question, please enter it on the meeting page at: http://en.opensuse.org/Meetings/Special_Meeting_2006-11-23 btw: we will have a regular meeting as usual on Wednesday, announcement coming soon. -- with kind regards, ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Martin Lasarsch, Core Services SUSE LINUX GmbH, Maxfeldstr. 5 90409 Nuremberg martin.lasarsch@suse.de ---------------------------------------------------------------------- simply change to www.suse.de (Log in to post comments)
too little... Posted Nov 20, 2006 16:25 UTC (Mon) by alonso (subscriber, #2828) [Link] Too little, too late. My perception, and I think comunity one too, in the comunity is that we can't trust Novell. They have no vision, and if they have one is abusing GPL. I switched from openSuse to fedora core6, which is really inferior desktop distribution but at least I can trust Red Hat that they are a OpenSource company that play the game as a member of the comunity.
too little... Posted Nov 20, 2006 16:41 UTC (Mon) by wtogami (subscriber, #32325) [Link] > I switched from openSuse to fedora core6, which is really inferior> desktop distribution but at least I can trust Red Hat that they are > a OpenSource company that play the game as a member of the comunity.
I appreciate that you recognize Fedora as a true partner in the FOSS community, although I cannot agree with your blanket generalization that we are "inferior". Could you please elaborate, in what specific ways do we have problems in this regard?
I am interested to hear your feelings about how we can improve the Fedora Project to better suit your needs, and the needs of the greater community.
Thanks,
Look and feel/psychological choices Posted Nov 20, 2006 17:39 UTC (Mon) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link] Warren,
The reason most people chose between distro's is psychological bordering on religious. They like something (say the look of an icon) etc at some point and then build an entire rationalization about why this distro or that is inferior to it. There is no logical reason except inside the head of the believer.
There was a psychological study where a group of psychologists took I think a Chevrolet and relabeled it a Ford (and they did the vice versa). They then took a lot of people who liked a certain brand and told them they were going to drive the next years model and compare it with a similar model from the competitor. The people chose the branded car over and over again even when they said "you know its awfully like a Chevy/Ford, but I just don't like Ford/Chevy."
I am pretty sure that you could change a SuSE system out and change the icons to have Red Hat.. and people would call it inferior because it wasnt the brand they identified with.
Branding is very much about tribal totems and getting something to identify who your 'clan' is. It is getting the lower parts of the subconscious to identify who is safe and who is the enemy.
Look and feel/psychological choices Posted Nov 20, 2006 19:48 UTC (Mon) by Ed_L. (guest, #24287) [Link] Last I looked (SuSE 9.2) there was a vast difference between YaST and the Red Hat admin tools. You won't fool many with an icon/images switch. BTW, that particular workstation, a dual PIII 600, dual boots both SuSE 9.2 and Fedora Core 4. But YaST is so sluggish on that hardware that I don't think I've booted SuSE more than twice since the install. And I had intended SuSE to be my primary OS.
Look and feel/psychological choices Posted Nov 21, 2006 1:34 UTC (Tue) by grouch (guest, #27289) [Link]
At the time I settled on Debian, all other major distributions required a re-installation for each new version released. I don't know if they still do that and don't care. What's the "tribal totem" for lazy?
Look and feel/psychological choices Posted Nov 22, 2006 15:59 UTC (Wed) by alexl (subscriber, #19068) [Link] Fedora, and Redhat Linux before that has never required a reinstall on upgrade. They do however require you to do the upgrade through the installer, so that some special case things like bootloader and filesystem changes can be handled.
In practice though, many people upgrade between fedora releases live with yum.
Look and feel/psychological choices Posted Nov 21, 2006 8:24 UTC (Tue) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] The reason most people chose between distro's is psychological bordering on religious.I must be an odd person then, or you are mischaracterizing the whole distro thing. When I bought the new 64-bit workstation I wanted things to run and I wanted ease of administration; having a certain experience with GNU/Linux I tried OpenSUSE, Mandriva, Gentoo, Debian 32/64, Ubuntu 32/64. Today I would probably give Fedora a try too, out of curiosity and by its stance on freedom. I was gladly surprised by OpenSUSE and Gentoo. In the end Gentoo was the most versatile and Ubuntu-32 the easiest to run, so I chose the latter for common usage but keep the others around. It is so easy to install a distro that there is no reason to be led by religious issues at all. True, you need some motivation to try things out, but once you do the differences are quickly spelled out; at least for minimally knowledgeable people. If you want to find out if the person speaking knows what (s)he is talking about, just ask if (s)he has actually tried the darn thing. Fanatics are easily spotted.
too little... Posted Nov 21, 2006 3:46 UTC (Tue) by peace (guest, #10016) [Link] Hi Red Hat person,
I know yum gets compared to apt a lot, but I'd like to ask you: what does yum provide that aptitude does not? What does RPM provide that .deb does not? If I'm going to use a package managed distro I want the package management to be excellent. RPM seems to be a relic from a time when Redhat thought it would be important to control a package manager. I doubt it matters one wit to redhat at this point what package manager organizes their distro. Why not eliminate one of the most annoying schisms in the FL/OSS world and role .debs.
It would be very nice if at some point in the future I could install a base system (fedora, deb, whatever) and then include application repositories for gimp, oo, firefox, etc. and have them be distro agnostic.
Please don't take this as a flame, I'm just frustrated with all the RPMs out there because it creates divisions where there is no need. yum is just inferior to apt and I think it would be best for FL/OSS if Red Hat would just admit it and stop wasting time on things that are not helping. They do plenty of other great things.
Kind Regards
too little... Posted Nov 21, 2006 11:25 UTC (Tue) by feyd (guest, #26860) [Link] > what does yum provide that aptitude does not?apt(itude) is clearly superior, it is mature and FAST
> What does RPM provide that .deb does not?
too little... Posted Nov 21, 2006 12:11 UTC (Tue) by jmtapio (guest, #23124) [Link] rpm is clearly superior It is true that debs do not support multiple sources, but the all-in-one-diff is nowdays mostly about collecting and transporting the changes together. A lot of Debian source packages use the dpatch system where the individual patches are placed in the debian/patches directory in the source package. This gives the needed flexibility to dropping and adding patches. 2) allows multiple versions of the same package to be installed simultaneously, so doesn't require the libfoo1_1.x.deb, libfoo2_2.x.deb etc mess I agree that this is something that the deb format does not support, and it is true that is causes a certain mess with library names when the ABI is changed. But as a user or an administrator I have not really ever found this to be too annoying. There are relatively few cases where I would ever want several versions of the same package (some libraries, *emacs, Python...). Most of the time when multiple versions are needed, the packages need to be created anyway in such a way that the multiple versions do not conflict (different paths, alternatives-system...). So I do not see the much reason in trying to support multiple installed versions for generic packages. Such support in the packaging system does add extra complexity after all. On the other hand there is interesting development with for example the Python packages in Debian, where most of the pythonx.y-something -packages have been eliminated in favor of generic packages, which contain code for all currently needed versions. In the end, I think package formats are not a very central issue nowdays in distributions. All distributions are getting more advanced with those. And the most important issue is still the quality of packaging, the time and resources that have been put into making sure that the package works well with the distribution.
too little... Posted Nov 21, 2006 17:17 UTC (Tue) by pharm (guest, #22305) [Link] rpm is clearly superior There are plenty of Debian packages which include a set of individual patches individually applied. The fact that these are bundled as a single "patch" to the original sources is irrelevant. See, for example, the Debian mutt package which (for the version which happens to be unpacked in my home directory at this time) contains a debian/patches directory containing 27 different patches, split by topic into seperate subdirectories. These patches are applied automatically during the package build. Your second point is more a matter of packaging philosophy. The Debian package manager will happily install multiple versions of the same library, if the packager has set up the dependencies to permit it. Historically, the dependency information you can put into a Debian package has been much more expressive than .rpms could manage: it's possible rpms have managed to catch up since I last looked however.
DEB is far superior to RPM Posted Dec 5, 2006 23:04 UTC (Tue) by hazelsct (guest, #3659) [Link] .deb features which have no parallel in .rpm:
Sorry, don't know yum well enough to compare with apt.
DEB is far superior to RPM Posted Dec 6, 2006 0:02 UTC (Wed) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link] I like the .deb format a lot better too. However...
"debconf [is] wizards done right..." I totally disagree. Debconf is the worst configuration front-end of any major Linux distro. Every package wants to chat during installation! Setting the debconf priority to high doesn't get rid of the conversation but it does cause a number of packages to install improperly (since nobody runs with priority set to high). debconf is the single biggest reason why I like setting Ubuntu servers up so much more than I like setting up Debian servers: Canonical has done a very good job of purging debconf from the system.
No, RPM and Ubuntu got this one right: configuration should not be done by the package manager.
That said, I like making .debs a lot more than I like making .rpms. The Debian devtools are just so much more flexible.
DEB is far superior to RPM Posted Dec 6, 2006 9:45 UTC (Wed) by james (subscriber, #1325) [Link] Alternatives is good but it's not dependent on .deb. Fedora has a port of it which works well.
too little... Posted Nov 20, 2006 16:44 UTC (Mon) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] I am going to reserve judgement on Novell for the time being.
Until people are actually able to review and tell me what is going on or at least give me a accurate overview.
Pretty much everything everybody is talking about with regards to the Novell Microsoft deal is mostly rampant speculation.
(And although I don't use it I always like FC more then Suse.)
too little... Posted Nov 20, 2006 18:56 UTC (Mon) by b3timmons (guest, #40286) [Link] "Pretty much everything everybody is talking about with regards to the Novell Microsoft deal is mostly rampant speculation." I might buy the Novell line of greater interoperability. But at such a distressing cost: 1. Showing contempt for and scaring FOSS developers and users; and 2. Trying to undermine the license for half of all FOSS activity. (Buying another Novell argument that any FUD is empty would also mean agreeing that the risk for alternatives to Novell is not so high.) Should Novell be *rewarded* in the face of such costs? Doing business with--even not disapproving--Novell necessarily rewards MS's threats; should MS be *encouraged* about how *easy* it is to bring about these costs? Some mention knee-jerk. Were Samba's and Louis Suarez-Potts's (a leader of OpenOffice.org) complaints knee-jerk? Should they not get greater respect? What do the complaints of those two interoperability projects say about the credibility of Novell's big line about interoperability? Whether the mess results from any incompetence from Novell, how can they be trusted?
too little... Posted Nov 21, 2006 0:42 UTC (Tue) by Ed_L. (guest, #24287) [Link] While I personally think SAMBA's response was a bit hasty, I'm open to the possiblity of being mistaken. They were, at least, definitive. And if time bears them out, then visionary as well. Fine. I can live with both. I do have a certain problem with those who immediately dump SuSE and recommend corporate accounts do likewise for (possibly, depending on the circumstance) inferior substitutes before getting anything like a complete picture. There can be a lot of time and expense involved in distro change -- or little, again depending on the circumstance. Recommending rash action in this regard is to put a lot of community credibility on what is as yet very incomplete information.OK, we may never get a complete picture. But Eben Moglen at least is working on it, and he has yet to reach a definitive conclusion. No, so far the MS deal doesn't pass the smell test. Yet I for one am willing to hear both Mr. Moglen and Novell out. Then decide.
Signed,
... too late Posted Nov 21, 2006 13:28 UTC (Tue) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link] The actual meaning of the deal does not matter anymore. Even if it was all hot air without anything behind, it allowed Novell-blessed MS spin in *many* press outlets (including non-IT-oriented press and international press) and already destroyed part of the perception FLOSS advocates spent years building (we'll soon see the effects on EU antitrust process, if MS can torpedo it with this agreement we'll have complete disaster)
Novell was highly irresponsible. Probably wanted a coup just after the Oracle announcement and agreed to last-minute "innocent" MS requests without proper evaluation (when you deal with MS, triple-check everything even if it takes weeks). You have to understand even if the deal was denounced by Novell today the harm has been done. Think MS will ask its lobbyists to get rectifications published in the press now? No sir. The window of press interest already closed and Novell has not the weight necessary to reopen it alone.
The Novell public cheerleading after the deal didn't help either (yes Miguel I'm thinking about you). No one will think their heart is behind any denial now.
... too late Posted Nov 21, 2006 13:32 UTC (Tue) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link] Could you please tell me which perception got destroyed how? I can't really follow your posting.
... too late Posted Nov 21, 2006 14:29 UTC (Tue) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link] Following the agreement and the press conference you had *many* press articles to the effect that Linux and Microsoft made peace and agreed to pay each other royalties. With pretty colour penguin/window logos even. (which translates for PHBs as Linux=yet another proprietary offering indirectly controled by MS. Which kills the point of Linux desktops - the only real motivator right now for corps is them being fed up with MS).
And yes you can say that may not be what the deal was about but press over-simplification is a fact of life. MS had a crystal-clear message ready to trumpet. It got it through high and clear. What the Novell boy-scouts intended convening a press conference with Ballmer without any message ready is a deep mystery. Even this IRC conference is more about damage control than getting any clear message through.
People are only going to remember Miguel's "I piss on ./ers" comment. Because that was the only clear message Novell sent. Probably not the right one though.
too little... Posted Nov 20, 2006 16:58 UTC (Mon) by elicriffield (guest, #33738) [Link]
If your shopping for a distro, try ubuntu or debian. I'm still disappointed in redhat when they changed to having two distros a supported and unsupported one.
With ubuntu you get the best one (the only one) if you pay for support or not.
(And imho its a the best desktop distro)
Eli
fedora is supported Posted Nov 20, 2006 19:37 UTC (Mon) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link] I've found that Fedora is as as well-supported as Debian is; in particular they tend to be faster with security bugs than Debian is, and I've generally found the Fedora folks responsive to bug reports. They have a tendency to fix bugs by adopting new upstream versions rather than backporting, which isn't desirable for those running a dedicated server that just runs specific applications, but it has definite advantages for desktop users (new hardware is much more likely to Just Work, for example).Red Hat itself has an incentive to dismiss the level of support of Fedora, since they don't want to undercut RHEL sales.
fedora is supported Posted Nov 21, 2006 3:19 UTC (Tue) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] I've found that Fedora is as as well-supported as Debian is Really?? My experience is just the opposite. Once your Fedora installation is over 12 months old, you run it at your peril... Fedora Legacy has been dreadful in providing security patches for older versions.
fedora is supported Posted Nov 21, 2006 21:04 UTC (Tue) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link] Well the stated Debian lifetime has been 3-6 months after the next stable release is out. If Debian were able to pop out releases every 6 months.. then it would be on tune with the Fedora support model.
too little... Posted Nov 20, 2006 18:48 UTC (Mon) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link] "They have no vision, ..."
It really is a shame that LWN's great tradition of well informed and considered and most of all: flame-free comments get's bashed down to unrecognizability within just a few weeks.
Well it was a great time.
too little... Posted Nov 20, 2006 19:00 UTC (Mon) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] well it's easy to counteract.
All you have to point out is things like they are the only company that I know of that is actually performing real-world usability testing for Linux desktops.
They open sourced Yast and related tools. They open sourced exchange plugin for evolution. These are both things that they are doing that the companies they original bought refused to do in a effort to do the Linux + 'value added propriatory bits' game.
And that is just a tip of the Novell-vision-for-Linux iceberg.
All sorts of stuff that is desperately needed by Linux desktop systems and nobody other then Novell is doing it.
Novell knows that there is no future for Novell as long as Microsoft controls the only platform aviable for deploying their software. That's their vision and it is shared by a massive amount of other companies.
oh, please Posted Nov 20, 2006 19:39 UTC (Mon) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link] Red Hat, Sun, the OLPC project, and many other organizations have been making massive contributions to desktop usability, as has Novell. It simply isn't true to claim that Novell is the only contributor.
oh, please Posted Nov 21, 2006 2:54 UTC (Tue) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] I am not taking about just 'usability' in general.
I am talking about a very specific thing. It's 'stick a guy in front of a computer and video tape him trying to use it' type things.
People have all sorts of usability theories about unified UI and other forms of /. wisdom, but nothing remotely compares to actually having people do real world things. Sure ok you can restrict the number of items in a task bar or whatnot, but real usability testing needs to be done by studying normal people trying do something like take a spreadsheet, generating a report with a graph, and sending it as a attatchment in email.
Try to do that with OO.org and your favorite email client and you'll be suprised on how difficult that still is on Linux.
Nobody else is doing that (real live testing of the clueless). The first time anybody did that ever with Gnome and Linux was Sun and that directly lead to the Gnome HIG (which caused a vast improvement in Gnome usability), but that ended years ago.
And although I have a deep appreciation for Redhat (and I am not just saying that. Redhat kicks-ass) and what they do for Linux they don't realy know jack shit about the desktop. Sorry they don't. Maybe Fedora, but I don't think they know much either. (They do a good job with other aspects of their system too, though.)
This isn't ment to be insultive, but a person (or corporation) has to know their limitations. (and note that Unix workstation is something that has to be treated VERY differently from Linux desktop.)
This is what Novell is good at and they have more experiance at this sort of thing then anybody else involved with Linux. A hundred thousand times more experiance. In fact Microsoft was copying THEM when it came to figuring out how to manage large numbers of corporate desktops.
Nobody has close to the level of expertise that Novell has in real-world enterprise desktop setups. (hence you have VBA macro compatability for Excell documents, Mono and other such things which is a HUGE mistake to dismiss due to paranoia) Not Redhat, not IBM, not Sun, not anybody. Novell knows what it takes to manage them. They know what it takes to move off of Windows and onto Linux.
oh, please Posted Nov 21, 2006 10:36 UTC (Tue) by mbanck (subscriber, #9035) [Link] I am not taking about just 'usability' in general.I am talking about a very specific thing. It's 'stick a guy in front of a computer and video tape him trying to use it' type things. Sun did that for GNOME years before Novell AFAIK, they just didn't hype it. Michael
The problem is... Posted Nov 20, 2006 19:58 UTC (Mon) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link] That we have learned from many other websites, that you can't fight trolls with reasonable answers to their trolling. If they really wanted such information, they could have found it with a two minute web search.
But sometimes people just want to have a new enemy they can point at. And Novell seems to be unfortunate enough to sign just the right agreement to mark them as tainted for all time.
It doesn't matter that for example Novell threw out binary drivers from their distribution where "holy" Ubuntu will include exactly the same drivers in their next version. Or that Novell pays for a build service where you can even build packages for other distributions. Novell is out to destroy all freedom and "faithful" users have to fight them immediately.
The problem is... Posted Nov 20, 2006 20:51 UTC (Mon) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link] We have also learned that an effective trolling technique is to bring up a hot button issue in a completely unrelated discussion... Like oh, say... mentioning binary drivers in a Novell/usability thread? :)
Usability? Posted Nov 20, 2006 21:15 UTC (Mon) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link] The discussion is about "They have no vision, and if they have one is abusing GPL." Nothing about usability there. Just accusation about "abusing GPL" to the company that actually opened much of it's own software including YaST and Apparmor by putting it under GPL and even supporting GPL hard liners by throwing out binary modules from it's distribution.
Usability? Posted Nov 20, 2006 22:51 UTC (Mon) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link] Well, the post you replied to was about usability, open sourcing code, and how Novell is doing both. And, I agree; Novell is open sourcing a lot of code. That's definitely a good thing.
Usability? Posted Nov 21, 2006 4:15 UTC (Tue) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] Well rejecting binary drivers is part of it.
It shows that Novell has a great deal of respect for the Linux developers. Also distros that embrace propriatory drivers actually cause damage to development to open source drivers (Of course indirectly)
A distro dedicated to open source would naturally remove propriatory drivers and work on testing and debugging open source drivers, which is what Novell is doing (probably to a much lesser extent to other distros though. (Yay Fedora))
Of course it's a lot easier to stand around waving your arms and talking about 'choice' when it comes to propriatory drivers...
Usability? Posted Nov 21, 2006 13:36 UTC (Tue) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link] Actually the Novell kernel people were not in the loop for this deal which shows how high they are in the Novell foodchain.
Usability? Posted Nov 21, 2006 19:10 UTC (Tue) by k8to (subscriber, #15413) [Link] My takeaway from all the linux novell folks saying "I didn't know and I wasn't asked" is that the current executive decision makers at Novell are dangerously out-of-touch. This little debacle may be the point where they learn the reality and price of their ignorance. One can only hope they take appropriate corrective action, or their growth market will become as doomed as their legacy ones.
too little... Posted Nov 20, 2006 20:43 UTC (Mon) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link] You're talking about http://www.betterdesktop.org, the site that Novell created with great fanfare and press releases and then abandoned for a year?
There's a lot of great Linux usability work going on: Network Manager, configurationless X, Monty's recent work on sound, etc. These are intended to be used by just about every Linux distribution out there, not just Red Hat customers.
Now, according to BetterDesktop, Novell is concentrating on Hula, XGL, YaST, and IFolder. It seems to me that more distros are pulling in aiglx than xgl (I think mostly because Novell chose to develop xgl behind closed doors so nobody upstream could follow what they were doing), YaST is only useful to SuSE users, and who uses Hula and IFolder?
So, it appears to me that Novell's usability efforts just don't affect non-Novell customers much at all. This is just my perception, of course, it's not meant as a flame. If Novell is working on usability projects that are likely to be pulled upstream as well, I'd very much like to hear about them.
too little... Posted Nov 21, 2006 3:10 UTC (Tue) by pfred1 (guest, #35195) [Link] That's like trading in a Mercedes for a Ford! I feel for you. Now why are Mercedes better than Fords? Let me count the ways ...
IRC meeting about Novell/Microsoft deal Posted Nov 20, 2006 16:52 UTC (Mon) by einstein (subscriber, #2052) [Link] Unlike those who freaked and split, I'm with Linus when he says "Let's see how this all pans out" rather than jumping to conclusions.
Even if we assume the worst and suppose that Hovespian was taken for a ride by microsoft, SuSE is still the best all-around distro I've found, and I'd only be shooting myself in the foot if I switched back to fedora, in a knee-jerk reaction.
IRC meeting about Novell/Microsoft deal Posted Nov 20, 2006 17:06 UTC (Mon) by jondkent (guest, #19595) [Link] I'm also waiting to see what happens as I do prefer SLED10 to FC6 although I did install FC6 on a portable for my father as I didn't want to muck him about if Novell goes turn out to be as bad as people are speculating.
To answer the Fedora guys query, its a look and feel thing with GNOME. I prefer the way it is laid out and the Yast gui is a big improvement over previous versions. That said FC package management is still easy to work with (although Debians is the best I've used)
IRC meeting about Novell/Microsoft deal Posted Nov 20, 2006 17:11 UTC (Mon) by Ed_L. (guest, #24287) [Link] Well, I agree with not succumbing to knee-jerk reaction. The problem with knee-jerk reactions is they're usually percieved to be such, for which there is generally a lot of PR spin to be made by the side one is erstwhile refuting.
I'm glad you're happy with SuSE. But for me, on the older hardware I run at home, Fedora has always worked better. At work, for the type of development I do, I've generally appreciated Fedora's lastest&greatest approach to compiler distribution. Your mileage may vary: I can easily see where the next guy might prefer something a tad more conservative.
But if nobody push it, the envelope don't get pushed.
IRC meeting about Novell/Microsoft deal Posted Nov 20, 2006 17:21 UTC (Mon) by sammythesnake (guest, #17693) [Link] It'd be good if they explained in the press release where the IRC meeting would be held. I'm guessing #opensuse on some network or other? Which network?
I'm also not a fan of knee-jerk reactions, though I don't see how Novell could be under any illusions that Microsoft's intentions were anything other than Business As Usual in their inimitable style.
I'll hopefully be able to sit in on the meeting and hope my fears will be allayed somewhat...
Cheers & God bless
IRC meeting about Novell/Microsoft deal Posted Nov 20, 2006 18:03 UTC (Mon) by kay (subscriber, #1362) [Link] Following the link in the announce you will find as second sentence:
"It will be held in the #openSUSE-project Freenode IRC channel ..."
Kay
IRC meeting about Novell/Microsoft deal Posted Nov 20, 2006 18:30 UTC (Mon) by mrtn (guest, #41769) [Link] Present two quotes from Microsoft's Bob Muglia to the Novell people. (source: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2060797,00.asp).
"The second [motivation behind this deal] is to recognize, unambiguously, that there is value to intellectual property within open-source products that are used by customers and that that intellectual property should be honored."
"There is a substantive effort in open source to bring such an implementation of .Net to market, known as Mono and being driven by Novell, and one of the attributes of the agreement we made with Novell is that the intellectual property associated with that is available to Novell customers."
IRC meeting about Novell/Microsoft deal Posted Nov 20, 2006 18:46 UTC (Mon) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link] Funny, that neither of these two sentences says something like that this "intellecutal property" belongs to Microsoft.
_Of course_ there's value to intellectual property within open-source products! And of course this should be honored. Not honoring this "intellectual property" or just plain old "copyright" would mean to not honor the GPL which is the foundation of free software.
So I'd say Bob Muglia is absolutely right.
IRC meeting about Novell/Microsoft deal Posted Nov 20, 2006 21:55 UTC (Mon) by mrtn (guest, #41769) [Link] Come on, everyone knows he is talking about Microsoft's intellectual property in Mono. Novell has licensed Mono under GPL and MIT licenses. So the issue is not Novell's intellectual property (i.e. Novell's copyright and possible patents).
Muglia says that only through this agreement is Microsoft's IP (i.e. Microsoft's patents concerning .NET) available to _Novell_ customers. Therefore Microsoft claims that nobody can legally use Mono without making an agreement with Microsoft.
IRC meeting about Novell/Microsoft deal Posted Nov 20, 2006 22:24 UTC (Mon) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link] Please quote where exactly he makes the bridge from making Microsoft's patents available to Novell customers to Mono may only be used by Novell customers. And please explain how the following third quote from the article fits in there:
"But we certainly have no intention of releasing the source code to .Net to the community, but the community is free to go with Mono and enhance that and build solutions for customers."
Please notice the "community is free to go with Mono" part.
IRC meeting about Novell/Microsoft deal Posted Nov 20, 2006 22:38 UTC (Mon) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link] If you think that third quote comment could be seen as estoppel, well, I have a bridge to sell you. Microsoft has never been shy about using patents to lever companies away from their target market. And the Novell deal appears to give Microsoft a little more leverage against all non-Novell companies.
So, no, that little quote doesn't reassure me at all. Does it reassure you?
IRC meeting about Novell/Microsoft deal Posted Nov 20, 2006 23:59 UTC (Mon) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link] The difference is: I just don't see this little more leverage. If you ask me, nothing changed at all, because Novell did not admit any patent violation by any free software it distributes. Some people _want_ to see an implication, but it's just an interpretation, nothing more.
What these people seem to forget is, that the covenant does not necessarily have to be about _current_ violations. There may be unforseen violations in the future, which is just the nature of patents. And the covenant assures Novell's customers, that they do not have to fear this future possibility. You know, just like Redhat's indemnification assures it's customers that they do not have to fear possible future law suits. Interesting, that there is such a different reaction in the community to that.
And Novell explicitly said, that if such future patent violations occur, the offending code will be changed to work around that or the functionality just ripped out. But of course, every one here has read the Novell FAQ about the deal to hear their side and already knows that.
What changed is that there is now flowing money from every Microsoft license sold directly into development of free software. I find it just nice to see, that the money I had to pay for a Windows license I did not want back then, when buying a notebook, is coming back to where I want it.
IRC meeting about Novell/Microsoft deal Posted Nov 21, 2006 1:23 UTC (Tue) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link] Even though Microsoft has more cash on hand than God, they have never been known to give it away freely. Why did Microsoft want to make this deal? What do they get in return?
As far as the Microsoft Tax, you're being very optimistic. The Novell deal is a one-time payment of 300 mil. Microsoft's license revenues are in the tens of billions *per year*. So, approximately 0.00% of the revenue from each Microsoft license flows to Novell. And only a small fraction of THAT flows from Novell into free software. It's utterly insignificant.
IRC meeting about Novell/Microsoft deal Posted Nov 21, 2006 9:48 UTC (Tue) by epeeist (guest, #1743) [Link] > Come on, everyone knows he is talking about Microsoft's intellectual property in Mono.
Let us assume that Mono is tainted. The thing I don't understand is whether this has any implications for Gnome? I am not trolling, it is just something that doesn't seem to have been mentioned anywhere and I haven't a clue whether there is any problem.
IRC meeting about Novell/Microsoft deal Posted Nov 20, 2006 19:32 UTC (Mon) by jayorke (guest, #10685) [Link] I don't understand the GPLv3 will kill the deal discussion. Isn't what is out there under a particular licence always going to be out there under that licence? Even if newer versions of all the GPLv2 products are released under GPLv3 wouldn't that leave the old GPLv2 stuff around? In summary, won't this simply lead to Fork-fest 2007?
Why does Novell think that fancy legal work matters more than norms anyway? Posted Nov 20, 2006 20:18 UTC (Mon) by dmarti (subscriber, #11625) [Link] Yes, and Novell ends up having to maintain the v2 fork itself, while Red Hat gets to ship the v3 fork that has everyone else's contributions -- unless Novell can somehow convince everyone that "you know the cooperation norms that you thought we were all working with? Well it doesn't matter -- what does matter is our hair-splitting interpretation of the license."Search of the day: +novell +gpl +weasel (38,800)
IRC meeting about Novell/Microsoft deal Posted Nov 20, 2006 21:34 UTC (Mon) by jmorris42 (subscriber, #2203) [Link] > In summary, won't this simply lead to Fork-fest 2007?
Not likely. Everything the FSF has the copyright on will go GPL3, obviously. That means most of the GNU tools and probably GLIBC and GCC. After this demonstration of a fatal bug in GPLv2 most other projects will migrate if they can. Projects like the kernel simply can't at this point so end of discussion on that. Sun just promised Java but so far as GPLv2 only , however since they own all the rights and will be requiring copyright assignments they can switch once they are assured that V3 will work for them.
Convince Moz Corp and OO.o to also migrate to GPLv3 and you are just about at critical mass. Bring over a few more major (KDE?) projects and you end up with more stuff than Novell could possibly maintain themselves. So instead of forking the code we can stick a fork in Novell because they will be done.
The only potential for a forkfest is if substantial numbers of developers decide they HATE GPLv3, but that is unrelated to the Novell/MS deal and offtopic for here.
IRC meeting about Novell/Microsoft deal Posted Nov 20, 2006 21:43 UTC (Mon) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link] "we can stick a fork in Novell because they will be done."
And I thought that free software was about cooperation and sharing. But I seem to have forgotten the "unless one is so dumb to accept hundreds of millions of dollars from Microsoft without any real disadvantages for anyone" part.
But back to your master plan how to get rid of "the evil itself: Novell".
IRC meeting about Novell/Microsoft deal Posted Nov 20, 2006 22:41 UTC (Mon) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link] Do you really think that Microsoft just gave Novell a few hundred million for free? No real disadvantages for anyone? Why would Microsoft do that?
IRC meeting about Novell/Microsoft deal Posted Nov 21, 2006 0:12 UTC (Tue) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link] I know that there are for sure more intentions on Microsoft's side, than we know about. They usually don't donate so much money to their competitors. So I dare not say if the outcome of this deal will be good or bad for us.
*But* I refuse to take part in this witch hunt that seems so popular right now and I won't render judgement about Novell's _intentions_. They say, that they believe that they do not harm the community by their actions and are the net winner in this deal, and I'm gonna believe that until _proven_ wrong.
I just still believe in a community of freedom, sharing and _trust_. It's just sad, that this community may shrink this fast.
IRC meeting about Novell/Microsoft deal Posted Nov 21, 2006 14:06 UTC (Tue) by deepfire (subscriber, #26138) [Link] Well, all other stuff nonwithstanding, but this is notable:
> I just still believe in a community of freedom, sharing and _trust_.
Freedom, sharing and trust. Erm, among, exactly, who?
Corporate world?
IRC meeting about Novell/Microsoft deal Posted Nov 21, 2006 21:45 UTC (Tue) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link] The corporations that make our distributions, desktops, kernel.Really a lot of code that runs on our machines is produced by corporations nowadays. And if we do not trust them, why do we run their code? Yes, I have the source and can verify for myself, that it does what it should. But if I do that I'll get really old before I can boot for the first time.
And of course there's the trust needed, for giving my code to them as contribution to open projects. If I don't trust, that they abide to the rules our community is based on, I could not collaborate. And this would be a shame.
Of course, one can contribute only to projects that are exclusively done by volunteers in their spare time. But those get fewer and fewer.
Questions I would like to see answered at the IRC meeting ... Posted Nov 21, 2006 9:16 UTC (Tue) by dwalters (subscriber, #4207) [Link] If the IRC meeting is meant to provide some clarity about the Novell-Microsoft deal, it needs to answer some hard questions from the FLOSS community. Here are three questions I would like answered (and no weasel-words please, just straight answers): Q1. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer stated last week that Linux "uses [Microsoft's] patented intellectual property". Does Novell share this view? If so, exactly which parts of Linux are considered to be affected by Microsoft patents? If you disagree, do you know which parts of Linux Microsoft considers to be affected by their patents? Q2. What does Novell have to say to the large constituency in the FLOSS community who regard the patent agreement between Novell and Microsoft to be in discordance with the spirit and intent of the GPL V2, even if not with the letter (i.e. it gets through a loophole). In other words, does Novell agree that when it distributes the GPL'd software in SLED/SLES to customer A, that customer is not liable for patent infringement of any Microsoft patents, but when customer A then distributes the GPL'd software in SLED/SLES to person B, person B is potentially liable for Microsoft-patent infringement? Q3. It seems almost certain that the loophole which may make the Novell/MS patent deal permissible under GPL 2 will be closed in version 3. When new versions of great swathes of software components vital to all GNU/Linux distributions (e.g. compilers, tools, the C library, and many other components) are licensed under GPL 3 in 2007, what will Novell's response be? The last one is the most important question that needs answered in my view, because until I get a satisfactory answer to that question, there's no way I can recommend Novell's Linux to any enterprise customers in good conscience. As it stands, it seems to me that there's too much of a risk that future versions of SLES/SLED (which will include components licensed under GPL 3) might become undistributable if the Novell-Microsoft agreement still stands.
Questions I would like to see answered at the IRC meeting ... Posted Nov 21, 2006 10:18 UTC (Tue) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link] Please note, that for actually getting answers to your questions, you should ask them on the IRC meeting or at least put them in the Wiki for questions that should be answered.
Apart from that you can get answers even right now. You just have to read the linked FAQs where for example Novell says explicitly: "Novell makes no admission that its Linux and open source offerings infringe on any other parties' patents. Our position has not changed as a result of this agreement." Which should answer your first question.
As for your second question: I'd say that it's pretty clear, that your customer B would _potentially_ be liable for patent infrigement. But there is no such infrigement yet, so they don't have any problem. Customer A would just have an insurance that if there would ever be patent problems with Novell's products, it would not be held liable. That's exactly the same insurance Redhat's customers have for example! If customer A where a Redhat customer and gave his RHEL to person B, person B would not have any indemnification either.
And for Q3: the FAQ sounds like they do not know what would happen if there were such a change in GPL 3. But they are working with the FSF to clarify their position and convince them why their deal is no problem for the FLOSS community and why such a change in the GPL is not needed. They seem to really believe that and must have their reasons, so maybe they even succeed in this.
Note that I'm in no way affiliated with Novell, and especially Q2 and Q3 are worth asking in this IRC meeting.
Questions I would like to see answered at the IRC meeting ... Posted Nov 21, 2006 10:27 UTC (Tue) by dwalters (subscriber, #4207) [Link] Thanks, I will definitely post the questions in the Wiki. That's exactly the same insurance Redhat's customers have for example! If customer A were a Redhat customer and gave his RHEL to person B, person B would not have any indemnification either. I respectfully disagree. I don't think it's the same thing at all. Red Hat offer to bail-out or defend their customers' if sued (that's well outside the scope of the GPL); they don't have any patent license agreements with Microsoft that "immunise" their customers, as Novell have.
Really that different? Posted Nov 21, 2006 11:10 UTC (Tue) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link] Different means, but same outcome. Redhat would defend their customers, Novell went straight to the source and made sure that their customers would not be attacked in the first place. But the outcome is the same: both companies' customers have some protection that they can not grant others.
Novell's way seems to be OK according to the words of the GPL, but they are accused of violating the spirit and intent of the GPL, because their customers get rights that they cannot grant others. But in that regards it's the same for Redhat! If Novell violates the _spirit_ of the GPL, then so does Redhat. Because they just achieve the same. That they do it differently is just a technicality which is something that is not relevant in a discussion about the spirit of the GPL.
Really that different? Posted Nov 21, 2006 20:37 UTC (Tue) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] Different means, but same outcome. Not really. If RedHat's customer is sued then RedHat will defend them. And if it'll succeed - then everyone will have the right to use the software. If it'll fail (yes, this too can happen) - nobody will have said right. The Novell's customer will not be sued (unless Microsoft will really want it, of course - this protection too can fail). But others can! That's the big difference: while RedHat only promises to pay for defence of its own customers the result of said defense (court resolution) will be available to everyone. Novell only bailed out its own customers. I'm not sure this agreement violates the letter of GPL but sure as hell it violates the spirit.
Really that different? Posted Nov 21, 2006 21:35 UTC (Tue) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link] If Microsoft sues for example me, I won't get any protection by Redhat, as I'm not their customer. They extend this courtesy only to a certain group.
Novell's deal extends protection to another group, where I'm still no part of.
Both companies' customers may use their respective products without having to worry about violated patents. And both companies' customers may not share this protection with others, while they may share the software.
The GPL tries to defend the users' rights to use, modify and redistribute a software and that they can share these rights with others. That's the spirit of the GPL. So I'm sorry, but I cannot see a difference between one company that won't let it's customers share the right to use the software and another on that won't let it's customers share the right to use the software. And really, if Microsoft sues me because of patent violation, then it may be nice to know that if attacked a Redhat customer instead and Redhat won, I would have won too, maybe (only if the patent would get nullified). But in reality it helps me just absolutely nothing, because I'm the one who is attacked, and I'm not protected.
Of course this is only if one acknowledges that said software may not used without a license for certain patents, which _none_ of these companies does. So everyone may use the software without restriction, which is exactly what the GPL tries to ensure.
So how is the GPL violated? I'd really like to know.
Really that different? Posted Nov 21, 2006 23:39 UTC (Tue) by b3timmons (guest, #40286) [Link] If it is true that you know what the GPL is all about, like its spirit, then you need to correct the creators of the GPL. Novell and Microsoft themselves have admitted that they circumvented Section 7. Yet another GPL loophole--is that good? Loophole: An ambiguity or unintended omission in a law, rule, regulation, license, or contract which allows a party to circumvent the intent of the text and avoid its obligations under certain circumstances. I don't know about you, but when I depend on and use a license, I do not try to circumvent it and hope others do not also. It is just a simple question of fairness and respect. There have been so many opportunities for big companies to do this over the years and they did not. However, we are now supposed to give Novell a free pass on this? Consider that the GPL will be revised to prevent this very kind of circumvention. How do you reconcile this with what you are claiming about the spirit of the GPL?
Really that different? Posted Nov 22, 2006 9:13 UTC (Wed) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link] "Novell and Microsoft themselves have admitted that they circumvented Section 7."
Could you please tell me the source of this? Because I really cannot find a statement by Novell that they see it that way. And why should they? They did not circumvent it because they did not need to.
The most important fact is: there are no known patent violations of any code shipped by Novell. And thus no patent license is needed for using it. Which means that Novell's customers have exactly the same rights due to the GPL as other people, they might redistribute the code to.
_If_ at some point in the future, patent violations are found in the code, then Novell's customers (like Redhat's) won't have to fear legal problems and Novell will change the offending code to not violate any patents any more, which they would and will do anyway. So anyone will be able to use the code again.
The case that Novell's customers actually have rights to use the code, while others do not would be only accidentally and completely undesired _and_ temporary. Like any insurance, the covenant not to sue should at best never be needed.
Really that different? Posted Nov 22, 2006 14:25 UTC (Wed) by b3timmons (guest, #40286) [Link] "Could you please tell me the source of this? Because I really cannot find a statement by Novell that they see it that way. And why should they? They did not circumvent it because they did not need to." Note circumvent does not mean violate. For a source of where they describe what they did, look no further than what lwn reported a couple of days ago: Here's a new press release from Novell on its Microsoft deal. The company is getting almost $250 million from Microsoft up front. There's some real weasel words with regard to the GPL: "Under the patent cooperation agreement, Novell's customers receive directly from Microsoft a covenant not to sue. Novell does not receive a patent license or covenant not to sue from Microsoft, and we have not agreed with Microsoft to any condition that would contradict the conditions of the GPL. Our agreement does not affect the freedom that Novell or anyone else in the open source community, including developers, has under the GPL and does not impose any condition that would contradict the conditions of the GPL." Some serious hair-splitting is going on here. Moreover, Novell, in its FAQ on the deal, addresses how they got around section 7 of the GPL. You may not think of any of this as circumvention. We have a different interpretation then. In any case, that the revised GPL will take all of this into account tells me more than anything about what the deal really means regarding the current GPL.
Really that different? Posted Nov 22, 2006 15:40 UTC (Wed) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link] "In any case, that the revised GPL will take all of this into account tells me more than anything about what the deal really means regarding the current GPL."
If it will take this into account. Till now there's only the expressed intention of doing so. But this was a quick reaction when the deal came out. Nothing more specific heard till now _and_ Novell said that they would talk to the FSF about the deal and try to explain them, why a change in GPL 3 is not needed.
I for me will decide what to think about it when the talks are over and a new proposal for the GPL made or dropped. Until then I do not judge.
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