Novell Speaks (Groklaw)

Posted Nov 21, 2006 13:53 UTC (Tue) by dune73 (subscriber, #17225) [Link]

"Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence."
(Napoleon)

Otherwise, the Groklaw article comes with a nice twist.

Posted Nov 21, 2006 14:30 UTC (Tue) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link]

Novell: "Ladies and gentlement, we have been shafted".

Posted Nov 21, 2006 15:06 UTC (Tue) by lyda (subscriber, #7429) [Link]

Shorter Novell: I didn't know I was being an idiot.

Posted Nov 21, 2006 17:16 UTC (Tue) by b7j0c (subscriber, #27559) [Link]

Shortest Novell: exit(1)

Posted Nov 21, 2006 17:16 UTC (Tue) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link]

It would have been smarter for Novell to point out that, if their agreement can be construed as an admission that Novell is infringing Microsoft's patents, then it must also be an admission that Microsoft is infringing Novell's patents, and not only that, but since most of the money was flowing in Novell's direction, that obviously the infringement by Microsoft is greater. Microsoft is known mainly as a copier of others' successful products, despite their claims to be an innovator, so we can confidently assume that they are infringing at least as many patents as Linux is, and furthermore we can confidently assume that they lack cross-licenses for many of those patents.

None of this excuses Novell for making this move.

Posted Nov 21, 2006 17:49 UTC (Tue) by wilreichert (subscriber, #17680) [Link]

Hmmm, this isn't going well.

Posted Nov 21, 2006 18:16 UTC (Tue) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523) [Link]

In my opinion, what really Microsoft is buying from Novell is support with its pro-patend effort in Europe and maybe support with settling theantitrust case. All the rest is smoke and mirror.

Posted Nov 21, 2006 18:21 UTC (Tue) by dmarti (subscriber, #11625) [Link]

Corporate speak: "Our interest in signing this agreement was to secure interoperability and joint sales agreements, but Microsoft asked that we cooperate on patents as well, and so a patent cooperation agreement was included as a part of the deal."

English: "Microsoft asked for something so we gave it to them without thinking it through."

Corporate speak: "When we entered the patent cooperation agreement with Microsoft, Novell did not agree or admit that Linux or any other Novell offering violates Microsoft patents."

English: "Unlike every other big-company partner deal ever made, we didn't agree to coordinate our public statements about this, so one side could turn it into a FUD frenzy."

Posted Nov 21, 2006 19:38 UTC (Tue) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]

Didn't expect Microsoft's recent statements on Linux and patents?? Holy cats. How on earth DID they expect Microsoft to respond? With trust and love?

It seems like Novell doesn't quite understand the ramifications of the deal they just signed. Here's a suggestion Mr. Hovespian: give the 300 mil back, then sign a clearly worded deal that you DO understand. If you can't predict how your business partner will behave then you're in trouble.

Posted Nov 21, 2006 23:12 UTC (Tue) by jtc (subscriber, #6246) [Link]

Not exactly the same topic, but very related, I believe - from an article at (http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/archives/108...):

"What we agreed, which is true, is we'll continue to try to grow Windows share at the expense of Linux. That's kind of our job. But to the degree that people are going to deploy Linux, we want Suse Linux to have the highest percent share of that, because only a customer who has Suse Linux actually has paid properly for the use of intellectual property from Microsoft. And we took a quota, you could say, to help them sell so much Suse Linux. That's part of the deal. We are willing to do the same deal with Red Hat and other Linux distributors, it's not an exclusive thing. But after a few years of working on this problem, Novell actually saw the business opportunity, because there's so many customers who say, 'Hey look, we don't want problems. We don't want any intellectual property problem or anything else. There's just a variety of workloads where we, today, feel like we want to run Linux. Please help us Microsoft and please work with the distributors to solve this problem, don't come try to license this individually.' So customer push drove us to where we got."

This guy is better at bullshitting/propangandizing than Rove and the Bush administration! I suspect that, in reality, MS is smart enough to realize that IBM, with its large patent portfolio and strong support for Linux, poses a real threat to their business in terms of patent claims, and that they don't want to take the risk of unleashing this giant against them. They are, however, willing to take the risk of spreading FUD about the possibility - I wonder if that is wise.

(See my other post about a hypothetical scenario of an IBM exec's thought process. The same disclaimer in that article applies to this one.) If I'm wrong or have missed some important counterpoints, I'm happy to hear about it.

(From the same article:)

"But we haven't lost our -- well, you asked whether we'd sold out. I'll let you decide at this stage. We have been customer-focused."

It seems that MS sold out about 20 years ago and has stuck to that sold-out state up to the present, so there's no need to worry about selling out now - it's already taken care of. :-)