This is Gnome/Mono speaking, not SUSE [LWN.net]

This is Gnome/Mono speaking, not SUSE

Posted Nov 28, 2006 8:00 UTC (Tue) by vblum (subscriber, #1151)
Parent article: Novell's IRC session on the Microsoft deal

AJ gets completely drowned out by Nat. It seems very disturbing that it's not the SUSE guys speaking here (whom I care about, as a SUSE user) but the Mono guy (about whose agenda I couldn't care less). This stinks. A good distribution is being dragged through the mud by a bunch of rookies with a narrow political agenda.

Jon, good questions. I note they were not answered, which is also not reassuring.

I have been a SUSE User for >8 years now, and I like the guys that made this distro work. I actually know some of them personally. My only consideration in my picking a distro is, do they have a future (enough mindshare/enthusiasm behind the distro), or not. Now I think, maybe not. The wrong people appear to be making the decisions now - this cannot possibly be without repercussions among their developers. What a capitally bad idea.

I will go FC within the next 1-2 days.

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This is Gnome/Mono speaking, not SUSE

Posted Nov 28, 2006 8:11 UTC (Tue) by k8to (subscriber, #15413) [Link]

Partially I think it is the personalities. Andreas Jaeger was never very loud. There are other much more .. vocal members of the SuSE Linux team, but they may not have been vetted for this irc meeting for the same reasons.

This is Gnome/Mono speaking, not SUSE

Posted Nov 28, 2006 8:41 UTC (Tue) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link]

Maybe they just didn't have time to attend, or just didn't want to. It is after all a very uninteresting topic for an engineer.

And don't forget: in reality it is a purely American/Japanese topic, as Microsoft could not inforce any software patents in Europe.

This is Gnome/Mono speaking, not SUSE

Posted Nov 28, 2006 9:12 UTC (Tue) by vblum (subscriber, #1151) [Link]

Errr ... in what world would those SUSE developers live? This Novell-MS agreement and its fallout would seem to have direct consequences for the professional careers of everyone involved, no? (regardless of how it plays out in the end)

Also, may I humbly suggest that this is not an America/Japanese topic. The reality is that software gets written in Europe with American / Japanese laws in mind - it would be supremely impractical to settle for software that is (temporarily) legal only in a part of a completely interlinked world. Americal software patents affect us directly here in Europe, already today.

This is Gnome/Mono speaking, not SUSE

Posted Nov 28, 2006 10:11 UTC (Tue) by aj (subscriber, #39001) [Link]

This is AJ speaking ;-). No, I was busy getting out 10.2 RCs and only chimed in where I felt my input was really needed. Nat was sitting besides me and I did not feel the need to take over.

This is Gnome/Mono speaking, not SUSE

Posted Nov 28, 2006 21:12 UTC (Tue) by vblum (subscriber, #1151) [Link]

Thanks for answering, really.

I would have felt more comfortable if someone from the SUSE distribution had been in the lead (no harm intended by that statement, this only reflects my honest impression while reading). It was my initial suspicion that chiefly the Mono proponents might have thought they'd benefit from such an agreement (to put out a perpetual criticism with respect to their project), while SUSE's developers did not stand to benefit much from an implicit admission that there were patent liabilities to be paid for in their distribution. The fact that Nat did most of the talking served to further that impression (with me, and me alone).

I am also aware that Novell takes the stand that there was no patent admission, but the agreement was immediately used to foster that rumour, no matter what Novell's intentions were - and I honestly think it was supremely naive to think that this would not happen.

I am sorry that this did so much damage to SUSE, really - I do not think the patent side of this agreement was a good idea at all. But, maybe time will prove me wrong (see Jon Corbets very reasonable article on the matter).

Best of luck, VB

This is Gnome/Mono speaking, not SUSE

Posted Nov 29, 2006 15:14 UTC (Wed) by lmb (subscriber, #39048) [Link]

It's fair to point out that Nat is the CTO of the business unit to which SUSE belongs, so indeed, a SUSE person _was_ in the lead.

Late followup

Posted Dec 13, 2006 21:21 UTC (Wed) by vblum (subscriber, #1151) [Link]

No idea whether this will ever be read two weeks after the fact - but just in case, I wanted to add that I did go Kubuntu in the end, on a brand new computer (with one of NVidia's famed cards ... as I was voted down in the decision).

Well ... that caused some issues for Kubuntu. What amazed me, though, is that when I went back to SUSE 10.2 for a try, _that_ experience was absolutely flawless - in fact, the most perfect Linux install I have ever had. (Essentially, nothing went wrong). Since I vowed to leave SUSE above (and honestly so) I thought it was more than fair to point out, in the same place, that that did not happen in the end. For me, OpenSUSE proved a completely superior distribution regarding the level of detail applied. So, I will wait and see what really comes of the Novell-MS deal after all.

Thanks!