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On Novell's acquisition of SUSEOn Novell's acquisition of SUSEPosted Nov 4, 2003 18:35 UTC (Tue) by rosie (guest, #4418)Parent article: On Novell's acquisition of SUSE Between Microsoft backing SCO, and IBM backing Novell and Redhat (I think this link's story is still correct), I'm starting to think that the whole GNU/Linux/OSS community is nothing but a few pieces on a big chessboard.....
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On Novell's acquisition of SUSE Posted Nov 4, 2003 19:13 UTC (Tue) by rknop (guest, #66) [Link] Certainly "corporate america" is probably incapable of perceiving it as anything else.A community-based project with a groundswell of grasroots support not controlled by any corporate interest... it just doesn't make sense. Early on, it's dismissed as hobbyists and not serious. (It still is by many.) Once it clearly becomes a force to be reckoned with, either it's all part of a clever chess game, perhaps (as SCO would assert) IBM pulling a sham on the rest of the world, or perhaps a bunch of companies pushing around naive programmers. But there is this base assumption that it simply *couldn't* have become so important and influential if there weren't corporate maneuvering behind it somewhere. Nobody can believe that it got big just because it was good, just because it was free, and just becuase the people behind it wanted to make it good. Sort of a sad commentary on our society that so many assume that there must have been a corporation behind it all for it to have become important. We are not people; we are merely consumers in somebody's economic model. -Rob
On Company000's acquisition of Company001 Posted Nov 4, 2003 20:20 UTC (Tue) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link] Ah, less of that negativity. Reading too many press releases can be bad for you health. Free Software will win. I am certain of this.Stuff is going to get worse before it gets better, SCO won't be the last attack on the community. But GPL'd software is always Free. GNU/Linux has gotten too big to be ignored. The mega-corps say "GPL is not business friendly", hoping they can convince us to give up on the goal of freedom. But reality is that of the Free unices, the mostly-GPL'd one is the one with the most business interest. Then they say "software can't be profitable *and* free". While ignoring that only 6% of M$ income is from software sales. Also ignoring that the software *using* community is currently answering to a microscopic software producing market. This is not a stable industry model. The infrastructure will have to change, but it will be Free Software that wins in the end.
On Company000's acquisition of Company001 Posted Nov 5, 2003 10:35 UTC (Wed) by evgeny (subscriber, #774) [Link] > While ignoring that only 6% of M$ income is from software sales.I've seen statements like this (with the percent value varying wildly, though). Is there a solid reference? Regards, Evgeny
On Company000's acquisition of Company001 Posted Nov 5, 2003 19:18 UTC (Wed) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link] short answer: No :)Despite seeing it just last week, I can't find/remember where I heard it. But even with this data removed, my point stands. Companies can give users freedom, and still pay wages. RedHat, CodeWeavers, g10code, MySQL AB, Ada Core Technologies, etc. have been doing it for years.
On Company000's acquisition of Company001 Posted Nov 6, 2003 10:13 UTC (Thu) by evgeny (subscriber, #774) [Link] > Despite seeing it just last week, I can't find/remember where I heard it.> > But even with this data removed, my point stands. > > Companies can give users freedom, and still pay wages. RedHat, CodeWeavers, > g10code, MySQL AB, Ada Core Technologies, etc. have been doing it for years. Right, and I have no doubt that one can build a successive business based on the free software. However, saying that only 6% of MS's income comes from the software sales you in fact imply that the other 94% of its multi-billion assets are legal (in the sense of FLOSS spirit). It allows MS to cry loadly: "See, we get our money in the same way these dirty commy hypocrites want (and use) themselves! Why should you (business) bother considering using free software? Why should you (senators) consider using the antitrust laws against us?" I believe the 6% number related to the desktop OS sales only (and still I'd expect it to be higher). Other rumors say that desktop OS + Office sales amount to roughly half of the yearly MS income. If it were 6% or so indeed, MS would happily made its software free (as in beer), since the neglible 6% would be easily compensated by a jump in the installed base (and hence, support fees).
On Company000's acquisition of Company001 Posted Nov 6, 2003 17:10 UTC (Thu) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link] > 94% of its multi-billion assets are legalSource of income cannot justify holding power over computer users. > Why should you (business) bother considering using free software? Because without software freedom, you do not fully own your data. And with file format lock-in, you cannot choose the best tool for the job. > Why should you (senators) consider using the antitrust laws against us? Because monopoly status of the OS has been used to gain monopoly status in the Office software realm as well as other realms. > If it were 6% or so indeed, MS would happily made its software I don't know much about Windows anymore. There could also be business motives for putting a high price on the box. One thing to remember is that their install base couldn't get much higher no matter what they do. As mentioned, I can't put up a decent defence for this statistic, but I can still defend that software freedom does not have to destroy profits.
On Company000's acquisition of Company001 Posted Nov 6, 2003 21:21 UTC (Thu) by evgeny (subscriber, #774) [Link] > I can still defend that software freedom does not have to destroy profits.Well, it does destroy profits - _unfair_ ones.
On Company000's acquisition of Company001 Posted Nov 6, 2003 23:04 UTC (Thu) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link] > Well, it does destroy profits - _unfair_ ones.Ok, I'll concede this much :)
On Novell's acquisition of SUSE Posted Nov 4, 2003 21:09 UTC (Tue) by rheggs (guest, #4737) [Link] I called one of my contacts in SuSE this evening. She had been in a meeting all afternoon, and had missed the public announcement. One of the first things she asked me was 'Has it been on Slashdot? What do people think about it?' Seems to me that SuSE at least, care for the opinions of the community.Time will tell what Novell is trying to achieve, but if their current front page is anything to go by (2.5 inch banner across the top of the page saying 'LINUX' with a red N), they seem to be making their position quite clear. Will be interesting to see how things pan out in the coming months.
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