Novell to be banned from selling Linux?

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SleepWalkerX

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Jun 29, 2004
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Originally posted by: postmortemIA
Yeah, except SUSE is great user-oriented distro, and I wouldn't like it dying.
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Agreed. This is horrible news. I at least hope OpenSUSE will manage to survive somehow if Novell gets some kind of unmerited punishment.. They've contributed so much to OSS that it'd just be a shame to see them go.
 
Shamrock

Shamrock

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Oct 11, 1999
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The quote he printed is entirely accurate, the FSF will have a decision in 2 weeks. The rest of the Reuter's article, however, is out of context.
 
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drag

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Jul 4, 2002
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Reuters is full of ******. Seriously, hugely full of ******.

There are certainly individuals who would like to 'punish' Novell in that way, but it's normal for every big orginization to have people like that and especially with open source/free software stuff you have a expectation of speaking out vs in a corporate setting were you have to have carefully crafted press releases.



Reuters has a longer article you can find here:
http://today.reuters.com/news/articlene...02280856_RTRUKOC_0_US-NOVELL-LINUX.xml

The quotes are taken out of context and everything is worded to be intentially misleading. In otherwords they've done what they've can to spin the issue short of anything that would get them sued for liable.

Eben Moglen response to the article is this:
"What he actually asked me," said Moglen in an email interview, "was 'Is it true that some members of the community want GPLv3 to keep Novell from distributing future versions of GPL'd software?' I said, 'Yes, the Free Software Foundation is opposed to the deal, and is thinking about what to do; there will be a new draft soon [of the GPLv3]" (GNU General Public License Version 3).

Therefore, "The actual quote he prints is entirely accurate, but his lede destroys the context and is making unnecessary waves."
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Reuters is just going to try their best to make the GPLv3 look like it was a hostile response to the Novell/Microsoft deal, which it isn't having been in the works for several years now.


Anybody using Suse or OpenSuse or Novell has nothing to worry about from the FSF.
 
Shamrock

Shamrock

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Oct 11, 1999
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But if you read bersl2's article from Groklaw, it's true. Groklaw is an Intellectual Property law firm...er, well...a member of one who does private blogging.
 
Nothinman

Nothinman

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Sep 14, 2001
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I at least hope OpenSUSE will manage to survive somehow if Novell gets some kind of unmerited punishment.. They've contributed so much to OSS that it'd just be a shame to see them go.
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While I don't consider their contributions all that great all of their free software will live on just fine, only the things that they had not released the source for would have a questionable future.
 
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n0cmonkey

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Jun 10, 2001
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They'll be fine until major projects (like Samba) switch to GPLv3. Then they may have something to worry about. And maybe not. Ask Jeremy Allison who left Novell because of the Microsoft deal.
 
postmortemIA

postmortemIA

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Jul 11, 2006
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There are no principles when it comes to money, and every company is in business to make money.
 
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drag

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Jul 4, 2002
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Originally posted by: Shamrock
But if you read bersl2's article from Groklaw, it's true. Groklaw is an Intellectual Property law firm...er, well...a member of one who does private blogging.
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Gloklaw isn't jack ___.

It's a blog by a person who is a paralegal (as in not even a lawyer) who got famous by blowing SCO case out of porportion and misrepresenting stuff.

The Reuters article is full of crap. There is no ifs, ands, or buts about it.

What Novell and Microsoft did is would normally be against the GPLv2 license, but they found a work around. They made a mistake and lost a lot of goodwill and some developers over it. But _thats_it_. Nothing in the GPLv3 is going to make Novell illegal to ship Suse, it will mearly make the Novell/Microsoft deal much less attractive as the 'covenant' would have to extend to everybody that uses code that Novell distributes, not just the ones that pay them money. They will still be perfectly able to ship Linux and nobody, at least nobody that matters, realy wants to take that away from them.
 
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SleepWalkerX

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Jun 29, 2004
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Originally posted by: Nothinman
I at least hope OpenSUSE will manage to survive somehow if Novell gets some kind of unmerited punishment.. They've contributed so much to OSS that it'd just be a shame to see them go.
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While I don't consider their contributions all that great all of their free software will live on just fine, only the things that they had not released the source for would have a questionable future.
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What are you talking about?
 
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Brazen

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Jul 14, 2000
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Originally posted by: Nothinman
What are you talking about?
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My statement seems pretty self-explanatory to me.
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Self-explanatory indeed, but inaccurate IMO. Novell maintains some big projects, such as Evolution, and they employ developers to work on a lot of upstream software. Yeah someone else COULD take over their projects, and maybe someone else will pay those developers, but it will be a big loss of resources for OSS.
 
Nothinman

Nothinman

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Sep 14, 2001
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Self-explanatory indeed, but inaccurate IMO. Novell maintains some big projects, such as Evolution, and they employ developers to work on a lot of upstream software. Yeah someone else COULD take over their projects, and maybe someone else will pay those developers, but it will be a big loss of resources for OSS.
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But Novell didn't start any of them and Evolution is one of the worst examples IMO since it's probably the most unstable MUA available for Linux.
 
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drag

Elite Member
Jul 4, 2002
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Originally posted by: Nothinman
Self-explanatory indeed, but inaccurate IMO. Novell maintains some big projects, such as Evolution, and they employ developers to work on a lot of upstream software. Yeah someone else COULD take over their projects, and maybe someone else will pay those developers, but it will be a big loss of resources for OSS.
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But Novell didn't start any of them and Evolution is one of the worst examples IMO since it's probably the most unstable MUA available for Linux.
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Plus nowadays Evolution is in 'mantainance mode'. It's up to the Gnome folks to support it from now on, I beleive.

I use it, but I think that Thunderbird is more appropriate for most people.

Novell does do some stuff that is good. It wouldn't be the end of the world if they died, but it would definately be a set back.
 
Nothinman

Nothinman

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Sep 14, 2001
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Plus nowadays Evolution is in 'mantainance mode'. It's up to the Gnome folks to support it from now on, I beleive.
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Which is BS because it's crap, it's got some of the worst IMAP support I've ever seen.

It wouldn't be the end of the world if they died, but it would definately be a set back.
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IMO it would be a very minor set back. Name recognition-wise it would be a bit of set back, but technologically it would barely matter.
 
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Brazen

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Jul 14, 2000
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Does NDS even still exist? Back in the day, NDS was the standard. It was the 300 lb gorilla of directory servers before Active Directory came along. Ever since Novell bought SuSe, I had hoped Novell would come up with an Active Directory equivalent for linux, either to control Windows clients or linux clients, or both. I haven't really heard much about NDS or any other such things from Novell recently.
 
Nothinman

Nothinman

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Sep 14, 2001
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I believe NDS runs on Linux now, along with Novell's other previously closed offerings like Zen and whatever their printer crap is called.
 
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BucNews

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Mar 11, 2007
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I think it would be a very stupid thing for the Linux community to piss off Novell... they are the ones that told SCO to take a flying leap for the Linux community.
 
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