>> They're selling out their customers for a temporary gain.
How's that?
Ken Elliott
=====================
-----Original Message-----
From: slug@nks.net [mailto:slug@nks.net] On Behalf Of Levi Bard
Sent: Sunday, November 05, 2006 2:43 PM
To: slug@nks.net
Subject: Re: [SLUG] Microsoft rides the NERD SLED!
Obviously Microsoft has no motive in this except increased
revenue/marketshare/what have you.
For Novell, there are two possible options:
1) They really are altruistic and they really think that somehow a deal like
this will be a Good Thing for Free Software.
For this hypothesis to be true, several other things also have to be true.
For one, *nobody* in Novell's situation believes that MS is offering them a
deal like this out of the goodness of their hearts.
You don't stay alive as long as Novell has by handing your cow over to the
first guy with some magic beans. Novell *has* to know that MS has some
purpose for this deal other than what has been stated. So, in this
instance, Novell thinks it has a pretty good idea about what the ulterior
motive is, and is betting that it has an ace up its sleeve that will ward
off the impending doom. If this is the case, good luck, and may Novell
succeed where nearly all have failed.
2) They're selling out their customers for a temporary gain. They know,
guess, or have been told what MS plans, but have reached an acceptable price
for the instillation of apathy.
This seems the more likely hypothesis to me. Would an organization like
Novell gamble all its investments into GNU/Linux, the Ximian projects, the
Mono project, etc., on a chance at being able to subvert a guessed potential
maneuver by historically the most successfully devious entity in the
software industry? Unlikely. As has been conjectured before, even in this
thread, the acquisitions of SuSE and Ximian may not have been enough to stop
the bleeding from the amputation of the Netware-related products. Perhaps
Novell has decided that its only path to survival leads to becoming a
Microsoft subsidiary.
And what is Microsoft's sinister ulterior motive? Of the conjectures I've
heard, educated and otherwise, the most logical in my opinion is that of a
lever to overturn the GPL. MS now has a patent agreement with a huge
distributor of GPL software, and could easily use it to further muddy the
waters around "intellectual property"
(http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.xhtml) and how the GPL and software
distributed under it relates to existing patent and copyright law. If MS is
successful in this venture, it could easily become the sole authorized legal
distributor of GNU/Linux, making the Debian Project, other distributors, and
users of these distributions illegal code pirates who are stealing the work
of honest developers. DRM would almost certainly become an integral part of
the "official"
kernel, vendor hardware support would become solely targeted at the
"official" kernel, interoperability would get soundly broken, and renegade
kernel forks would soon get left behind.
-- Tcsh: Now with higher FPS! http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/shouldbefree.html ----------------------------------------------------------------------- This list is provided as an unmoderated internet service by Networked Knowledge Systems (NKS). Views and opinions expressed in messages posted are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of NKS or any of its employees.----------------------------------------------------------------------- This list is provided as an unmoderated internet service by Networked Knowledge Systems (NKS). Views and opinions expressed in messages posted are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of NKS or any of its employees.
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