On 11/7/06, Pascal Bleser wrote:

To avoid further FUD and discredit of openSUSE.org (including its community), maybe it would be a good idea to post the position of the openSUSE.org community (and staff) somewhere on the website, to make

This would be a good thing. Please, also include some paragraph about who is running the show at openSUSE.org. After 10.1 many people believe it's Novell management who is calling the shots (and using OpenSUSE as testbed). -- HG. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org

Andreas Jaeger wrote:

I'm currently writing a blog entry about this and will try to clarify. Unfortunately I'm not finished yet...

Andreas

Oh! Thank you for the quick reply! I'm happy to know that. I could wait and I could tell other japanese users to wait for the announce, too. noniko noniko@netbeans.jp --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org

Martin Schlander writes:

Tirsdag 07 november 2006 13:55 skrev Andreas Jaeger:

...

I'm currently writing a blog entry about this and will try to clarify. Unfortunately I'm not finished yet...

Take your time. It needs to be good ;-)

Then I should better put out it now and tell you I had not enough time to make it good ;-). Yes, I do take my time and asked a few for comments on it so that it is as good as I'm able to do it ;-) Andreas -- Andreas Jaeger, aj@suse.de, http://www.suse.de/~aj/ SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, Maxfeldstr. 5, 90409 Nürnberg, Germany GPG fingerprint = 93A3 365E CE47 B889 DF7F FED1 389A 563C C272 A126

Hi, Andreas Thank you for letting me know about your blog. -- noniko noniko@netbeans.jp Blogs: http://www.jroller.com/page/Noniko/Weblog (Broken English) http://www.myblog.de/noniko (Worse German) --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org

jdd sur free writes:

Andreas Jaeger a écrit :

...

It's up now at the following two places (same text): http://andreasjaeger.blogspot.com/

why do you say:

Currently you can run Windows virtualized on Linux but the other way round is not working -

I often run linux on vmware/windows, so this claim don't seems right. May be you mean about an other kind of virtualisation (Xen?)

Yes, I mean Xen - and paravirtualization, Andreas -- Andreas Jaeger, aj@suse.de, http://www.suse.de/~aj/ SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, Maxfeldstr. 5, 90409 Nürnberg, Germany GPG fingerprint = 93A3 365E CE47 B889 DF7F FED1 389A 563C C272 A126

Adrian Schröter wrote:

I am not sure what to write here, almost everything is said in the announcements, but of course there will be questions. So better raise questions now and we (as a SUSE/Novell employee acting as an interface to Novell) need to find answers to them.

We may need to create an FAQ out of them ...

Nice idea! I myself don't think so seriously about this topic, But as one of the hottest SUSE user in Japan, I wished to know something about openSUSE's way of thinking. Maybe someone would ask me for it. And I did not know you had been on vacation. Gomennne(I'm sorry). noniko --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org

Pascal Bleser wrote:

Now that calls for a contest.

Aha! I have many content in Japanese, but I'm going to write more in English. Let me introduce one I have contributed in en.opensuse.org. http://en.opensuse.org/Xen_Full_Virtualization_Example I think SUSE is the best environment of Xen virtualization. If there were no SUSE package, I would have never dreamed of trying Xen.

You have a picture of you somewhere ? (just kidding, couldn't resist ;))

A Japanese woman would be a little shy to display her picture :). Instead, I have a hand-drawn portraits of myself in my blog. The example is: http://www.jroller.com/page/Noniko?entry=warm_biz Anyway, I posted in the Japanese user's mailing list, suse-linux-ja@suse.com about the discussion. Some Japanese users are interested in detail of "Patent protection" and the future of Novell. Most of them love SUSE and want to continue using it, even if they might sometimes critisize it. noniko noniko@netbeans.jp --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org

Adrian Schröter wrote:

Am Tuesday 07 November 2006 12:38 schrieb noniko:

...

Recently I have read about many post about Novell-MS collaboration in opensuse@opensuse.org ML (Though it is an ML for general support....).

I'd like to how openSUSE should think about this topic. I don't think it a weird question, because the "Microsoft/Novell Collaboration" news is at the top page of opensuse.org site.

maybe it is bit too prominent there ...

...

For example:

1.It is a very important news to openSUSE, so the users should keep watching on this topic. 2.It is just a matter of Novell and has nothing or very little to do with openSUSE. 3.openSUSE only report the news and do not think it should make any comments. 4.Now discussing. Later there'll be some announcement from openSUSE.

Either of the 4 would be all right for me. I just like to know.

I am not sure what to write here, almost everything is said in the announcements, but of course there will be questions. So better raise questions now and we (as a SUSE/Novell employee acting as an interface to Novell) need to find answers to them.

The announcements raise more questions than anything else. There has been a lot of FUD (e.g. by a Fedora maintainer who works for Red Hat, or trolls like Bruce Perens), but there have been some *potentially*/hypothetically valid points as well. I think it's important to put forward that the openSUSE.org community and the openSUSE distribution is FOSS, it's driven by employees of Novell but also by contributions from people of the community who do that in their spare time, for free, and that we're not any less "holy" (FSF-speak) or "worthy" (OSS-speak) than any other FOSS project. When stuff like "Fedora will never compromise" or "boycott SUSE" is written in the blogosphere and published/referenced everywhere, we should really have a FAQ/position of the openSUSE community to hold against it. Future shall tell whether Novell has cut its throat or will become a real contender to Redhat through the MS deal, but we shouldn't let rumors, false assumptions and other potential damage in the FOSS community insult or discredit the SUSE Linux distribution nor the work of the openSUSE.org community. We don't deserve less respect nor credit than Debian, Fedora or Ubuntu. (IMO it should also be mentioned again how many projects Novell is sponsoring through full-time or part-time developers on their payroll - be it OpenOffice.org, KDE, GNOME, Mono, Linux kernel, ... ...)

We may need to create an FAQ out of them ...

Yes, a FAQ would be great too. cheers -- -o) Pascal Bleser http://linux01.gwdg.de/~pbleser/ /\\ _\_v http://www.fosdem.org http://opensuse.org

Am Tuesday 07 November 2006 16:36 schrieb Martin Schlander:

Tirsdag 07 november 2006 16:17 skrev Pascal Bleser:

...

Yes, a FAQ would be great too.

I agree a lot with Pascal, it's impossible to predict the consequences of the agreement in general, but it's very clear that openSUSE is suffering a lot.

is it ? can't it be also the case that openSUSE and the general open source world gets also lots of new chances ? Some chances, I do see right now: Linux will run easily under Windows. What does that mean ? Way more people will be able to try & use Linux and its applications. People who would never risk their Windows installation for just testing Linux. Imagine the hughe amount of Windows users. They all are now potential Linux users :) Document exchange may become finally work for sure, because MS will join OOo development.

I sent the following questions to Novell Open Audio for their upcoming show on the subject, maybe some of these could be rephrased for an FAQ, and maybe they could also serve as inspiration for AJ's blog regarding which subjects to cover.

I can't answer them all right now, but I would like to comment some at least.

1) What is Novell's answer to the allegations of GPL violations with regards to: a) offering special patent protection for it's customers that does not apply to other users of the same code, including openSUSE users. And b) paying a royalty to a third party for distributing free software.

please see my comment to Pascals mail on opensuse. Short version: this will definitive not happen thanks to the GPL license ;)

2) It's announced that MS will receive part of Novell's revenue. Is this a fixed sum per SLED subscription sold? or how will this be calculated?

sorry, I do not know the details, but these will usually not get published by companies who do an agreement. ...

5) A lot of headlines say "MS to interoperate with open source". Isn't it the case that MS will only cooperate on interoperability with Novell's proprietary products?

well, thanks to the GPL you can only do changes, which are also usable by others ;) So there is no way to add a functionality in a GPL software which is not usable from someone else. There could be of course a commercial product on top of it in some SUSE Linux Enterprise product, but this is not a topic for openSUSE.org, I think.

6) Novell have talked a lot about open sourcing more of it's proprietary technologies in the recent years, which has endeed happened on some occasions, will this deal affect the plans to open up more technologies in the future?

Well, this is always decided for every single task. I do not think that anyone from Novell said that all Novell products will be open source. But we do have openSUSE.org for this reason. It is clear that openSUSE.org is an open source project.

7) Are Novell surprised by the very 'mixed' reception that the deal has gotten from the community with users leaving and some even talking about a boycott?

I just can tell from my personal view. I am not surprised that there are strong concerns, but I am also very happy that a large amount of people want to figure out what this really means. And that it is not limited to "a way" view. In the end, as far as I can see it atm, there are only new possibilities and no new limitations. The world becomes better by this step :) And seriously, people who expect now the sudden death of Novell or open source do definitive not understand the power of open source.

8) Isn't this whole thing Microsoft succeeding with the oldest trick in the book - "divide and conqour"?

Might be. But divide something from the 90% what they conqueror to us is a nice step for us. ..

10) The patent issue seems to play a large role in this whole thing. Which surprises me a bit, since I thought Novell were focusing on the developing markets that don't seem to be as polluted by out of control software patents as the US apparently is. I hope Novell are working on a better long term solution to the problem than paying revenue to competitors. Money which will of course be reinvested in putting Novell out of business.

These are new, I didn't send them to NOA, thought of 'em later.

The problem is that issues with patents do already affect our software. And we need to deal with them. But these problems did also exist before and need really to spend here quite some effort to find such software and remove it (because it is very often anyway a GPL violation).

11) Is it possible that we will see technology that is known to be covered by a MS patent, implemented in openSUSE under an OSS license in the future?

This is something which we need to clarify in our policies, which are getting prepared for public review. My personal feeling would say that this could be theoretical possible, but it would be definitive happen in a way that this makes it visible. For example providing an extra (and optional!) package via the openSUSE Add-On CDs, like we do with the other binary only stuff.

12) Is there any (small) area where the deal helps the Linux community at large, and not Novell/SUSE Linux _only_.

As written above, work on samba, OpenOffice and mono should be helpfull for everyone who does use these. bye adrian -- Adrian Schroeter SUSE Linux Products GmbH, Maxfeldstr. 5, 90409 Nuernberg, Germany email: adrian@suse.de --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org

On Tuesday 07 November 2006 13:24, Peter Flodin wrote:

...

At least part of the openSUSE community is suffering a lot.

Clearly any "suffering" is self-imposed or a matter of perception only. All the wailing and gnashing of teeth is based wholly on assumptions and alogical projections of things that occurred or were peceived to have occurred in the past. It's all pretty iffy, at this point.

They have woken up one day to find the likes of Steve Balmer threaten Linux distributors with FUD and are using SUSE by name to do it. This tugs at the core reasons why we use Linux in the first place. I can fully understand where the boycott SUSE sentiment is coming from.

I though those on the inside of the Linux world, certainly business people who are distributing Linux commercially, could see through any of the stock Microsoft FUD tactics. If not, we're in bigger trouble than this deal might portend. People are just flying off the handle. It's premature at this point to do anything other than wait and see. Asking questions is fine. Hypothesizing future events following on from this agreement is a reasonable thing to do, _if done in a reasonable and logical manner_. But most of of what we're hearing is just a more intense version of what we heard when Novell bought SuSE and when the announcement of a shift of emphasis from KDE to Gnome was made. As far as I can tell, the sky has not fallen, not here, not over Provo, not anywhere in the Linux world. People need to chill out and think clearly before speaking and acting.

...

Pflodo

Randall Schulz --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org

Hi, http://www.novell.com/linux/microsoft/ I appreciate the above page. Especially there is a link for asking question directly to Novell. I think I am completely satisfied. Thank you. -- noniko noniko@netbeans.jp Blogs: http://www.jroller.com/page/Noniko/Weblog (Broken English) http://www.myblog.de/noniko (Worse German) --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org

today in our IRC meeting around 5:30 UTC (6:30) Kurt Garloff will join the meeting and we will have a Q&A session on the Novell/Microsoft announcement,

Wow! I respect Kurt Garloff very much. He has made a great contribution of packaging Xen into SUSE! Unfortunately it's very late for me in Japan to attend the meeting an hour later. Please say hello to Kurt. And sorry to change a topic a bit. -- noniko noniko@netbeans.jp Blogs: http://www.jroller.com/page/Noniko/Weblog (Broken English) http://www.myblog.de/noniko (Worse German) --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org

Onsdag 08 november 2006 08:49 skrev richard (MQ):

I think a lot of the posts on this thread rather miss the point - once big business gets involved in an organisation, the *only* thing that's really important to them is the bottom line. Community spirit and F/OSS values count for nothing to the accountants.

Of course. But it is possible that the FLOSS community and big enterprise can have common interests. Certainly my continued support of Novell (translation, beta testing, promotion, user support), is dependent on Novell's actions not contradicting my interests and the interests of the Linux community at large. And I assume this applies for many others.

My very real fear is that now, unless the OpenSuSE community can put clear water between it and Novell, the developers, testers and other supporters will find other distributions to work with and OpenSuSE will wither. Retaining this support - and mine too, FWIW - is crucial. Statements from Andreas may not be enough, however well thought through.

I don't think it's possible to put clear water between Novell/SLE and openSUSE, and thus it should not even be attempted. The only way I could see it, was a complete fork. The way to go must be to inform people and let the truth be known - hopefully the truth isn't unacceptable. I must say with the last FAQ, with the community questions most of my worries are laid to rest. The only things that now still leaves a little bad taste are the following, pretty intangible issues. 1) Novell to a certain degree working around the GPL. With the new information it's not as bad as I had feared, I think comparison with TiVoization is going to far. 2) I don't like that Novell try to take advantage of customers being scared of patent litigation. The way I understand things now, Novell are indeed paying an innovation tax to MS, and at the same time saying: "we don't infringe patents now, and we won't do it in the future either." Either they're lying/wrong about infringing patents, or they're paying a truck load of money to give customers a psychological sense of security that they pretty much had before. Either case I'm not happy. 3) Novell has given MS ammunition to FUD about interoperability and Office "Open" XML. These are things I can live with however, albeit I'm not pleased. Of course I have very little insight into the benefits this deal brings in enterprise environments. I sure hope they make up for it. Martin --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org

On Wed, 2006-11-08 at 16:53 +0100, Martin Schlander wrote:

2) I don't like that Novell try to take advantage of customers being scared of patent litigation. The way I understand things now, Novell are indeed paying an innovation tax to MS, and at the same time saying: "we don't infringe patents now, and we won't do it in the future either." Either they're lying/wrong about infringing patents, or they're paying a truck load of money to give customers a psychological sense of security that they pretty much had before. Either case I'm not happy.

Look at it like this; if a child is convinced that there's a monster under his bed that wants to eat him, his parents can try to convince him that there's no such thing as monsters, or at least that there's no room for a monster to fit under this particular bed, or whatever. But most of the time, it ends up being a lot easier to just buy the kid a night light. The parents know that the night light doesn't really do anything, but it makes everyone's lives easier, so... As you noted, Novell has publicly said that it doesn't know of any patents that Linux infringes, and that if it found any problems, it would fix them. To me, that shows that it's not trying to "take advantage of customers being scared". It's just acknowledging that *some* customers disagree with Novell's analysis of the legal situation, and so it's providing additional assurances to those customers, even though Novell believes that those assurances shouldn't be necessary. (I don't speak for Novell blah blah blah you know the schtick) -- Dan --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org