On Wed, 8 Nov 2006, Martin Schlander wrote:
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 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.
Same with me. ...
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.
I see this payment as Novell paying MS for the support contracts from their having SLE/SLED/... running on windows in virtual servers. The results of MS promition of Linux. Maybe I am reading to much into it. But I do understand that giving back some funds for businees is a win-win for both.
3) Novell has given MS ammunition to FUD about interoperability and Office "Open" XML.
This is the area that concerns me the most. Given MS record for FUD I am afraid they will use this do put down linux.
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.
Me too. Thanks, -- Boyd Gerber <gerberb@zenez.com> ZENEZ 1042 East Fort Union #135, Midvale Utah 84047 --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org