[opensuse-project] Closing the Candor Gap at Novell
I'm posting this here because I want to reach Novell/Suse developers without throwing it to the wolves on the opensuse user lists. I've been reading all there is to read about the Novell/MS deal since it happened. My company had been considering doing business with Novell, so I'd already been doing diligence. For us the deal changed everything. Definitely made us take a step back from Novell. Novell had been our favorite company because of its developers. I've had Suse on my desktop for more than two years now, and I tend to be more of a dilettante than a loyalist when it comes to OS's. Just haven't had an urge to change. And I can easily find whatever help I need in the mailing list archives. The connection between Novell/Suse engineers and users is unparalleled. There is a feeling of real openness in this community. Watching the fallout from the Deal has magnified my faith in Novell/Suse developers. I am very impressed with how publicly you are struggling with this, questioning it, and expressing opinions about on mailing lists and in on-the-record meetings. I understand that most of you are guardedly optimistic about the whole thing. The contrast between the openness in the developer community and the corporate-style disinformation coming from the Novell execs is glaring. It is much more this lack of candor at the executive level than the deal itself that makes us nervous about going forward with Novell. There is a lot of speculation about the REAL reasons Novell went into this - slipping revenues, sudden need for cash, massive internal FUD due to musical-chairs style executive turnovers... Any or all of these reasons are understandable. I would be greatly relieved to hear these reasons from Mr. Hovsepian or Mr. Jaffe, or anyone at the top level. No matter how sordid the real reasons are, I'm sure they are perfectly sensible and human and reasonable in the context of running a major corporation that has been floundering for quite a while. If the executives started behaving with the candor of the engineers, I believe that they would have a chance of regaining some of the trust of the Open Source community. Some of you guys actually sit down with the execs from time to time, right? What are the chances that you could convince them that if they started to adopt public openness into their corporate culture they would be a lot more credible as supporters of Open Source and Open Standards? I think right at this moment Novell is at a tipping point between closed-door oligarchy and real freedom and creativity. You guys are smart. I have faith you'll figure out a way to give the company a nudge. Saill White saill.white@openlina.com --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
Saill White a écrit :
Some of you guys actually sit down with the execs from time to time, right? What are the chances that you could convince them that if they started to adopt public openness into their corporate culture they would be a lot more credible as supporters of Open Source and Open Standards?
i'm not anything in Novell :-) I doubt if what you propose is possible. Programmers are like scientists, sharing results have drawbacks but great advantages, so the opensource model can live. Managing a hudge company is entirely different. In bare view, you must generate cash for the owners, the more the better. basically you should sell for a big price a cheap product :-). Making this involve cheating :-). Open this should be like playing poker with all cards on the table..; wa must all hope openSUSE will end on making Novell'x cash grow... jdd -- http://www.dodin.net http://dodin.org/mediawiki/index.php/GPS_Lowrance_GO --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
On 11/14/2006 09:41 AM, jdd sur free wrote:
basically you should sell for a big price a cheap product :-). Making this involve cheating :-). Open this should be like playing poker with all cards on the table..;
Well I think that's the fundamental problem with Open Source. It's hard to charge a high price for something other people give away free. You pretty much need to go in the direction of a service model. And everyone knows you can't become a Microsoft or an Oracle that way. Unless of course you get creative and go for some kind of patent protection racket. I think Novell's got a lot of pressure from their board to keep those revenues rising in a way that a service company just plain can't. And maybe to that end they've been messing around with the accounting a bit, or something - banks don't usually come down on companies that hard for missing a filing date. But at the same time, they are supporting employees who ask them tough questions on podcasts. They have links to Novell-critical blogs on their own website. They are letting people like Nat Friedman climb the corporate ladder. Maybe they have a toe in the "new business model" water. I wish they would just tell us what's really up. That's the main thing that bugs me. And if I were a Novell developer I'd be extremely annoyed. On 11/14/2006 03:06 PM, Boyd Lynn Gerber wrote:
Take a look at the IRC log from last week.
http://en.opensuse.org/Meetings/Status_Meeting_2006-11-08/transcript
That is great. It's what inspired me to write.
There will be an other IRC session. From the list it looks like next week.
Were Mr. Hovsepian and Mr. Jaffe invited? Maybe they should be ;)
I think we all are in a wait and see mode. We hope for the best, expect the worst and take what ever comes.
Ordinarily I'd agree with you. I'm certainly not wiping Suse off my disk. But if I'm choosing amongst Open Source companies to partner with right now, the need to wait and see with Novell pretty much removes them from the short list. Saill saill.white@openlina.com --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
On Tue, 14 Nov 2006, Saill White wrote:
Novell had been our favorite company because of its developers. I've had Suse on my desktop for more than two years now, and I tend to be more of a dilettante than a loyalist when it comes to OS's. Just haven't had an urge to change. And I can easily find whatever help I need in the mailing list archives. The connection between Novell/Suse engineers and users is unparalleled. There is a feeling of real openness in this community. ... The contrast between the openness in the developer community and the corporate-style disinformation coming from the Novell execs is glaring. It is much more this lack of candor at the executive level than the deal itself that makes us nervous about going forward with Novell.
Take a look at the IRC log from last week. http://en.opensuse.org/Meetings/Status_Meeting_2006-11-08/transcript ...
Some of you guys actually sit down with the execs from time to time, right? What are the chances that you could convince them that if they started to adopt public openness into their corporate culture they would be a lot more credible as supporters of Open Source and Open Standards?
There will be an other IRC session. From the list it looks like next
week. You could ask your questions then. I think we all are in a wait
and see mode. We hope for the best, expect the worst and take what ever
comes.
Good Luck,
--
Boyd Gerber
Saill, let me just answer briefly to your email: I'm glad to be at a company where we can discuss in an open environment. Be assured that we have discussions about the Microsoft/Novell deal on all levels. Just one example: last week Jeff Jaffe visited our offices in Nuernberg and Prague (this is where most of the development work for openSUSE happens) and discussed several hours with the complete team the whole deal in a very open discussion. I do believe that Jeff understands the issues. You might want to read his blog and comment there: http://www.novell.com/ctoblog/ , 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
On 11/15/2006 02:10 AM, Andreas Jaeger wrote:
I'm glad to be at a company where we can discuss in an open environment. Be assured that we have discussions about the Microsoft/Novell deal on all levels. Just one example: last week Jeff Jaffe visited our offices in Nuernberg and Prague (this is where most of the development work for openSUSE happens) and discussed several hours with the complete team the whole deal in a very open discussion. I do believe that Jeff understands the issues. You might want to read his blog and comment there: http://www.novell.com/ctoblog/ ,
Andreas, Thanks very much for your reply. I have great respect for your obvious sincerity and for your loyalty. I have read Dr. Jaffe's blog, and to be honest I found it to be extremely confusing. It is difficult for me to believe that this is not intentional. The subject matter is not innately incomprehensible, but the writing makes it seem so. It is poorly organized and meandering. He states that he will address certain points, then he does so either unclearly or not at all. He uses a great many words to deliver very little relevant information. My first reaction on seeing something like this is normally to fall asleep. But you have inspired me to actually sit down with it and attempt to summarize its meaning. Luckily English is my first language, so it has only taken me hours rather than months. If Dr. Jaffe's speaking style is anything like his writing style it's no wonder that you were all still deeply confused after several hours of "very open discussion". What a nightmare that must have been. The upshot is that the blog contains very little relevant information and that once this information is extracted from the background noise it actually raises more questions than it answers. This particular entry only covers virtualization, not patents or Office document format interoperability which are touched on in a similarly uninformative manner in his earlier blog entries. Below is my attempt at translating Mr. Jaffe's blog entry of November 7th into clear, relevant, informative English. I have summarized each section of the article using Dr. Jaffe's words and organizational structure, then "translated" each section by eliminating superfluous information and organizing what remains into a logical structure. I have inserted my comments and questions in parentheses throughout. /* --------- Saill's attempt at making sense of Dr. Jaffe's Blog -------- "Intro" 1. a broad and industry transforming deal with numerous implications 2. benefits for open source 3. financial terms - very favorable for Novell *** "Intro" - translation This is a broad and industry deal with numerous implications, benefits for open source and favourable financial terms for Novell (putting these points in the intro implies that they will be addressed in the body of the blog) "Purpose of the Deal" 1. Customer needs - environments must work together 2. Technology opportunities - deeply embedded virtualization 3. Server consolidation scenarios - (this should be a sub-point of point 1) 4. Openness (how is this title related to its sub-points?) a. many customers run either all Windows or all Linux (yes, and many customers don't) b. such customers are reluctant to support applications that only run on an unsupported operating systems (unsupported how? which OS is unsupported? Windows? Linux?, non-Novell Linux?) c. With virtualization, we add choice. Windows shops can support Linux applications, virtualized on SLES – and vice versa. (Oh, ok, another subpoint of point 1, I guess) Conclusion - Novell could not solve any of these problems convincingly and quickly without the collaboration of Microsoft. We will compete vigorously with Microsoft to push for Linux and Open Source rather than Windows (the use of the word "convincingly" is odd here, but ok...) *** "Purpose of the Deal" - translation 1. Customers want environments to work together (they need good virtualization) They want to consolidate servers (virtualization helps by allowing multiple OS's on one machine) They want to be able to run the apps of one OS on another, ie, SLES virtualized on Windows running Linux apps. 2. Virtualization can be deeply embedded (hypervisor style virtualization like XEN has the ability to present platforms to the guest OS's that are tuned to present virtual hardware optimized to meet the specific requirements of the guest OS. This can result in great increased speed and stability. The more that is known about the guest, the better tuned the virtualization system can be.) Conclusion: Novell needs MS collaboration to solve these problems convincingly and quickly. (Ok, it's clear that MS collaboration would be nice. But the Open Source world is really good at back-engineering MS products, so I'd hardly say Novell "needs" this. Clearly if Microsoft helps Novell understand the details of its OS Novell can more quickly offer a virtualiztion platform that is well-tuned for XP or Vista or whatever as a guest OS. So that's great, but two questions arise: 1. What does Microsoft get out of it? The way Linux works is public knowledge. If you have the kernel sources all the documentation you need is right there, in plain text. If this is the heart of the deal, why is Microsoft paying Novell, not vice-versa? 2. How do Microsoft engineers help provide interoperability without revealing any source code? I picture this shiny new research center all full of engineers playing charades - the Novell engineers taking wild guesses at how various aspects of Vista work while the Microsoft engineers wildly pantomime clues. Then in five years, once Vista is humming along on Xen, the contract expires, the MS engineers stay up all night removing the "if 0"'s from the code, release VistaII, and the whole thing comes to a screeching halt. Ok, that's a wild fantasy, but still...) "The Drumbeat around Virtualization" (no translation necessary) 1. Customers want vitualization and here's proof (ok, got it already) "Different Forms of Virtualization" 1. Two types of virtualization - "full" and "para-" 2 MS/Novell collaboration helps full virtualization go faster and makes paravirtualization possible *** "Different Forms of Virtualization" - translation 1. Two flavors of hypervisor virtualization, can be understood as "plain" and "optimized for specific guests". 2. With collaboration Novell will get Vista working on Xen faster and will also be able to optimize Xen for Vista better (This is covered above. Still, why are they paying Novell for this?) "Novell’s Virtualization Solution" 1. Open Source - It's open source 2. Community - Those working on it include Novell and Red Hat, now Microsoft, AMD and Intel, Dell, HP, and IBM, ISVs, management companies, and start-ups. 3. Paravirtualization: Performance improved by exploiting hardware assists. 4. Server consolidation: Novell's virtualization allows this 5. Support of different operating systems: Novell's virtualization allows this *** "Novell’s Virtualization Solution" - translation .1 Novell is working together with the open source and hardware communities to provide an optimized virtualization solution that allows server consolidation (as any virtualization solution does) and supports lots of OS's (as any virtualization solution should). */ ---------- End sense-making attempt ------------- So the conclusion here is that Dr. Jaffe has used many, many words to tell us that interoperability through virtualization is a fabulous thing and that it's a Good Thing that Microsoft has agreed to help Novell out with it. Still, he has given us no real information about WHAT Microsoft will provide to assist with interoperablity, or about WHY Microsoft is paying Novell for the pleasure of lending said assistance. If I were you guys, I'd ask him those questions. Or maybe I'll ask him myself, as you suggest. Saill --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
2006/11/14, Saill White
For us the deal changed everything. Definitely made us take a step back from Novell.
Hi, Saill i read your mail carefully, but frankly i don't understand what are your exact fear about the deal. The same deal, make me talk with our IT manager to start considering Novell Suse ( we are using Red Hat right know ), i don't see nothing but benefits for this deal. So i would like to know what are the exact part of this deal, that make you step back from Novell. -- Marcel Mourguiart
On 11/15/2006 01:50 PM, Marcel Mourguiart wrote:
The same deal, make me talk with our IT manager to start considering Novell Suse ( we are using Red Hat right know ), i don't see nothing but benefits for this deal.
So i would like to know what are the exact part of this deal, that make you step back from Novell.
-- Marcel Mourguiart
My fear comes from the fact that I have a strong sense that the Novell executives are not being honest about their reasons for the deal, and I believe they are withholding crucial details of it even from their own engineers. C'mon, if they've been trying to explain it to the Suse engineers for weeks now and they still don't get it, it's because the story doesn't make sense. I know for a fact that those guys aren't stupid. The Open Source developers at Novell were apparently not consulted about it until the days just preceding the public announcement, and even now they don't know the details of the contracts between MS and Novell. I don't understand why MS would pay a huge sum of money to: 1. Declare a patent detente that everyone claims is unnecessary. 2. Assist Novell with interoperability issues with Office (in a limited way) and with virtualization. It doesn't make sense - the Office teams have been cooperating quietly for a while now with no major announcements or exchanges of money. Why not keep doing it that way, except expand it to the virtualizaion teams? There is a lot of speculation about what the whole truth might include, but to me it doesn't matter. Right now I trust the executives at Novell just as much as I trust those at Microsoft. Which is really a shame because I think the Novell/Suse/Ximian developers are wonderful. I actually think switching to Suse a great idea - despite the Deal - because it's a great product. I think you'll enjoy both the technology and the community a lot. On the other hand I'm sincerely hoping that Red Hat doesn't go out of business in the next five years. Saill --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
2006/11/15, Saill White
On 11/15/2006 01:50 PM, Marcel Mourguiart wrote:
The same deal, make me talk with our IT manager to start considering Novell Suse ( we are using Red Hat right know ), i don't see nothing
but
benefits for this deal.
So i would like to know what are the exact part of this deal, that make you step back from Novell.
-- Marcel Mourguiart
My fear comes from the fact that I have a strong sense that the Novell executives are not being honest about their reasons for the deal, and I believe they are withholding crucial details of it even from their own engineers. C'mon, if they've been trying to explain it to the Suse engineers for weeks now and they still don't get it, it's because the story doesn't make sense. I know for a fact that those guys aren't stupid.
Of course they are not telling the real story, but i think they are actually telling all the facts. Why they do this ? ( the patent part ) Money baby, money. MS is going to give Novell a huge amount of money and right know they need it. Novell are having problem in every field of business except opensource which is growing, the problem here is that Novell could get out of business before the opensource business can grow enough to replace the other part of the business. This deal give Novell time and right know time is all what they need. Why MS pay money for this ? Of course the deal suggest MS can sue every Linux customer because of patents, why costumer need such protection if there is no problem ?, doesn't matter that's not really true, FUD don't need the true. IS going to work ? i don't think so, but i think Perens and the other Fuders are doing a great job helping MS. But the SCO shows thats this kind of FUD doesn't work, by the way, Red Hat and Novell give they customer protections against the SCO in the past, that's mean they was working with SCO or MS ?, no and nobody ever said that, know is the same, but RH is not included in the party. IBM have deals with Microsoft, i work with IBM HP have deals with Microsoft, i work with HP SUN have deals with Microsoft, i work with SUN I don't think a deal with MS is a good reason to doesn't work with a company, in fact i work with MS too. Read again all the critics, and all what you are going to find are "feelings" not facts, because the facts are not terrible ... except for one player, wish was not invited to the party ( RH ). Sorry for my bad English. -- Marcel Mourguiart
On 11/15/2006 04:56 PM, Marcel Mourguiart wrote:
Of course they are not telling the real story, but i think they are actually telling all the facts.
Why they do this ? ( the patent part ) Money baby, money. MS is going to give Novell a huge amount of money and right know they need it. Novell are having problem in every field of business except opensource which is growing, the problem here is that Novell could get out of business before the opensource business can grow enough to replace the other part of the business. This deal give Novell time and right know time is all what they need.
That's fine, if that's what they're doing. Then they should tell the engineers: "Look guys, we really needed the cash so we could keep feeding you and your families. We know this is risky, but we have great lawyers and we hope it's all going to be ok. We hope you'll stick with us through this." They could maybe give the public a slightly shinier version of that story. If they said something like that I would have a great deal of faith that that was pretty close to the truth. The fact that they are telling a story that is CLEARLY not the whole truth makes me wonder just how bad the truth is. The fact that they are telling this story to their own engineers makes me angry.
Why MS pay money for this ? Of course the deal suggest MS can sue every Linux customer because of patents, why costumer need such protection if there is no problem ?, doesn't matter that's not really true, FUD don't need the true. IS going to work ? i don't think so, but i think Perens and the other Fuders are doing a great job helping MS. But the SCO shows thats this kind of FUD doesn't work, by the way, Red Hat and Novell give they customer protections against the SCO in the past, that's mean they was working with SCO or MS ?, no and nobody ever said that, know is the same, but RH is not included in the party.
IBM have deals with Microsoft, i work with IBM HP have deals with Microsoft, i work with HP SUN have deals with Microsoft, i work with SUN
I don't think a deal with MS is a good reason to doesn't work with a company, in fact i work with MS too.
I agree. The deal with MS in itself may not be a huge problem. For instance I feel very good about Sun right now. The disinformation IS a huge problem.
Sorry for my bad English.
Bad? Ha! You should read my French!
-- Marcel Mourguiart
Saill --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
Saill White wrote (@ Quarta, 15 de Novembro de 2006 22:17):
I don't understand why MS would pay a huge sum of money to:
1. Declare a patent detente that everyone claims is unnecessary. 2. Assist Novell with interoperability issues with Office (in a limited way) and with virtualization.
The second point was obvious to me. Microsoft enterprise market is big but unstable. A lot of customers are unsatisfied and they want a better solution. However, because of interoperability problems, they either do a mass migration or they stay the same due to the cost that implies. Either way, it's bad for Microsoft to work in such an unstable market, so they try to provide customers with an alternative of a mixed solution, as well as technical support. This might be bad in a short term, but it will allow them to keep a stable customer base, which is much better to work with and the stock holders prefer. For the Novell's part, the benefits are obvious. Btw, it seems they are trying to negociate with other distribuitions. I dunno why the patent agreement part. I guess Microsoft only wants the interoperability software they will develop to only work for the distributions they make agreements with. But this is pure speculation. Cheers, Ricardo -- Arithmetic is being able to count up to twenty without taking off your shoes. -- Mickey Mouse --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
participants (6)
-
Andreas Jaeger -
Boyd Lynn Gerber -
jdd sur free -
Marcel Mourguiart -
Ricardo Cruz -
Saill White