On 11/15/06, mlist@safenet-inc.com
After Anders J. noted that RedHat offers a similar pledge to their customers,
<big snip> Kevin, I do agree that if you take only this fact, and look at Novell's perspective - it is a good business. What I do really say, is that I do not understand MS move. There should be some other reason for them - and no one tells what is it. I do not believe them to do this just because they care about Novell's customers, neither that they just like Novell, and want to provide them with some funding. In MS history they have always acted as predators, and every their partnership with somebody have ended as acquisition or killing this partner. Also, they were never a software retailer, so I do not think they are after the "big" money they can get from selling SLES. So, until someone tells us some reasonable motif for MS to get in this agreement, there will always be "conspiracy theories". I do not argue Novell's move as a business strategy, I just question their morale because they do not tell the whole truth, and the parts they tell does not make sense. Without the missing parts the only conclusions one can make are: 1. MS will pay Novell for nothing. 2. MS will bully their customers to prefer only SUSE among other distributions, and thats not because SuSE is much better, but because they have "extra" protection. 3. This will lead to disappearing of the support for other distros either by reducing the funding, or by limiting the sales 4. The end result will be loosing the diversity and the competition, thus weakening the whole linux world. Yes, it sounds a little bit paranoid, etc., but everything secret sounds like this. And that's not the way the FOSS world works - where everything is open and under the oversight of the community. I guess I have too low acceptance of business BS-ing. -- Svetoslav Milenov (Sunny) Even the most advanced equipment in the hands of the ignorant is just a pile of scrap. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org