__/ [ BearItAll ] on Friday 05 January 2007 13:39 \__
> Roy Schestowitz wrote:
>
>> Novell CTO Touts 'Mixed Source' Strategy, Takes Jab At Red Hat
>>
>> ,----[ Quote ]
>> | Jeff Jaffe, Novell's chief technology officer, writes that his company
>> | is not going to go down the Open Source-Only strategy path, as he says
>> | Red Hat has:
>> |
>> | [...]
>> |
>> | Companies like Red Hat start with Open Source and end with Open Source.
>> | That misses the market.
>> `----
>>
>> http://www.crn.com/weblogs/thechart/blog.jhtml?id=196801063
>>
>
> Linux V Linux competition has always been there, it doesn't matter that
> ideas and coding groups are supported sometimes jointly by distros. In the
> end each distro wants to be at the top of the popularity list. It's good
> for us as users that this competition is going on and it is very good for
> Linux. The good distros work their way to the top, the bad or less-good
> ones drop off the bottom.
>
> A bigger worry from all of this is the XenSource part. With the general
> direction of all OS's at the moment and the importance of Xen generally in
> modern computing, anyone of them would gain a huge boost from the purchase
> of XenSource and in particular it's really nice collection of very
> important patents. You could effectively take the crown and septor sit on
> your throne and just sit back reap the rewards.
And what about possible prebundling of Xen in future versions of Windows?
This could unseat the far more stable and robust Linux as the 'cradle' for
secondary systems.
> XenSource were active in the blocking of those 'foriegn' patent laws that
> allow patent thieves in another country to gain ownership of items that
> don't belong to them.
>
> XenSource have shown themselves to be very much on the side of not only
> OpenSource but in showing, as more and more companies are doing, how
> open-source and commercial products really can come off the same shelf.
OpenVZ, I suspect, is the more (?) open alternative. I may recall the details
very badly, but there's another Open Source fork (or independent) package
that offers virtualisation. Also remember that Red Hat was behind Novell
when it comes to virtualisation and that XenSource have been flirting with
Microsoft since July.
> But put the power of XenSource into the hands os a MS-Partner and we are
> heading for a serious fight.
>
> I wish there was some way for companies such as this to be shared by all
> distros of Linux. The way a company is shared could be simply from a
> licence perspective of cause, but that doesn't really protect the company
> itself, as in a co-op. There must be some way for The Linux Community to
> own those areas that simply *must* be safe guarded. Imagine the shit we
> would be in if say Samba was somehow bought by MS, they could really shut
> the door on Linux in the workplace then. Or if MS bought up the two main
> video card companies, ATI and GeForce, they could send us right back to the
> dark ages in an instant, drop the Linux driver download page, simple
> changes could be made to make previous Linux drivers no longer compatible
> with the card families.
They have done something similar with Sysinternals. And also bear in mind
that Novell calls itself a mixed source company, so taking off the latest
downloads from the Web site would not lread to an identity conflict or a
backlash (not from Novell shareholder anyway). That FUD which came from
Ozzie's mouth (assuming it's true, have a look) confirms much of this.
> There is still just too much potential for MS to wreck Linux and as we saw
> with the Novell deal, the more desperate they feel the more money they will
> throw at it.
Yes, which is why Novell need to be isolated, IMHO. Remember that I used to
love Novell.
--
~~ Best wishes for the new year!
Roy S. Schestowitz | Oracle: Linux adoption to accelerate
http://Schestowitz.com | GNU/Linux ¦ PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
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