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:
Jeff must be very ignorant of Linux or he would never have made that
statement. Anyone in the market knows full well that Red Hat offers
two versions of it's software. Fedora, which is totally OSS, freely
distributeable, and contains no restricted software. Red Hat
Enterprise Linux, which comes in both Enterprise and Server versions,
comes with a support contract, contains patented and proprietary
software, including 3rd party software, and is not so frequently
updated (IT managers really don't like having to do major upgrades
every 3 months in production environments).
> | [...]
> |
> | Companies like Red Hat start with Open Source and end with Open Source.
> | That misses the market.
> `----
Where did this guy come from?
http://www.novell.com/company/bios/jjaffe.html
Graduated MIT in 1979, went directly to IBM and worked on Security,
then in 2000, to Lucent and Bell Labs.
http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/11/22/HNnovellcto_1.html
I really do hope that Mr Jaffe has more experience with OSS that he
seems to be displaying in this quote. The irony was that while he was
working on SecureWay, Linux already had OpenLDAP and Pluggable
Authentication Modules. Of course, IBM had some nice history with LDAP
as well, even configured the Mainframe RACF system to function like an
LDAP server.
SecureWay did run on Red Hat Linux, along with DB2 and WebSphere. And
later Tivoli Access Manager, Tivoli Identity Manager, and most other
IBM products were ported to both Red Hat and SUSE Linux. Both
companies have close relationships with IBM.
These two boys really need to play nice with each other.
> http://www.crn.com/weblogs/thechart/blog.jhtml?id=196801063
>
> They are now combatting Linux instead of fighting for migrations from Windows
> to Linux.
This is a really big problem. For Novell, especially. Their revenues
from NetWare and NDS are dwindling, and although the server market is
growing, the workstation is growing about 4 times faster, based on
revenues.
If Novell stops pushing for the desktop, other companies like Linspire
and Mandriva, and organizations like Ubuntu will be pushing through and
taking market share away from SUSE.
Microsoft thinks that if they can goat-rope one company, that this will
take down the rest of Linux. They tried it with Corel. It virtually
destroyed Corel, but it didn't even slow down Linux.
If Novell doesn't want to play nice, there are 300 other distributors
waiting in the wings for their chance.
> That is precisely what Microsoft wants Novell to do. Microsoft and
> Oracle (among others) are scared of Red Hat. From this afternoon... some
> more incidents of Novell using FUD tactics against Open Source Linux
> distributors:
Oracle isn't afraid of Red Hat, but Oracle likes to get down to "Bare
Metal" as much as it can. Remember that on most UNIX systems, Oracle
database table spaces are installed onto raw partitions. When you are
trying to tweak the system, and you have made a number of adjustments
to the operating system, drivers, and libraries, to strip out the
graphics, 3D applications, X11 libraries, and anything that drains
resources from the primary job of really fast database, and you paid an
Oracle specialist $400/hour for 6 weeks of tuning, it's a problem for
Oracle when Red Hat ships out an updated system and wipes out all of
that tuning and tweaking.
Keep in mind that Mandrake started with the Red Hat system as a
baseline. Eventually it made it's own choices in terms of how patches
were distributed, how peripherals and networks were configured, and
other "skins and wizards" choices, but the foundation system of nearly
all Linux desktop and server systems is pretty much identical, except
for the update schedules.
Even Red Hat had to deal with two different types of customers who had
different update needs. Developers want the newest reliable systems
they can get. They are working on systems that might not be in
production until a year later, which means that they need to have lots
of time and effort packaged into the system.
> Novell Talks Red Hat, Still Sidles With Microsoft
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | ...it seems evident that Novell is after Red Hat's customers while it
> | remains obedient to (READ: scared of) and ?plays nice? with Microsoft.
> | It is a case of Linux fighting Linux, which is precisely what Microsoft
> | sought to achieve when striking this deal, also paying a lump of money
> | for easier persuasion.
> `----
>
> http://boycottnovell.com/2007/01/04/novell-talks-red-hat-still-sidles-with-microsoft/
Microsoft have Novell a $350 million dollar cash payoff as part of the
deal. This may not seem like a great deal to Microsoft, but to Novell,
it's 1/3 of their revenue and over 1/2 of their debt.
What was worrying Microsoft was this
http://biz.yahoo.com/e/060608/novl10-q.html
<quote>
* One of our most important initiatives is to increase revenue from our
Linux and open source product offerings. Revenues from our Linux
platform products increased 20% during the second quarter of fiscal
2006 over the same period in the prior year. This quarter we announced
our next-generation platform for the open enterprise, SUSE Linux
Enterprise 10. With enhanced performance, scalability, security and
usability, SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 is the basis for all of Novell's
next-generation enterprise Linux offerings, including SUSE Linux
Enterprise Server and the recently announced SUSE Linux Enterprise
Desktop. SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop and Server offerings are
scheduled to be available in the second half of calendar 2006. We also
introduced the first workgroup suite for the open enterprise, the
Novell Open Workgroup Suite, which includes server and desktop
components with robust management tools, e-mail, collaboration and the
most advanced open source office products in the market. Strengthening
our position as a leader in driving open source software adoption, we
announced a near doubling in the size of our Market Start program in
the second fiscal quarter. Launched in 2005 to accelerate open source
adoption worldwide, Market Start gives enterprise open source companies
access to Novell's global sales and marketing channels to bring their
solutions to the marketplace.
</quote>
Novell had entered the desktop market "officially" in June of 2006, and
apparently it was causing problems for Microsoft, who was negotiating
contracts with OEMs at the time. Remember those announcements? In
January, HP announced that they would be offering Linux preinstalled on
their AMD-64 based processor based machines - and then reversed that
announcement about 3 days later. Then in July, at the Linux Expo,
Lennovo announced that they would be offering Preinstalled Linux in
their 64 bit Intel Duo based machines, and then announced 2 days later
that they would not be doing preinstallations.
The hot new machines are running dual core 64 bit processors. Vista
has a 64 bit version, but support in terms of applications is horrible.
The very applications barrier to market that locked out Linux for
almost 6 years (1993 to 1999), is now locking out 64 bit Vista.
Meanwhile, major players in the applications market have rallied around
Linux, and LInux supports 64 bit processors and 64 bit operation.
Linux also supports SMP systems very efficiently now. We really do
need to thank Microsoft for pointing out those little spinlock
bottlenecks. Switching to event queues like those used on IBM
Mainframes since the 1970s definitely makes things run a whole lot
faster.
What's really going to be fun is when the PS/3 gets loose. That
machine has 9 "cells" which are like mini-cores, and can do things that
traditional Windows programmers would have a hard time even
comprehending. That's really not true. Windows programmers would
probably understand multithreading, but fully preemptive multitasking,
efficient IPC and grids and clusters are not typical elements of
Windows workstations. They are "stock in trade" for Linux programmers.
Microsoft wanted to derail Novell as much as possible, as quickly as
possible. They seem to have offered to "allow" OEMs to preinstall SUSE
Linux Enterprise SERVER into server machines (which they have been
doing for years), but now they can let the Linux servers host Windows
virtual machines.
Unfortunately, Novell didn't get similar concessions for the desktop.
This means that Microsoft can't be hit with anticompetition laws,
because they made a "deal" with Novell. At the same time, they can
still beat the OEMs into submission, restricting their ability to
preinstall Linux as the primary operating system on 64 bit Machines,
and install Windows as a client.
Ironically, this may result in retaliation from the applications
vendors. They may go more openly "Linux", telling customers who want
to use their applications on Windows to install Cygwin, otherwise just
run Linux in a Virtual client. This means that Linux will be faster
and more effecient than Windows, and will have better security,
stability, and 3rd party support.
Microsoft is already almost completely on their own. And companies who
depend on Windows Only applications are already reeling from the lack
of opportunity here. There are a few companies like Quicken who get
automatic annual revenues due to tax law changes, but most 3rd party
applications are now being excluded.
Look at the companies that aren't welcome in Vista Land.
Corel/WordPerfect/Draw
Lotus Smart Suite, 1-2-3
MacAffee Antivirus
Norton anything
Antispyware
Real Media
Quicktime
Ipod
About the only thing that is welcome in Vista Land in terms of 3rd
party software, is games. And even this is only if they also support
the Xbox. Could retailiation for supporting the PS/3 be far behind?
Vista in 2007 is looking more and more like Windows NT 3.1 in 1993. A
boatload of hype, late schedules, features cut out, no 3rd party
applications, poor backward compatibility with existing 3rd party
applications, and license terms that, once understood, are offensive.
In 1993, Linux was a fledgeling. But there was Linux, BSD/386, SCO,
OS/2, and UnixWare all ready to grab market share from the failed NT
3.x market flop. Unfortunately, Microsoft was allowed to use it's
vaporware campaign to keep people from trying Linux or Unix long enough
to get Windows 95 into their hands. And by then, PC makers were so
starved for revenue that when Microsoft threatened "all 95 or no 95",
they didn't dare say "no 95".
Today, over 30% of the PC market is "white boxes" designed to run
Linux. 64 bit processors accounted for 25% of the market in 2006 and
could be as much as 80% of the market in 2007, unless the vendors
decide to cripple their desktop machines by offering it only with
Windows.
And if Microsoft thinks that they can get hundreds of millions of Linux
users to pony up $200 for "upgrades to Vista Ultimate" just so they can
run Vista as a Linux client, there could be a rude awakening for
Microsoft.
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