Recently in Novell Category

Check out this Slashdot item about Red Hat's Matt Szulik saying, go ahead and take Microsoft's money and get it over with. And dittos for Oracle, apparently.

Here's Matthew Aslett's article at CBR Online, Take Microsoft's Linux money, says Red Hat.

Bravo, Red Hat, that's just the right attitude, and I'm not being sarcastic at all here: try the low-priced spread and you'll go back to Red Hat if you care about quality.

Go check out this article on Computer Business Review Online: Red Hat dismisses threat posed by Oracle and Microsoft. It's nice to get a balance from the gloom and doom purveyors (like myself, sometimes):

Red Hat Inc's executive vice president of worldwide sales, Alex Pinchev, has dismissed the impact that Oracle Corp's entry into the Linux support business could have on Red Hat, insisting Oracle does not really know what it is doing.

Snap.

As for Novell? See for yourself:

Pinchev was even more dismissive of the Novell-Microsoft deal, describing it as a non-event. "People know what it means for a company to partner with Microsoft," he said, suggesting it would not be in the best long term interests of Novell, while also dismissing the suggestion that Microsoft will ever bring a patent infringement suit against an IT user.

'Would you sue your own customers? I wouldn't and I don't believe Microsoft will ever do it," he said, while also rejecting out of hand Microsoft's attempts to do a similar deal with Red Hat. "For us the open source community is not for sale," he said. "Innovation is not for sale."

Oracle outlines the details of its indemnification program (warning: link to PDF document).

A couple of items of interest here. First, open source blogger Matt Asay made some interested points under the headng Just what is Oracle indemnifying, anyway after he read Oracle's license and then read the description of their indemnification program (see above).

Worth reading. My favorite line was the last one of Oracle's statement, "NOTE: NO CONTRACTUAL OBLIGATIONS ARE FORMED EITHER DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY BY THIS DOCUMENT." All capitals, all italicized.

I'm certainly not a lawyer, so don't ask me what it means--ask your lawyer if you are considering Oracle's deal.

The open source turbulence generated last month by Oracle and Microsoft's moves on Linux is slowly but surely clearing. I've been looking at the issues in some depth for full-length articles to be published here in the next month or so. But at the moment it's kind of tough to figure out what exactly it all means.

Rather than try to figure it all out as it happens, I'm going to be pointing to some of the particulars of the issues here in my blog.

As a starter, here are links to some of the key announcements from Microsoft, Novell, Red Hat and Oracle:

Oracle Unbreakable Enterprise Linux announcement on October 25.

Red Hat Unfakeable Linux response to Oracle's entry into the Linux market (with a rebadged version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux).

"Microsoft and Novell Announce Broad Collaboration on Windows and Linux Interoperability and Support", the broad outline of Microsoft's deal with Novell, from November 2.

We Believe response from Red Hat to the Microsoft/Novell announcement on November 2; here's an FAQ from Microsoft on agreement and a resource page on the deal from Microsoft.

Novell's resource page for the Microsoft/Novell collaboration. Here's Novell's Open Letter to the Community dated November 20, in response to Steve Ballmer's comments about the possibility that Linux incorporates Microsoft intellectual property.

Microsoft announces that they "agree to disagree" with Novell on November 20, after the first wave of controversy unleashed by Ballmer's statement that Linux users owe Microsoft for intellectually property.