Not impressed with Mark Shuttleworth

[CityK]

I wasn't at all impressed with Novell and their deal with MS. I'm still sitting on the fence on that one, but am still leaning towards the negative perspective. I note that Ballmar's quips, within the recent week or so, about "Balance sheet liability" and "Linux users owe us", certainly didn't do anything to calm the fears of the many online detractors to the deal. And while conspiracy theorists might weave a thousand different evil empire scenarios from that, I'll just add that if MS is up to something, they're certainly off to a rather poor start (the recoil reaction to Ballmar's remarks has not been in their favour, nor were perceptions of the extention to Redhat goof up (after just signing an exclusive deal with Novell)). Anyway, from my perspective, I believe that the magnitude of the outright hostility toward the deal, coupled with Novell's CEO's openly annoyed response to MS, further strengthens the argument that Novell did not do full due dilligence on the deal. [i.e. its construction was hurried (Oracle) and shortsighted (magnitude of negative response, MS games)]. But is this really a big surprise to us? Of course not. Many of us have been saying for a while now that Novell appears to be a ship that is captained without a sense of strategic direction, and is handled by a management crew that repeatedly fails to execute their tactical chores.

Alright, enough with the Novell analogies now. Lets talk Shuttleworth.

What an idiot. If you're not aware, he just placed a developer recruitment/purge post, or "invitation" as he called it, on the openSUSE mailing list and his personal blog. He writes:

.I know that posting this message to an OpenSUSE list will be controversial. I'm greatly respectful of the long tradition of excellence in the SuSE product and community and have no desire to undermine that with this post. That said,..[/url]I love statements like that.

• "I'm greatly respectful" ... no you're not, else you would be doing such a classes act
• "have no desire to undermine that" ... sure you do, that's the whole point of your posting -- to undermine Novell and purge developers
• "That said,.." ... those words remind me of something I read a little while ago about when someone writes "with all due respect" -- respect just went out the window and you know that an open season of bashing is soon to commence inside
  
  It is nice to see that, as this article points out, reaction to this Shuttleworth stunt/tactic has been cold -- even from members within inside the Ubuntu community at large.
  
  I'm sure the humour of the
  annonymous retaliatory posting on the Ubuntu lists is not lost on many.
  
  So, all in all, it would seem that Shuttleworth is either just as short sighted as Novell or has let egotistical ambitions get in the way of his reasoning. Either way, I'm not impressed. I'm glad reaction on the web indicates that most others aren't either.

 

[CityK]

Handy - can you fix my html goofs above please (I once again clicked submit when I should have clicked preview)
PS - I thought there was a post edit function added to the forum, but I can't seem to find it. Am I imagining things?

 

[Mercutio]

Shuttleworth has probably done more for Linux than anyone else in the last two years. While I'm not personally fond of Ubuntu, that organization has pushed Debian forward and brought it to something nearly mainstream.

SuSE made a deal with the devil. An incestuous one, given the dealings Microsoft has had with SCO and Novell in the last few years.

Shuttleworth could've vetted his post with a PR-type guy, but he had a good point; a lot of the Linux community is really unhappy with SuSE right now, and stepping away from it might not be a bad idea. That said, yes, the guy is a cock with an oversized ego. That's probably part of the billionaire businessman personality type. I say let the guy make an ass of himself. His money is where his mouth is, and he said something that a lot of other Linux advocates have posted in places like Slashdot.

 

[CityK]

Shuttleworth has probably done more for Linux than anyone else in the last two years. While I'm not personally fond of Ubuntu, that organization has pushed Debian forward and brought it to something nearly mainstream.

I don't know if it was necessarily Shuttleworth himself, but certainly Ubuntu/Canonical's marketing dollars have. And while I like several things about Ubuntu, I realize that most of the hype about Ubuntu is just that - hype.

Shuttleworth could've vetted his post with a PR-type guy, but he had a good point; a lot of the Linux community is really unhappy with SuSE right now, and stepping away from it might not be a bad idea.

But in approaching the idea in the manner that he has, he hasn't at all strenghtened his position, nor undermined that of openSUSE...rather, it is likely that his drawing up a division line has strenghened openSUSE ... hard for people to step away from openSUSE if they're given an artifical resolve to stick with it ...

 

[CityK]

SuSE made a deal with the devil.

From the gag is off: Samba's Allison talks turkey on the MS-Novell deal, (but quoted out of order for contextual effect):

Allison: When I first heard that Microsoft was going to take Linux seriously by doing an agreement with Novell I was delighted. But the more I looked at the details the more unhappy I got with the patent part.

I approached Google once I found out enough about the deal to realize that Novell had got itself into a position where they couldn't back out without severe penalties, and thus they were really stuck in a trap of their own making, I realized Microsoft held all the cards in the relationship and they had no interest in helping Novell back out of a big mistake (especially when its in their favor). They promptly demonstrated that at the initial press conference, when (Microsoft CEO) Steve Ballmer publicly humiliated Novell (IMHO) by making direct and rather ugly threats against other Linux distributions.

I've spoken with Novell executives since I came out internally against the deal and their position on it has been "if it doesn't violate the GPLv2 what is your problem?" The problem is I do think it violates the intent of the GPLv2 if not the letter,

in the meantime I don't want to give my efforts to a company that is willing to try and trick their way out of their license obligations on my software.

MJF: Why do you believe Novell signed the deal with Microsoft? And do you believe Novell or other Linux distributions infringe on Microsoft patents?

Allison: I don't know exactly why they signed it. I don't think (Novell CEO) Ron Hovsepian is clueless or malevolent. I've met him and think he is a really nice guy. My guess is that the negotiations for the useful parts of the agreement (the virtualization part and the federated directory interoperability part) had, as Ron says, been going on for months and just before Novell wanted to seal the deal Microsoft turned up with "there's just this one more thing we want you to sign….." and in desperation to get the other parts of the deal done they rushed it through.
It was carefully prepared by Microsoft legal to try and bypass the GPLv2, and I think to their shame Novell helped them do this.

As for Linux distributions infringing on Microsoft patents if Microsoft believes that there is a clear path for them to follow to enforce their patent rights. So long as they are not doing that I think it's fair to say "Microsoft patents, *what* Microsoft patents ?"

MJF: Your opinion: Will Microsoft convince other Linux distributors to sign deals similar to the one it forged with Novell?

Allison: I don't think they have any chance with the major ones. Niche players might be tempted, but I expect the business fallout from this to be so negative that no one else is tempted once people realize it's another attempt to cast legal clouds over Linux to scare people into choosing Windows yet again

 

[CityK]

SuSE made a deal with the devil. An incestuous one, given the dealings Microsoft has had with SCO and Novell in the last few years.

I wasn't aware till recently that SCO is/was used by two diferent entities, so perhaps this has clouded/aided to the confusion as to MS dealings

From
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDOS
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DR-DOS
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caldera_Systems
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Cruz_Operation
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenix
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UnixWare

We see that:

• Microsoft purchased a license for Version 7 Unix from AT&T in 1979 ... Xenix was Microsoft's version of Unix .. Xenix varied from its 7th Edition origins by incorporating elements from BSD
• When Microsoft entered into an agreement with IBM to develop OS/2, it lost interest in promoting Xenix. In 1987 Microsoft transferred ownership of Xenix to The Santa Cruz Operation (SCO) in an agreement that left Microsoft owning 25% of SCO.
• Digital Research, with its losing battle to promote CP/M-86, eventually decided that they could not beat the Microsoft-IBM lead in application software availability, so they had best join it by modifying CP/M-86 to allow it to run the same applications as MS-DOS and PC-DOS. The new version was re-launched in 1988 as DR-DOS.
• SCO branched Xenix into SCO UNIX in 1989.
• In 1991, Univel (a joint-owned venture of AT&T's Unix System Laboratories (USL) and Novell) released UnixWare, a flavor of the Unix operating system
• Digital Research was acquired by Novell in April '93, and Novell rebranded the DR-DOS product Novell DOS
• In June 1993 Novell acquired USL and UNIX System V source code from AT&T and formed Novell Unix Systems Group.
• Caldera Systems, based in Utah, was founded in 1994 by Ransom Love, and received start-up funding from Ray Noorda. Its main product was Caldera Network Desktop, a Linux distribution
• On September 19, 1995, the Santa Cruz Operation bought certain rights regarding Unix and UnixWare from Novell.
• in 1996 Novell sold the Novell DOS product line off to Caldera Systems (owned by former Novell CEO Ray Noorda's investment firm The Canopy Group.) Caldera renamed Novell DOS to OpenDOS
• In 2000, Caldera settled out of court a legal battle with Microsoft in regards to MS-DOS vs DR-DOS/OpenDOS -- Caldera's claim against MS were with relation to monopolization, illegal tying, exclusive dealing, and tortious interference
• In 2001, SCO sold its Server Software and Services divisions, as well as rights to its proprietary UnixWare and OpenServer operating systems to Caldera Systems. But SCO retained its Tarantella product line, and changed its name to Tarantella, Inc.
• Caldera, after acquiring the Santa Cruz unix properties subsequently changed its name to The SCO Group, to reflect that change in company focus to UNIX.
• In 2003, (the new) SCO made several statements that they were the owners of Unix and began to claim that Linux contained large amounts of its intellectual property .... Novell claimed these statements were false, and that they actually still owned Unix (that the 1995 sale of UnixWare from Novell to (the old) SCO did not include the UNIX IP rights) . After Novell registered the copyrights to some key Unix products, SCO filed suit against Novell, claiming slander of title....and subsequently launched upon a campaign of suing all sentinent creatures in the world

Now are the claims that MS may have bankrolled (the new) SCO somehow related to the 2000 Caldera vs MS case? Or was there some sort of, um, monetary exchange in recent years as well?