Novell Touts Microsoft--There's a Shock
Last week, the story was broke that Novell was claiming to be making some money, and the company cited its partnership with Microsoft as a big reason why.
This came out during a conference hosted by the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council, in which Novell's Director of Marketing Justin Steinman indicated "The affect on sales year over year, for Novell's first three quarters of our fiscal year, which ends Oct. 31--our Linux business was up 243 percent year over year."
Normally, this kind of up-tick in Linux business would be a good thing, but then Justin had to go and sour the milk with this now oft-quoted gem from Novell's marketing strategy: "Do you want the Linux that works with Windows? Or the one that doesn't?"
Needless to say, people were seriously honked off. Pamela Jones over at Groklaw launched a scathing critique on the Novell-Microsoft lovefest, which blasted Novell for not getting, after all their big talk, the concept of open source at all.
Actually, with all respect to Ms. Jones, I think Novell does get it--perhaps more than any of us would like to acknowledge.
Open source is, when all is said and done, a means to develop software by sharing code with select groups of people. The more open a license is, the more people get to share the code. Open source is not some sort of over-arching moral standard that dictates business practices. Personally, I wish it were. But it's not and arguing that a company needs to behave in an "open source" way is not an effective argument.
For instance, while many of us in the community are squeamish about the notion that Microsoft and Novell were producing some sort of mad-scientist marketing synergy to grow some Frankenstein's monster of a Linux business, there is nothing inherent in open source that says this kind of thing is not allowed. Ask yourself, honestly: do you think Red Hat or Canonical or any other commercial Linux vendor doesn't use marketing to build themselves up and knock their opponents down? I'll answer it for you: I know such practices take place. All of the time.
Yes, I will be the first to stand up and say that it's galling to hear so-called compatibility with Microsoft being used as a marketing ploy. But it was equally galling for me to hear pre-Fedora Red Hat claim to be purely open source when everyone knew they were keeping some secret sauce for certain ISVs--like Oracle--to hook into. And I am sure there are lot of other marketing statements we have heard in the past from other companies that have set our teeth on edge.
Make no mistake: this is no apologia for marketing horse hockey. But the unfortunate truth is that this stuff is present in any for-profit arena, and it has nothing to do with how the product is made. If anything, I think having an open source product makes marketing even more prevalent: if the market has Linux A, Linux B, and Linux C, all based on the same software, how does Linux B distinguish itself? A few gadgets and gizmos, yes; better services, sure; excellent support--the list goes on. But how does Linux B make all that differentiating stuff known to potential customers? Marketing.
Steinman's remarks gave us all a rare, candid look into the seething underbelly of how business is done in IT, whether it's an open source company or a proprietary one. It struck a nerve because it was Novell, working with Microsoft. As much as we are loathe to admit it, this partnership may be showing signs of life (unless his remarks were nothing more than marketing smoke as well). There is nothing special about open source development or ideals that can prevent it. Nor the ideals of free software, since the Novell/MS partnership slips right past GPLv2 and (thanks to the grandfather clause) GPLv3.
If something is to be done about Novell and Microsoft's partnership, then it will have to be something other than holding these companies up to the "ideal" of free and open source. Sadly, as long as they are following the letter of the law, such arguments will fall on deaf ears.
Something else will need to be done.
"Open source is, when all is said and done, a means to develop software by sharing code with select groups of people."
Selected group?!!!??? Doesn't that make companies like Microsoft an Open Source company as they are sharing selected portion of their OS code with selected group.
Man!! this got to be the best definition of ever.
Except Microsoft doesn't usually share its code with anyone outside the company. But, you will recall, two of MS' "shared source" licenses are vying for official "open source" status from the Open Source Initiative.
I think of it like a spectrum: you have proprietary licenses (which share source with none) on one end, and the GPL and BSD licenses on the other end, which share source with everyone. All other licenses fall somewhere in-between.
BKP
The Groklaw main point was that because Novell had access to Microsoft code under an NDA, there is a problem that the code developed by Novell for general distribution to other flavours of Linux could contain code that contains MS patents. The Novell mono developments being a case to point, but Novell may also get kernel patches accepted.
Microsoft's assertion that a Linux distro contains MS patents would become a provable fact, and Novell's Linux would become the one and only legit version, a situation Novell would love to be in I am sure.
The problems for Linux are:
That Novell has always been a company engaged in creating and selling proprietary products, unlike all the other main distro suppliers, so their attitudes and actions towards open source are coloured by their proprietary past.
That no one in the community can view the MS code that Novell can see, and thus the many eyes of open source development are limited to a very select few whose motives are purely to increase sales of their own product line for the benefit of their shareholders.
Another part of marketing is to spin mediocre news into big news. If your market share is small, then use percentages to talk about growth. If your market share is larger, then use absolute numbers. When I read the Novell announcement (which used percentages), I checked RedHat's numbers for the quarter. It appears that in absolute numbers, RedHat's Linux business is growing faster than Novell's, and maybe even more than Novell's total business.
So the questions still remain, is Novell's Linux/FOSS strategy working? And did the deal with M$ actually help or would they be doing the same amount of business without it? And conversely, has the antipathy within the community hurt them? Their announcement didn't come close to answering these.
Later . . . Jim
Stomfi,
If Novell is producing GPL'ed code based on the information they signed an NDA to see, they are in bigger trouble than FOSS. This is essentially what SCO claimed IBM did, and if that were true, IBM would have had to pay a penalty. IBM has strict development procedures which make it unlikely that would ever happen. I expect that Novell has similar procedures that are watched closely by lawyers.
Later . . . Jim
How this article got clearance from editorial board? This is not at all acceptable from a prominent Linux/open source website.
Editors, please be more careful before allowing articles like this.
To Mike Colligan - there is a difference between "Free" and "Open". Open Source is mostly a design methodology, but "Free" is a moral philosophy and values attached. Stallman's criticism of Open Source is well documented on these points and you should take a look see yourself.
To Stomfi - you are correct that with the signing of NDA's, there's a worry of legal encumbered code entering Linux, but because NDA's were signed, it doesn't mean that that's not necessarily the case. Those people on the development team who signed the NDA's are most likely the ones who write SPECIFICATIONS on how things should work, while a second team writes the code from spec. That's a question we should ask too.
Finally my own observations. The Novell-Microsoft agreement could very well be MS's attempt at embrace, extend, extinguish - but there may be another consideration - a PLAN B. The EU has ruled now that MS must now provide specs on for their networking protocols on a RAND basis. Do not be surprised that the specs come from Novell engineers who signed the NDA and wrote specs for other Novell developers. Secondly, Microsoft's Viridian project is way behind - it is not capable of live migration - so it is using XEN and Novell to serve as alternate platforms to VMWare to allow full virtualization capabilities. Third, Novell's mono project and MS's blessing of it may also be a portent of things to come - actual MS apps ported to Linux. Think I'm crazy? MS Office already runs on MAC OSX which means MS has a port that can be moved to Linux with a little more effort. With mono existing in Linux, MS can make the move without having to go through porting the tools first. Vista is a flop, the other MS divisions don't make money, and the competition has become fierce on all sides. MS's only long term strategy would be to do what the DOJ wanted it to do in the beginning, become two companies - one focused on applications, and one focused on the OS. The Novell-MS technical partnership makes this more feasible. MS still makes money hand over fist, but if the profit starts to slow, and the stock value stagnant, do not be surprised to hear the calls of stock splitting to two entities to retain or grow stock value again.
Re: "Annonymous"
Er, I am the editor of this site. :)
BKP
JJS
Yeah but, the SCO law suits are all about copyrights to the code base. They tried to include methods and concepts, but without identifiable similar code, these inclusions were disallowed.
Patents were not included in the litigation as none were part of the Novell/SCO deal, and I don't think software patents existed at the time UNIX V was written.
The MS agreement with Novell is an agreement to not sue each others customers for use of each other's specified patents in each other's software.
Who outside of Novell and MS can say whether Novell's new code for Linux contains MS patented methods?