Various responses to Microsoft/Novell

Posted Nov 4, 2006 18:13 UTC (Sat) by The_Pirate (guest, #21740)
Parent article: Various responses to Microsoft/Novell

We (ALSLUG, a small danish LUG) have taken the consequence of this deal. For your information, this is the letter we wrote to Novell yesterday:

----8<----
Dear Sir:

We have with astonishment noticed the deal your company have done with
Microsoft.

As a Linux User Group, we can not anymore risk having the Novell/SuSE
distribution in our distro library - the collection of distributions we loan out to our members.
We also have to stop all support of the SuSE distributions.

If the deal is withdrawn, we will of course be willing to include SuSE again.

Until that happy moment, we hereby cut all connections with Novell and SuSE.

Yours truly

Kim B. Christensen
Secretary, ALSLUG (Alssund GNU/Linux User Group)
Denmark

----8<----

Various responses to Microsoft/Novell

Posted Nov 4, 2006 19:20 UTC (Sat) by gravious (guest, #7662) [Link] (5 responses)

I notice you haven't explained anywhere in your severance statement why you have made the choices you have made apart from some vague mention of risk from an unspecified source. Is this a normal practice of yours? Do you also snub your local delicatessen when they do a deal with McDonalds but only hint at your displeasure and grievance? (Okay - I know, odious analogy.) At least give Novell the courtesy of your informed and considered opinion so that they may see the error of their ways. Or do we suddenly live in a world where people are now automatically tainted by association? Having said all that I wouldn't trust Microsoft with a proverbial ten foot barge pole but until somebody can convinglingly demonstrate to me that not only has Novell acted in bad faith towards the Open Source community and also put us all somehow in jeopardy I'm not buying any of this Evil Novell crud. Clause 7 or no clause 7.

regards, Anthony

Various responses to Microsoft/Novell

Posted Nov 5, 2006 2:21 UTC (Sun) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (4 responses)

Or do we suddenly live in a world where people are now automatically tainted by association?

Novell made a deal with a convicted criminal monopolist that has called GPL-licensed software a "cancer". That's pretty tainting.

Various responses to Microsoft/Novell

Posted Nov 5, 2006 11:12 UTC (Sun) by The_Pirate (guest, #21740) [Link]

IM(private)HO, anyone who starts doing buisness with Microsoft is certainly tainted. Badly.

The reason the letter from our LUG didn't contain specifics is, that a very, very large part of the world-wide community is taking great pains to explain, to the smallest detail, why they/we are unhappy with this.
No real need to re-broadcast it all, a quick "We're out of here!" would do the job. That's just our small extra needle on the camel's back.

Apart from that, yes, i think it's a very good idea to be specific with a complaint. Had it been the local shop going nuts, i would have told them what i thought and why.

Various responses to Microsoft/Novell

Posted Nov 6, 2006 20:46 UTC (Mon) by gravious (guest, #7662) [Link] (2 responses)

Look - with all respect - the thrust of my argument is that we should hold off calling Novell scum and such like. There are a lot of good people working for that company and whatever you think about the _corporates_ they are a substantial part of our community now. This was always going to happen if Linux became successful. I think we may charitably say that Novell better be cautious and that they were probably 'dumb' to make a deal with Microthingy. (I officially started hating them when the Halloween documents first came out. I'm old enough now not to need a lecture on monopolistic business practices and their ethical position vis-a-vis Linux). All I'm asking is for people to Novell some time to see how this plays out before striking out with the condemnations and melodrama.

Okay?
Anthony

ps: yes, I think they were dumb.
pps: I hoped to be proved wrong.

Various responses to Microsoft/Novell

Posted Nov 7, 2006 2:39 UTC (Tue) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (1 responses)

...we should hold off calling Novell scum...

I never called Novell scum. Stupid, misguided, doomed maybe. Microsoft, however, is scum, so when Novell does a deal with Microsoft, then Novell is tainted by Microsoft's reputation.

There are a lot of good people working for that company...

There are a lot of good and bright people working for Microsoft, yet they consistently do underhanded things and produce crappy products. If the leadership is bad, then a company can be far worse than what you'd think it should be by looking at the low-level tech workers.

Various responses to Microsoft/Novell

Posted Nov 28, 2006 22:46 UTC (Tue) by gravious (guest, #7662) [Link]

Okay - we both believe Novell was almost certainly dumb/stupid and we both agree that Microsoft's de facto monopoly is a very bad thing(tm). Let me repeat - let's see how this pans out before saying "That's it, you're outta here". When it comes to it though, if Novell hurts the community then I say, sure torpedo away. Happy now?