Now that Novell has tossed aside the use of a prophylactic with Microsoft, can they post a detailed list of the alleged patent violations?

Microsoft wanted to divide the linux group by buying novell. Well, it did not work. Thanks for the money... He he.. that's lots of money.. stupid MS.. It could be used to commercially support open source.. more improvement.. wider campaign agains MS.. etc.. So it has advantages of both open and commercial...

Cheers,

Surely, next step is ThePirateBay selling out to RIAA?

Ho, and BTW, I'm beginnig to miss my PH dose. Did Paris "Golden Sparkling" Hilton take good resolutions for 2008, or does El Reg neglect us poor glamwority-craving readers?

Where's the glamwhore angle?

I don't think that this deal is so bad. First, this gives novel a lot of money to invest in developping linux improvements that may benefit the whole linux comunity. Second interoperability sounds rather good to me. If we really want linux adoption to take off with the masses I think we'll need asd much interoperability as we can get, and that probably means a mix of open source an prioprietary technologies.

There's also another angle here. If they make Suse different enough from other distros they can effectively lock users into using it. Don't forget Msft's EEE: Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. If Suse gains enough momentum behind it, it can effectively lock all those users as switching to different GNU/LInux can be another learning curve.

IMHO, that's where it currently goes.

As long as the FOSS boys insist on playing petty, rattle-out-of-pram politics, trying to Change The World rather than working with it, they'll be an irrelevance.

Like the missing Atheros support in SuSe for "licensing" reasons, aka somebody, somewhere going "we don't like who you're playing with". It's childish and unprofessional and, more importantly, turns what should be a point 'n click install into a nightmare of bloodymindedness and dependancies to get wifi working.

You want to know why Windows dominates the desktop guys? Look in the mirror.

Don't start with the "why aren't you using Ubuntu?" whine. Getting the sodding installer not to hang the graphics on about 50% of hardware puts me off that one before I even get to the "squashed Yak turd" desktop.

Better interoperability is good, the mono project especially should be welcomed by the linux community - it's not just SuSE. Novell is right, any business from SME and up needs a mix of platforms to operate effectively, CIOs who have lived in the real world are starting to understand this.

It is really interesting that many people defending Novell-MSFT deal are using same patterns of sentences and words. Has Web 2.0 marketing come that far?

You use Linux because you choose NOT to use MSFT products, genius. Not like Linux is some accompany Windows utility software. You choose Windows, Linux, BSD, OS X, AIX over some solution. It is up to the MSFT to make their products work, not up to Linux scene. If they don't work fine with Linux, they will be eliminated. No need to buy/bribe CEOs etc. for that.

Linux on servers is de-facto standard, others including IBM, MSFT and even FreeBSD is trying to convince companies to use their solutions. It is NOT Desktop, Linux is the indisputable king on server scene. It is not a favor or anything, you HAVE to make sure your product works with Linux or you are a joke on enterprise.

Just like OS X, it can be called minority but for multimedia scene, if your product doesn't support OS X, you are a joke.

Please point me to a single, enterprise or desktop credible (NOT a tech demo!) product which uses Net 1.x emulator aka Mono.

Mono and its creator puppet is a disgrace to entire open source community.

Any financial people could tell if Novell would continue to exist with their failed business model if money from MSFT didn't arrive? I really wonder that. Their financial boards were full of chapter 11 rumors until MSFT deal was signed.

Miguel should STFU and go away. He's a living example of Microsoft's bit of FUD that 'all OSS does is imitate the proprietary world.'

MIguel, you're a bright guy. Pull your head out of your nethers and build something *original* for once.