After a few days of thought, I posted my current thinking on the subject on this LXer link, which, in turn, points to one of the best overviews of the potentially destructive nature of the MSuse cohabitation that I have yet seen.

I can see it now, XBOX 720, Linux Based. Run faster, jump higher, etc. In the words of Boris I have a feeling somebody in Microsoft's Redmond office is yelling, "I'm invincible."

Ok... I've read and I've read and I've read. Then I decided to read some more.

Here's what I've been able to come up with:

1. I simply DO NOT TRUST Micro$oft. It's just that simple. The integrity of the company is in serious question as far as I'm concerned. Therefore, I try my best to not do business with people who have no integrity. It really is that simple with me.

2. Novell is a huge question mark (?) with me now. FUD is everywhere in the community. I still don't fully understand what Novell is trying to accomplish here. Money??? Market Share??? I read their statements and it is clear that they are not showing us the complete picture. They are hiding something. They are not being honest with the community. I believe in direct confrontation and FULL disclosure. Something is infinitely wrong here. Are they actually selling out the community? Something is seriously wrong here. Micro$oft is the "Matrix" for Pete's sake!!! Very, very, very interesting..... hmmmmmmm... What is Novell without the community? I'm sure somebody at Novell has got to be reading this stuff. They had to know that this was coming. They had to know that this would reverberate throughout the community. Did they think that we would accept this arrangement? Did they care? Lots of questions, with very few answers. I just don't get their angle on this.... If there IS an angle..... The biggest question of all is .....

Why?

I think that I know the answer. It is rooted in the following statement:

"For the LOVE of money is the ROOT of ALL evil."

That and
"Power Corrupts and absolute power Corrupts Absolutly"

Micro$oft is trying to get absolute power over everything..

Novell have just sold their soul to M$ and in the long term they will regret it as M$ will not stick to their word, eventually tehy will swallow novell whole and then spit out the peices.

i think that open suse which IMO ius a good distro shoudl fork off from novel before its too late, disown them while there is still somting left to disown and while the code is still open, after all M$ wont keep it taht way for long.... GNU or no GNU

taht way the distro that converted me fully will still live, though i will be using fedora untill this happens

Folks, this is all about the money. Here is a quote from Steve Ballmer about the deal (full article) :
In other words, this deal is all about Microsoft getting paid when you choose Linux as your OS. Pay us now by using Suse, or pay us later when we sue your posterior for violating Microsoft IP.


What I keep waiting to happen is for IBM to speak up about this. They've invested in Linux big-time and they have vaults full of IP. Some of that has to be critical to Microsoft.

Microsoft is going to shell out 348 million dollars to Novell.

What is Novell obligated to do for that kind of money?

notice this:
The plan could therefore create a two-tier Linux business, with one tier that is approved and protected by Microsoft, and one that faces potential litigation, although the Free Software Foundation's general counsel, Eben Moglen, has reportedly stated that it could therefore be a violation of the GNU General Public License.

While admitting that he was yet to see the terms of the agreement, Moglen postulated that it could fall foul of section seven of the GPL, which requires distributors to pass on the right to distribute software without additional permission.
maybe the free software foundation or similar orginisation will sue ms?
this will be very interesting.

That appears to be exactly what they are trying. (Divide and conquer?)

I would think it would be Novell that would get sued. As long a MS doesn't disribute any code, the only thing I could imagine MS being sued for is inducing Novell to violate a license. I am definitely not a lawyer and can't comment on that!

The way I look at it, this development is not as dire or horrible as the blogosphere makes it out to be. I mean, the scenario of MS taking legal action against a given organization over IP issues has existed for decades prior to this deal, and it will continue to exist decades into the future - the fact that a particular organization might happen to be Linux-related seems pretty much beside the point. Additionally, keep in mind that with Linux being open source, MS has had the ability to view the complete source code of any Linux distro since day one. In other words, it would be trivial for the Redmond team to compare Linux code with their own proprietary code, looking for any instances of their code. Given that ability, is there any realistic chance today that Microsoft really truly has no idea whatsoever whether any of their IP is contained in Linux? *cough* *cough* No way. The only logical conclusion is that MS definitely knows, and has known for a very long time. It seems foolish to think otherwise.

Therefore, the next question would be to consider the scenario where Linux somehow does contain MS IP, and MS knows that it does. Under that (unlikely) scenario, would it make any sense for MS to delay taking legal action? Clearly, No. The bigger Linux gets, the harder it will be to defeat, and the more people/companies they'd have to fight who don't want to lose Linux. Additionally, if MS knowingly refused to act on known infringement for a prolonged, lengthy period of time, it would seriously weaken their case -- if the infringement was truly causing them significant economic loss or other injury, what rational justification could they offer for failing to act once they had discovered it was occurring?

Overall, despite numerous, random, and vague comments coming out of Redmond about "possible IP issues" in Linux, I personally dismiss them as pure FUD. MS has long considered Linux as a threat, and has worked tirelessly to attack it (remember those Halloween papers - which incidentally date from 1998?). As such, you can bet that if there was a way MS could take Linux out of the picture over IP conflicts/issues, it would have already happened. Think about this: For at least the past 10 years or so, Microsoft has invested an enormous amount of money and effort into making MSN the #1 search engine. They really want to be everyone's home page, and they want to move Yahoo and Google to being marginal and/or irrelevant players. They have failed to achieve that goal - even their Alexa rankings show Yahoo and Google in the #1 and #3 position of all website visits. Furthermore, who is Microsoft's biggest rival today, both in terms of having a better search engine, and in attracting the cream of the crop in terms of talent? That would be Google, which was built 100% on Linux. Don't you think that if MS had any weapon they could use to body-slam Google, they would have done so already? I do. If MS knows today that Linux contains their IP, and that numerous multi-billion dollar companies are somehow "damaging" them by using Linux, then it's pretty suer bet that MS would be obligated to sue. On the other side of the coin, seeing as how that hasn't happened, I think it can be safely concluded that Linux doesn't use any MS IP.

On a different topic, the fact that MS is willing to work with a Linux vendor to make their (Microsoft's) products more interoperable with Linux seems a good thing. The #1 barrier against acceptance of something new is that the new [thing] doesn't let the user do [something] the old [thing] did. In a business context, let's admit that Word and Excel are the standards. *All* major companies use Word and Excel throughout their organizations, and if a particular company took a hard-line policy that they would accept open-source docs, and would not be able to cope with Word docs or Excel spreadsheets, well, that company wouldn't be in business very long. If this MS/Novell deal means that Novell will get an infusion of cash to support Linux development, and that the joint cooperation between MS and Novell will lead to more users being able to open Word docs and Excel spreadsheets transparently from within Linux, then this deal doesn't sound all that bad to me.

I was under the impression that one of the reasons that MS got so powerful was because they initially didn't take action against pirates. They allowed their software and standards to become widespread and once they'd become the key player, THEN they started protecting their property. I don't, however have any sources or evidence for this information; perhaps somebody could back me up?

This seems a fairly likely way for Microsoft to play now as well. To be quite honest, they don't NEED to protect their property. They have so much money and so many different enterprises that the odd IP infringement here and their becomes almost irrelevant. I think it seems likely that what MS have done is *IF* Linux have infringed copyright, they'll let the code become widespread and then sue as many people as they can. From the way I have seen MS play in the past, this seems entirely plausible to me.

However, like you say, the longer they wait, the weaker their case becomes. The tide is turning for MS's legal shenanigans as shown by the European anti-trust rulings. Whether they'll be able to pull this off could be interesting.

I cannot be more pessimistic about Novell and Microsoft deal.

Linux community offers an easy and clear way to contribute: GPL. Has windows announced it will open the source of its software. The answer is a big NO...

Microsoft is fighting for its economics interests, and those are not the interest of the linux community: that the code of the programmes belongs to the people, not to big corporations. Linux is a competitor for Microsfot, and Microsoft has show its aggressivity to Linux: for example, paying for 'independent reports' showing that linux is less secure than Microsoft.

If Microsoft wants to help the community, it should open its source code.

I think everyone here has made lots valid points and I agree with a lot in general. I myself am disappointed in Novell for such a move, I understand from a business point of view that such a move might be in the best interest for the company.

But I would never trust any M$ business venture like this, since M$ is known to be only concerned with unilateral control, money is important, but that will always come if you have the monopoly, it's not like they can go anywhere else.

i read that novell bought unix from at&t. so, why doesn't novell just publish and run with unix? novell could make a LOT of money that way.

Microsoft Linux anyone?

I think everyone is in agreement on a couple points:

1. We all dislike Microsoft, and will never trust them.
2. We all like linux, and are fearful its future could be threatened.
3. The ms/novell deal is hiding something, and nobody is buying it.

Why doesn't Microsoft just come out with their own distribution? Linux is open source, and we can all assume MS has been looking at linux code for years. They've ripped off every other successful competitor by duplicating the technology. Why not linux too?

We all know where this is going, we've seen it before. MS will ripoff off SUSE, and come out with their own distribution. The same way they ripped off every other competitor. Anyone remember Word Perfect? Lotus? Ashton Tate? Quarterdeck? Netscape? Apple? The list of companies is truly endless.

I for one am a huge SUSE fan, and anything that helps Novell can only help our organization. I dont trust Microsoft. I hope Novell knows what its doing. We love SUSE and will continue to run it in our organization.

So Ballmer says that Linux contains MS intellectual property. So every Linux user is using MS property that they haven't paid for. That makes every Linux user a thief. We say that we don't. Therefore, he's also saying we are liars.

Ballmer is saying that every Linux user is a thief and a liar but hasn't produced any evidence. Reeks of libel to me. Anybody up for suing this son of a bitch?