Dear China, Here Comes Microsoft's Friend, Novell.

khess 0 531 Views

Almost 10 months ago, I wrote the post, "Dear China, Microsoft Wants to Charge You for Air Too" and now Novell follows up with its own plan to charge China for air. The Chinese assume that since Linux is open source that it means that it is less capitalistic and less money driven.

OK. Now let's see if you can get them to believe that.

The conversation will go something like this:

Novell: Hi, we're Novell--we represent the open source operating system, Linux.

China: Great. You did know that Red Hat and Microsoft both have already been here, didn't you?

Novell: Yes, of course. Our version of Linux is better than Red Hat's and we have an agreement with Microsoft. [Giggling in the background]

China: Microsoft? But aren't they a monopolistic, greed-based, capitalist company bent on world domination--umm, you know like Communism without the monopoly or greed things. [Giggling]

Novell: Yeah, but our agreement with Microsoft is to protect our customers from any patent infringement caused by Linux.

China: So, using Novell's SUSE Linux, we'll be protected from patent infringement? Red Hat gives us the same deal--Ubuntu does too, I think. What's the advantage of using your version when we can get it for free and ignore patent infringement anyway? After all, we're the biggest software pirating country in the world.

Novell: Yeah, but you should use us because...like...we're Novell and our production software is only a little behind the curve on innovation.

China: Yeah, OK. You've convinced us. [All out laughter]

[On the Plane back to Utah]
Novell: I think we did well. They like us. They really, really like us. [High fives all around]

[Beijing - Ministry of Information Industry]
China: That was interesting [Tossing marketing materials and info into trash]. We'll own them in a year. [High fives all around].

Dani AI

Generated

This thread surfaces a lasting, practical question: how should organizations judge a commercial Linux vendor when that vendor has public alliances with big proprietary players? captures the political skepticism many feel, and reminds that distro quality and tooling still sway real users. The useful takeaway is simple — treat marketing claims as noise and insist on concrete, reviewable legal and operational guarantees.

Legal promises labeled as "protection" or "patent coverage" are not uniform. Common forms are: (1) a covenant not to sue (a promise not to bring claims), (2) an indemnity (the vendor agrees to defend and pay damages), or (3) a limited license for specific patents. These differ by scope, duration, territory, whether they cover modified or redistributed code, and whether they survive transfer. Oral assurances and press statements do not substitute for contract language; written terms matter.

Practical checklist for procurement and ops:

  • Obtain the exact text of any patent covenant/indemnity and have independent counsel review scope, exclusions, governing law, and assignability.
  • Verify whether coverage applies to vendor-supplied binaries only, or also to downstream modifications and redistribution.
  • Clarify defense/settlement obligations, caps on liability, and excluded patent families.
  • Require explicit support and patching SLAs tied to the product releases being purchased.
  • Demand provenance and license-scan reports for delivered packages; run independent scans before production rollout.
  • Build technical mitigations (isolation, container boundaries, multi-vendor fallbacks) so legal risk does not become an operational single point of failure.
  • Favor vendors that contribute upstream and publish transparent security and maintenance practices.

Skepticism like shows is healthy; so is the distro loyalty expresses. Combining legal scrutiny with operational due diligence gives a defensible, pragmatic choice — evaluate enforceable terms and real support, not marketing lines.

Member Avatar for kenholmz
kenholmz 0 Newbie Poster

This is causing me mild pain. I have been using SuSE since before Novell purchased it. Although I install others, it remains the distro I am most comfortable with. I even like Yast although I do use other tools. I am currently using OpenSuse 11.0; no plans to upgrade until KDE 4.2 is included unless I change to another distro.
BTW: You may have seen this already, but I find this article about GNU and GPL quite interesting.

Member Avatar for khess
khess 95 Practically a Master Poster

I liked SuSE too when it was still owned by the German company. In fact, it was the first commercial version of Linux I ever purchased. I think Novell's involvement has screwed it up. I'm sorry. I used to really like Novell but they did some things very wrong to their customers years ago that I'll never forgive them for with NetWare. Most of their great people are also gone so I'm barely hanging onto them as a distro at all. I do really like their SuSE Studio product though--it's awesome. OpenSUSE isn't too bad either.

Be a part of the DaniWeb community

We're a friendly, industry-focused community of developers, IT pros, digital marketers, and technology enthusiasts meeting, networking, learning, and sharing knowledge.

Edit Preview