[sclug] Open Letter to the Community from Novell

[ed]

On Wed, 22 Nov 2006 07:58:46 -0000
"Martin Summers" <Martin.Summers at ansys.com> wrote:

>  Hello there !
> 
> I don't usually post very often on sclug, but this is one of those
> issues that makes me feel very uneasy. I have this horrible feeling
> that all the press releases I have see, especially from people like
> Steve Ballmer of MS, seem to be using the deal they have with Novell
> to say to the rest of the Commercial Linux companies: "Strike a deal
> with us or face us in court for IP breaches in a US court." (I
> paraphrase here, but that seems to be the general gist...)
> 
> This could be really rotten for businesses using commercial Linux
> distributions. 
> 
> On the other hand, it might be good for home users, depending on what
> comes out of it: For example, it may make a deal for proprietory video
> and audio codecs to be available for Linux. This may be a poor
> example, but I am sure that there are other technologies and file
> formats where this deal might just bridge the gap. Maybe DRM'ed media
> might also be a more open door (providing it doesn't contravene the GP
> etc..) (....actually, scratch that last sentence - I don't want to
> encourage DRM at all unless there is absolutely no other way to play
> DVD's and music on my linux host)

i think safety in numbers. if everyone flat out, chooses not to buy
things that are DRM'ed, either because they cannot play it, or because
they dont want to play it, then maybe the market will change and a less
DRM-ish format will prevail.

> I would love to believe that something good is going to happen as a
> result of this deal between MS and Novell, but I suspect there are now
> a lot of big risks for Novell as a company as MS are quite capable of
> using them for their own needs, and I don't think it would take much
> for home SuSE users to drop suse and use another distro. Businesses
> tend to care less unless money is directly involved. 
> 
> I have been using SuSE a lot in the last few years and as a desktop
> system, it works rather well and comes with a lot of applications that
> are useful, and I *like* it. I sometimes find the Centos and Redhat
> distros a bit lean sometimes, so often end up installing a lot of
> additional bits and pieces, but I find the Redhat and Centos stuff
> nice if you want something that's very "clean" and have a specific
> purpose in mind...
>  I'm still a big Sharp Zaurus user (a C860), which is a great tool and
> superb for learning linux from the ground up - the linux desktop
> community could learn a lot from some of the ideas on linux PDA's
> IMHO.
> 
> So maybe its time I gave Ubuntu a try while I see how things pan
> out.....

ubuntu is popular, but i'm not that happy with it these days. i think i
preferred debian on my desktop.

-- 
Regards, Ed                      :: http://www.bsdwarez.net
proud c++ hacker
The boogers in Vin Diesel's nose have been mined by ancient Persians 
and used to make rugs.