Hooray for straw men
|
| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| swbrown Mar 10, 2007 10:37 AM EDT |
"But as Novell proved last week, this was an instance of the community being more loud than correct." The community said it was wrong/corrupt to do, not that they'd lose money in the short term. Obviously, getting paid off a few hundred million dollars and having Microsoft effectively buy and distribute 70k support contracts isn't going to cause a short term loss. "While you can't draw a straight line from these increases to the deal with Microsoft, you have to imagine it had some impact." So not only was it a straw man, it's being attacked with assumptions? :) Classy. |
| Abe Mar 10, 2007 11:44 AM EDT |
Quoting:Rather, in the short term, the very opposite has happened. Novell's Linux business skyrocketed last quarter and in fact is the only part of their business that appears to be doing well.The key word is "short term". Those Linux deals that Novell just closed were already in the works and the Novell-MS contract helped expedite their closure. There is no doubt about it. But what is going to happen next might not be so pretty for Novel. There is OpenSuse, which can be downloaded for free and many other distros that can be downloaded or purchased with support. Most of the other distros can perform as good, if not better than Suse, and there is no reason for customers to use them especially when the MS-Novell contract has a expiration date. Why go with Novell and then have to move to different distro later when the protection does not last? The companies that singed in with Novell already made their selection and weren't going to change at last minute. MS helped with those companies they have influence on, but how much influence MS will have on such companies in the future? I believe it will be much less if none at all. Quoting:revenue from Linux Platform Products was up 46% from the same quarter last year to $15M and Linux-related invoicing was up a staggering 659% to $91M.The patent payments by MS and their purchase of 70K Linux licenses sure are considerable. Adjusting the books might have something to do with it too. But, is it going to be enough to save Novell? My guess is it will not. Quoting:And certainly the backlash predicted to take it's pound of flesh from the Linux vendor never materialized.Let's give it time and see. This is not a stock market, this is a process with long term strategies that take time to show noticeable results. |
| bigg Mar 10, 2007 12:22 PM EDT |
My impression was that the open source community was upset because Novell was selling out. The open source community was complaining that Novell was in some way cheating them in order to make money. If anything, the recent financial results show that the open source community was right that the deal would make money for Novell. |
| dinotrac Mar 10, 2007 12:37 PM EDT |
> If anything, the recent financial results show that the open source community was right that the deal would make money for Novell. As I recall, it was Novell saying they would make money from the deal, not the free software community. I belivee the kind-hearted folks of free software were predicting rather dire circumstances for Novell. |
| Abe Mar 10, 2007 2:31 PM EDT |
Quoting:As I recall, it was Novell saying they would make money from the deal, not the free software community.To my knowledge, Novell never mentioned anything about the deal making them money, All that they were touting was "cooperation, interoperability, virtualization, and patent agreement not to sue each others customers and for the benefit of the consumers". Bigg is right, the community is upset because the deal was a sellout. MS-Novell found a loop hole to take advantage of. MS is paying Novell for some Linux licenses and Novell is paying for MS patents that Novell uses. The issue is not clear whether those patents are in Novell's Linux products or something other. MS claims that they are in Linux but Novell disputes that. Who to believe when both are untrustworthy. Novell can clear the dirt off their face by publishing the the details of the contract but they refused to. If it is because of terms in the agreement, I say hog wash, otherwise they would have been able to release to Moglen under NDA. [quote]I belivee the kind-hearted folks of free software were predicting rather dire circumstances for Novell.[/qote] I believe that still stands, just give it time. |
| swbrown Mar 10, 2007 2:43 PM EDT |
> As I recall, it was Novell saying they would make money from the deal, not the free software community. Denying the few hundred million and support contracts Microsoft and Novell announced at the onset would be a short term profit is like denying the holocaust. > I belivee the kind-hearted folks of free software were predicting rather dire circumstances for Novell. How much money they would make in the short term was never the point. |
| swbrown Mar 10, 2007 3:04 PM EDT |
Btw, what I think will happen is that Novell will intentionally not attempt to prevent Microsoft from attacking Linux or GNU/Linux vendors (especially Red Hat) via patents (since their loophole allows them to /profit/ off this happening by squeezing fleeing customers - a profit motive for attacks on freedom that Liberty or Death is supposed to prevent), which will shrink the Linux market and steal control of attacked projects. That'll make Novell a lot of money, but ultimately will destroy their own market, not to mention what a disaster it will be for everyone else. It's a SCO exit strategy. The only way to prevent that from happening is to cause Novell to also be substantially harmed in the short term from such an attack by Microsoft - disable their 'squeeze fleeing customers' profit motive - so they would have no choice but to defend. That will involve relicensing a lot of software GPL3 and hoping it's done in time for their intended victims (the customers) to depend on the GPL3-only versions. |
| jezuch Mar 10, 2007 3:04 PM EDT |
Quoting:All that they were touting was "cooperation, interoperability, virtualization, and patent agreement not to sue each others customers and for the benefit of the consumers". And that doesn't mean "more money for us" in market-speak? |
| dinotrac Mar 10, 2007 3:32 PM EDT |
>And that doesn't mean "more money for us" in market-speak? Of course it does!! It meant it when they said so after the deal and it means so now. I don't remember Novell being remotely shy about the deal being good for their bottom line. |
| Abe Mar 11, 2007 6:54 AM EDT |
Quoting:And that doesn't mean "more money for us" in market-speak?It does if the consumers bite. But if it fails to accomplish what promised and consumers end up wasting their money, it will backfire severely at Novell. MS is the key to that success, and Novell has become under its mercy. We all know MS's history and the result of partnering with them. That is why the chances of Novell surviving is very slim. |
| dinotrac Mar 11, 2007 7:39 AM EDT |
>It does if the consumers bite. The question is not who the consumers are, but who the customers are. Novell seem to have made the decision that corporate users are their customers. As a business, you have to care about the people who are willing to plunk down cash. Four million downloads might look nice for user base, but doesn't fatten the bottom line. |
| Abe Mar 11, 2007 8:26 AM EDT |
Quoting:The question is not who the consumers are, but who the customers are. I like how you broke them up to two categories, but with today's many options available, one company customers can dwindle pretty rapidly when they find better solutions and option from a different company. Customers are not as blindly loyal as they used to be. Novell ought to know that by now as they have seen their Netware customers defecting to windows and Linux. |
| dinotrac Mar 11, 2007 10:03 AM EDT |
>Customers are not as blindly loyal as they used to be. Corporate customers have never tended to be blindly loyal, just very aware of costs and implementation risks. For Novell to make money from Linux, they need to provide a value add worth paying for. Red Hat has done that and so has IBM. Novell has the resources and experience to do it. Time will tell if they succeed. |
| swbrown Mar 11, 2007 10:16 AM EDT |
> Time will tell if they succeed. What they're currently attempting to 'succeed' doing is profiting off of an upcoming patent war by letting their 'friend' attack Red Hat and by it, the freedom of all Free Software distributed by anyone but Novell. I not only hope they don't succeed, I hope they wind up a smoldering crater for just trying. |
| Abe Mar 11, 2007 10:56 AM EDT |
Quoting:Corporate customers have never tended to be blindly loyal, just very aware of costs and implementation risks. Don't get me started on corporate IT management. It is at a pitiful state in the US and it is all because of the MS culture. Most IT managers became no more than MBAs and bureaucratic Contract Administrators (CAs) who know nothing but how to cover their arse when there is a problem by pointing fingers at outsources. They claim it cost less to outsource and improves services. In the process, they kill all creativity and innovations in the internal work place. It used to be "you can't be fired for picking IBM" and now "you can't get fired for picking MS". Now days, spending the big IT budgets is fashionable, it is a way of showing you are attending to the IT needs of the business. In reality, while IT spending is increasing, services are dwindling. Go figure. |
| dinotrac Mar 11, 2007 1:13 PM EDT |
>by letting their 'friend' attack Red Hat and by it I don't know what you think they could or would do about that. Microsoft will do what Microsoft will do. Last I looked, they didn't take marching orders from Novell. |
| dinotrac Mar 11, 2007 1:15 PM EDT |
>Don't get me started on corporate IT management. It is at a pitiful state in the US and it is all because of the MS culture No. Most of the problems with IT management predate MS by a long time. MS is just the current beneficiary. You could see it in the old "All blue" shops -- (Gosh! If everything comes from IBM, we don't have to worry about vendors pointing fingers at each other...everything will just work!), or even today's "If it's a database, it must be Oracle" shops. |
| Sander_Marechal Mar 11, 2007 11:30 PM EDT |
>Don't get me started on corporate IT management. It is at a pitiful state in the US and it is all because of the MS culture I think there are really two causes for it: 1) The people make the decisions don't understand the technology. Not even of a superficial level. It's all run PHB-style. Management cannot make decisions without understanding the tech because there is no way to make a judgment on the risks involved. This leads to people simply following the market leader / evilo empire of the day - whether that's MS, big blue or anything else. 2) IT is all to often seen as a cost. That's not true. IT is a resource. The more you have it the better (up to a point ofcourse). You don't "pay for" IT, you invest in it. Investing in IT isn't just about getting the cost down in other departments (e.g. HR) but about creating new opportunities, more flexible work processes, more effective competition, etcetera. |
| dinotrac Mar 12, 2007 3:22 AM EDT |
> IT is all to often seen as a cost Bingo. I have worked in companies (like the old Ross Perot, pre-GM, EDS) where IT WAS the business. It makes a difference. The place I'm working at now (for the next few weeks, anyway) is like that. They are, for all intents and purposes, organized to send development to India. They might never do that, but they're organized that way, with a layer of project managers and business analysts between developers and customers, developers and non-IT management, etc. They have, for all intents and purposes, organized themselves to prevent development teams from making significant contributions to the company. The thing that stuns me after talking to a number of people who have gone through there is that this company isn't all that unusual. Sigh. Too bad Google looks for people who are smarter than I am. |
| Sander_Marechal Mar 12, 2007 4:02 AM EDT |
> Bingo. I have worked in companies [...] where IT WAS the business. It makes a difference. Good to hear because I'll start working for such a company in three weeks. I'll be glad to be out of the logistcis business. |
| swbrown Mar 12, 2007 11:17 AM EDT |
> I don't know what you think they could or would do about that. They'll do nothing, which is the problem. If their business would be destroyed by Microsoft attacking the same software they distribute, Novell would have to defend against them as well. By circumventing section 7, they don't have to, and obviously won't. They're hoping it'll mean lots of money for them as customers flee from Microsoft attacking their competitors, and everyone who uses Free Software in the process. Profiting off of attacks on freedom. |
| DarrenR114 Mar 12, 2007 12:02 PM EDT |
@swbrown, what's preventing MS from suing Novell? |
| dinotrac Mar 12, 2007 12:26 PM EDT |
>By circumventing section 7, they don't have to, and obviously won't. You presume a lot by presuming that the agreement changes what Novell would or would not have done. The very fact that Microsoft was willing to pay Novell hundreds of millions of dollars says that they didn't relish a legal fight. If they went after somebody, it would be somebody else. Novell would sit on the sidelines unless they had a clear interest in jumping in. From what I can see, there is nothing in the agreement to prevent them from doing that now. |
| Abe Mar 12, 2007 12:42 PM EDT |
Quoting:No. Most of the problems with IT management predate MS by a long time. MS is just the current beneficiary.I don't believe that is accurate. IBM was the "Big Blue", They were professional and excellence driven and controlled the business enterprise market. But they lived and let live always leaving crumbs to others. MS started with those crumbs. Then Digital came along and took a good share of the computer market. IT managers new what they wanted, how to use it, and adopt it to their busness. It wasn't marketing that Digital was good at, it was Engineering and good software. Digital always advocated technology and always believed in "A good product will sell itself" Then Sun came along with Unix/Solaris. IT managers moved to Unix in droves, Again, Technical excellence and know how was the determining factor of what hardware software to purhase. Then MS came along with their marketing razzle-dazzle and changed the whole culture. MS low cost and cheap products (that is how it appeared initially when buying for a few PCes here and there) and lack of competition got them where they are. Lock-in, trickery, kickbacks and many other sleazy methods converted many start up companies and users (not managers yet). MS had many lucky chances because of the stupidity (in hindsight) of IT companies (IBM, Digital & Sun). That is how MS changed the IT culture. It wasn't IBM. |
| dinotrac Mar 12, 2007 1:09 PM EDT |
>But they lived and let live always leaving crumbs to others. Umm... The federal government has filed twice as many antitrust suits against IBM as they have against Microsoft. IBM was anything but "Live and let live." When I worked at EDS, one of the reasons we bought Amdahls, and one of the reasons EDS partnered with Hitachi to form NAS was to have a counterweight at the "live and let live" IBM. |
| dcparris Mar 12, 2007 2:50 PM EDT |
dino, I'm may not always agree with your viewpoint, but you definitely always bring perspective to the arguments. I actually missed out on the big bad IBM days. In fact, I really didn't pick up on much of the tech news until I began to get serious about GNU/Linux. In scouting around the 'Net for info, I kept running into resources pointing out MS as the big bad evil empire (MS dirty tricks, MS usability, MS original ideas, The Halloween papers, etc.) So I have had to get my tech history from the news and sites like these, and don't necessarily have the history that includes IBM's days as the evil empire. Essentially, I have little or nothing by which I can compare the two empires. At most, I have a handful of conversations (either threaded or in the form of articles), most of which suggest that MS is even badder and meaner than IBM. However, given what I have learned about the main source I am thinking of, I cannot be certain of the accuracy of that viewpoint. |
| jimf Mar 12, 2007 3:26 PM EDT |
>MS is even badder and meaner than IBM Different times, different boogie men. None of them were 'nice'. |
| swbrown Mar 12, 2007 3:27 PM EDT |
> @swbrown, what's preventing MS from suing Novell? Nothing. That's not what's going to happen, though. Microsoft will patent-attack either a non-Novell GNU/Linux vendor, or some Free Software itself. Novell will stand by going "Gee, that's too bad guys, gosh, we never expected that to happen, and for what it's worth, we 'strongly disapprove' of what our partner is doing despite not canceling our deals or trying to stop them with our patents we pledged we would before we pledged we wouldn't, but hey, we'll sell you back your own software if you want for the low low price of $699 per CPU. We call it our 'Novell Intellectual Property License License for Linux', oops no, wrong press release, 'Novell Patent Covenant for Linux'.". Now if they hadn't found a loophole, they couldn't do that - Microsoft attacking the software they distribute directly or by proxy would destroy their business as well, as their customers would be just as vulnerable as anyone else's customers. They would have to defend the freedom of the software, instead of the freedom of Novell to poach customers from Red Hat at the expense of the freedom of the software. |
| jezuch Mar 12, 2007 3:52 PM EDT |
Quoting:Different times, different boogie men. It begs a question: what boogie man comes after MS?... |
| Sander_Marechal Mar 12, 2007 4:05 PM EDT |
Some claim Google will be next. I don't really see that happening but it's not too far fetched either. |
| dinotrac Mar 12, 2007 4:11 PM EDT |
>Essentially, I have little or nothing by which I can compare the two empires I consider Microsoft to be worse than IBM in one sense: I believe that IBM played hardball to the Nth degree. I believe they took full advantage of their market power. I believe they were spreading FUD before Microsoft was even imagined. The whole "you don't want vendors point fingers at each other while your systems are down" thing was trotted out with glee. They could border on malicious - When Perot was seeking his first sale for EDS, IBM sent a team of salespeople behind him to discourage potential customers from signing up. Microsoft, however, seems to lack anything like ethics. Oh - and one more thing... IBM really has put out a lot of pretty good stuff. It's pretty sad that Microsoft, freed from the pressure of competition, has put out so much nasty crap. |
| jdixon Mar 12, 2007 4:21 PM EDT |
> most of which suggest that MS is even badder and meaner than IBM. It depends on your definitions. Like you, most of the IBM misdeeds predate my direct knowledge. From what I can tell MS is more unscrupulous than IBM, and thus willing to do things which they know are flat out illegal. IBM was equally, hmm, perhaps cutthroat is an accurate term (in the business sense), but I get they impression that they knew and accepted that there were rules to the game. I don't think Microsoft acknowledges any rules except the 11th commandment, and even it doesn't apply if they think they can buy their way out. |
| Sander_Marechal Mar 12, 2007 11:30 PM EDT |
Also, I think IBM only tried to screw the competition. MS screws their customers as well. IIRC the only anti-customer move by IBM was charging ridiculously high prices. |
| dinotrac Mar 13, 2007 3:08 AM EDT |
>the only anti-customer move by IBM was charging ridiculously high prices. That was one thing. Bundling was another. They were also rather notorious for offering differential service levels depending on how big a customer you were. Not that anyone had to settle fo Microsoft levels of care, but it's nice to have choices when you are not at the top of somebody's priority list. |
| DarrenR114 Mar 13, 2007 8:27 AM EDT |
Anyone remember microchannel?? That was a technician's dream ... too bad that IBM tried to keep too tight reigns wrt licensing. |
| bigg Mar 13, 2007 8:45 AM EDT |
> IIRC the only anti-customer move by IBM was charging ridiculously high prices Lou Gerstner included some stories in his book about his experiences as American Express CEO. One example: they bought a few machines from a competitor, so IBM decided to not support any of AmEx's machines. He was finally able to get that problem fixed, but AmEx was a big customer. The small company with 100 employees would have been out of luck. |
| Abe Mar 13, 2007 9:29 AM EDT |
Quoting:The small company with 100 employees would have been out of luck.That is where IBM went wrong and a good thing they did. Digital, Sun & MS, etc... all had a chance to grab the small companies business and in the process became competitors to IBM, which eventually threatened IBM's existence. IBM learned their lesson and had to rejuvenate themselves to survive. But the key point here is, IBM didn't try to dominate everything, they just dominated the big enterprise business that were worthwhile for them. IBM worked with the vendors who furnished service for the little companies. they charged for their technology but didn't keep it closed like MS does. MS went the other way; they dominated the little companies and had its eyes ever since trying to dominate the enterprise. If it wasn't for FOSS, MS would have succeeded already. That is why FOSS plays a major role in having IBM supportive of Linux. Quoting:IBM was charging ridiculously high pricesSupply and demand. when there is no competition, abusive monopoly rules. Quoting:Bundling was another.You can't avoid bundling in enterprise business. They need it, they want it, and they love it. IBM didn't keep small vendors out of serving small businesses and large business where IBM didn't think it was worthwhile for them. Look how MS got to monopolize the PC technology market that IBM invented. Being stupid or not, they did allow others to play a role in the market. Quoting:I believe they were spreading FUD before Microsoft was even imagined.Standard way of over powering others when you are a monopoly. FOSS is leveling the playing field. |
Posting in this forum is limited to members of the group: [ForumMods, SITEADMINS, MEMBERS.]
Becoming a member of LXer is easy and free. Join Us!