maybe so, maybe not
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| tuxchick Mar 21, 2007 2:21 PM EDT |
"Friedman also said he is not surprised that Red Hat waited to act until the point where Novell had demonstrated that desktop Linux is viable and credible." Yeah. Right. Red Hat has always had a desktop edition; they called it 'enterprise workstation' or something like that. They've been very cagey about using the word 'desktop,' but no matter what you call it this is not a new thing. Novell-droids make it sound like they woke up one morning, went "OMG Novell has shown us the light! We shall follow!" and suddenly conjured up a desktop version. This is a pitiful attempt to look like a Linux leader. Lotsa luck. Real Linux leaders don't become branch offices of Microsoft. |
| rexbinary Mar 21, 2007 3:15 PM EDT |
Well said. It won't be long before Microsoft closes that branch anyway. |
| jsusanka Mar 21, 2007 5:39 PM EDT |
you are too funny tuxchick, don't you know we owe everything to microsoft - every time we touch the keyboard we wouldn't of been able to do it if it wasn't for microsoft. and now they have blessed linux by creating the branch office novell. I just thank the good lord they finally did it - I don't know if I could of gone on much longer without them getting money from the hard work of all the linux developers. |
| tracyanne Mar 21, 2007 9:45 PM EDT |
It wouldn't surprise me if Microsoft were to attempt a hostile takeover of Novell sometime in the near future. After all there is a fair amount of proprietary software that Novell own that could either be subsumed or simply be abandoned. And it would be the end of a Linux company as well. |
| DarrenR114 Mar 22, 2007 5:47 AM EDT |
As I recall, the Fedora Project was formed as Redhat's exit strategy from the desktop market - then they realised they blundered and re-introduced a desktop version of Redhat which in turn called into question of what was to become of Fedora. |
| swbrown Mar 22, 2007 9:08 AM EDT |
Yeah, sadly, Red Hat dropped the ball pretty damn hard when it came to the desktop. They intentionally shifted focus away from it despite initially hiring up desktop people. |
| dinotrac Mar 22, 2007 9:26 AM EDT |
>It wouldn't surprise me if Microsoft were to attempt a hostile takeover of Novell sometime in the near future Would there any advantage to them in doing that? They've already got access to Novell's technology. I'm not sure what a buyout would do for them. Doesn't mean there isn't something. I just don't know what it is. |
| jdixon Mar 22, 2007 9:49 AM EDT |
> After all there is a fair amount of proprietary software that Novell own that could either be subsumed or simply be abandoned. While should Microsoft buy Novell for their software when they can just do what they've always done and steal it? |
| vorbote Mar 22, 2007 1:25 PM EDT |
There is a very clear reason why Microsoft would want to buy Novell wholesale: To own the patents and trademarks that make up the UNIX(tm) operating system. You know, the ones that SCO thought had bought but didn't. |
| tracyanne Mar 22, 2007 1:33 PM EDT |
quote:: There is a very clear reason why Microsoft would want to buy Novell wholesale: To own the patents and trademarks that make up the UNIX(tm) operating system. ::quote Indeed. |
| jdixon Mar 22, 2007 1:49 PM EDT |
> To own the patents and trademarks that make up the UNIX(tm) operating system. Yes, I can see why they would want that. Point taken. |
| dinotrac Mar 22, 2007 1:56 PM EDT |
OK gang - How much (if anything) in Novell's UNIX stuff is actually patented? As to the trademarks, pshaw. I suppose Microsoft might enjoy collecting license fees from Unix vendors, on the other hand... Sun doesn't use Unix. They use Solaris. IBM doesn't use Unix. They use AIX. Linux isn't Unix, it's -- well -- Linux. Maybe those trademarks aren't worth buying Novell for. |
| azerthoth Mar 22, 2007 2:00 PM EDT |
Here is something that I just ran across, it answers alot of the layman questions about patents that have cropped up here now and again. http://utrf.tennessee.edu/tto/docs/Patent_Overview.PDF After reading this one starts to wonder at the dates on those UNIX patents that Novell has. Another thought is, with Microsoft already being a convicted monopolist I dont see the government allowing such a merger to take place anyway. I forget the name of the organazation that has oversight on those deals, but its the one that says yeah or nay to various bank mergers, airline mergers, and such. Still the clock on those patents is ticking, and has been since the day they were filed. |
| DarrenR114 Mar 23, 2007 5:35 AM EDT |
@azerthoth Federal Trade Commission aka FTC |
| vorbote Mar 23, 2007 3:17 PM EDT |
"""
Sun doesn't use Unix. They use Solaris.
IBM doesn't use Unix. They use AIX.
""" Not correct. They are UNIX(tm). Both companies not only licensed the UNIX code and made improvements on it to adapt them to their hardware products but also paid ludicrous amounts of money to get the certifications that allows them to call their operating systems UNIX (in capital letters). Nowadays, these certifications and renewals are handled by the OpenGroup http://www.opengroup.org/certification/idx/unix.html Same certifications that the community projects based on the original 4.4 BSD net tapes (NetBSD, FreeBSD and the later forks OpenBSD and DragonFly BSD) cannot afford. That's the reason they are not UNIX. (I don't recall the amount but it is a six to seven US dollar figure). """ Linux isn't Unix, it's -- well -- Linux """ Yup that's about right. If anything it started as a clone of Minix, but it diverged radically very early on. Now on the issue of when the patents expire, it is a matter of conflating copyright with patents and trademarks, which creates an immortal Frankenstein monster considering that copyrights are now 75 years in the US and something close in the EU. A good lawyer without morals can concoct something like this in a second. The "Intellectual Property" oxymoron wasn't invented out of the blue, it is a draw-the-dots explanation to corporate suits on how they can make obscene amounts of money by setting up a patent/trademark/copyright portfolio and sue the truly innovative businesses who do invest in research and development out of the planet. BTW, trademarks do not expire as long as you assert them strongly against (possible) abusers. |
| Bob_Robertson Mar 23, 2007 3:26 PM EDT |
"If anything it started as a clone of Minix, but it diverged radically very early on." Nope. It started as a terminal emulator. It was _developed_ on Minix, because Torvalds needed to start with _something_. He then proceeded to write the basic UNIX-style environment from freely available specifications sources and books, but _not_ from anyone else's _source_code_. http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20050327184603969 The daemon, the gnu, and the penguin A History of Free and Open Source ~ by Peter H. Salus |
| dcparris Mar 23, 2007 4:40 PM EDT |
Well, Linus wanted a Minix replacement. :-) |
| vorbote Mar 23, 2007 5:09 PM EDT |
@Bob_Robertson Mind you I said "clone of minix" not an outright copy. Of course that the first versions of the code had to be written somewhere and bootstrapped somehow and Minix was the only OS a student could afford at that time that wasn't an MS product. It wasn't a clean-room implementation if that's what you portend, because in the 80's people either studied UNIX or studied Minix in their operating systems introductory course. If you read the actual post made by Torvalds to comp.os.minix 15 years ago you'd remember that he based his early design on Minix but using his own ideas on OS design (as it should be): http://groups.google.de/group/comp.os.minix/browse_thread/th... . The fact that he didn't feel that Tannenbaum's approach to kernel design was workable made him take the decision to forgo a modular kernel for a monolithic one. The present day monolithic kernel with loadable driver modules came about several years later, inspired by the early SunOS versions based on SYSVR4. BTW, I would have much appreciated that you had posted the actual, relevant, link to chapter 19 [url=http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20051013230225716&query=Peter H. Salus]http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20051013230225716&q...[/url] where by the way there is nothing to support your claims. I hope you did not acquire that perception of the events that brought Linux about from Groklaw comments! You see, Groklaw is like a crossbred of Slashdot and Wikipedia. The only important content is the documents posted or referenced, the rest is page filling and hot air. When you say that Torvalds wrote the basic UNIX-style environment from freely available specifications, I understand that you are trying to say that Torvalds wanted to have something as close to UNIX as he could, so he tried to model his kernel after the POSIX specification. At that time the POSIX specs were not available publicly, you had to cough up a fair amount of money. When that situation changed (that was in 95 or 96 if I remember correctly) the kernel started the slow process of adopting POSIX as its model. It took a long time to make Linux into a POSIX kernel. |
| dinotrac Mar 24, 2007 5:10 AM EDT |
verbote - If you'll look at my post, You'll see that I referred to trademarks, not copyrights. The Unix trademark ain't worth what it would cost to buy Novell. At this point, the Unix copyrights are worth something, but I wonder how much. I presume that any licenses that IBM and Sun require provide them with adequate protection against a voracious Microsoft. As to patents, you may have missed the gist -- I seriously question that any of that old Unix code is patented as the US didn't even grant software patents until relatively recently. |
| Bob_Robertson Mar 25, 2007 11:24 AM EDT |
Verbote, Sorry. When someone says "clone", it is in fact an explicit copy. An exact replica. I'm glad that you liked the book. I'm sorry that you got a different impression about Torvalds writing from published specifications than I did when I read it. You did....read it, right? All of it? |
| vorbote Mar 25, 2007 3:28 PM EDT |
Bob, First, I see you are very keen to semantical wars but you are unable to read between the lines. What part of "diverged early on" did you not understand? In CS the word clone has a different meaning of that one in biology or the one in the common language dictionaries. Those different meanings are called "scientific jargon" and are both a consequence and a necessity of creating semantical frameworks for clear communication between peers in a field of science. In the context I chose to use, the word clone is used to mean functionally identical, not a replica. Please, don't go for the biology meaning unless you are familiar with the concept of norm of reaction. On reading the whole book. Yes I did, there is lots of informal and personal recollections. Now, I was a contemporaneous observer and early adopter. I was playing with Linux by October that same year and read everything that transpired in Usenet at that time and in the following years; so you could say that my perception is based on being an interested witness of historical events. There is nothing in that book that I haven't known for years. (BTW, the nickname is Vorbote, not Verbote. Check your German, the meanings are *very* different). |
| Bob_Robertson Mar 25, 2007 4:40 PM EDT |
Vorbote, of course. You are absolutely correct. I bow to your mighty perspective. Too bad. |
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