Et tu, Suse?

[that_chick_in_I.T.]

Any thoughts on the "don't ask don't sue (http://news.com.com/Microsoft+makes+Linux+pact+with+Novell/2100-1016_3-6132119.html?tag=nefd.lede)" agreement between MS and Novell?

The response so far has been legitimate concern about clashes with MS patents and the requirements of the GPL. The two don't quite seem to mix, do they?

Honestly, I'm in the camp of skeptics. While I don't hate Microsoft, they aren't really the type to share and share alike. The agreement boosted Novell's stock by 17 points, but slighly dinged Red Hat - the presumable target of the merger. By eliminating the liability concerns associated with using Linux for Suse users, MS potentially grabs users from Red Hat - and when users call MS, Ballmer himself said that the first priority would be to sell Windows-only systems, and to sell the MS-Suse systems as a last resort. It seems like a move designed to kill off both Suse and Red Hat - which sounds quite a bit like the Redmond Giant. Whatever you think of MS, they didn't get where they are today by liking competition.

One of Novell's projects is OpenOffice. I prefer AbiWord for word processing, given the clunkiness of OOWriter (or OOAnything for that matter). That being said - if OO is open-source, and MS gives them information to improve OO interoperability with MS Office - then presumably anyone else can examine the source code for OO and apply similar changes to other pieces of software to improve their interoperability with MS Office. So saith the GPL. As for how Microsoft will weigh in on that, this should be interesting.

[LostMyMind]

Personally, I think it will work out just fine. Microsoft has a history of beating and fighting against folks who are trying to knock Microsoft off the top.

All the crap from major software companies, "Microsoft won't tell us how to do this, blah blah blah". Is all BS, all it takes is a few mins and Microsoft will give you that information. Windows internal code has almost always been available. (It's there for hardware developers)

Microsoft don't like OpenOffice because it goes out of the way to "mirror" Office. So it's understandable. I'm sure car companies will be duking it out if one company decided to make a car that looks and acts almost exactly like the top selling car.

[that_chick_in_I.T.]

Microsoft has a history of beating and fighting against folks who are trying to knock Microsoft off the top.


Which is exactly what they seem to be doing here. Linux only offers real competition to MS in the server market, and Suse doesn't even offer any competition there. The most serious competitor is Red Hat. That being said, a concern about using Linux servers, is being sued over software patents (http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3389071) - which can be pretty draconian (http://www.internetnews.com/ec-news/article.php/3639541), to say the least. This "merger" offers a threat to both Suse and Red Hat - a pretty strategic move on the part of Microsoft.

And yeah, I really don't like OpenOffice. It does try too hard to imitate MS Office, but for some reason manages to suck reeeeeeally hard in doing so. A lot of Novell's open source stuff is designed around Microsoft products.

[LostMyMind]

Oh and the one who sue Microsoft about "object automatically activating" feature of IE was an infringement of their patent. Which is why you have to "click" on a control to use it in IE.

The problem is not the companies, the problem is the patient office can't look at common stuff when it's wrapped around "computer speak" and see that they're trying to patient normal programmer's way of doing things. Even hyper-link is patented.

So every company sends out thousands of patients on different ideas about how to do something so they can actually use it without getting sued. Microsoft is just trying to protect themselves. I hope this leads to the software industry dropping this stupid patenting of math.

All computer software is just math. Pluses, minus, multiplication, and comparison. They should have never allowed "math" to be patented. It is the dumbest thing in the world to do. Patents are for mechanical/chemical designs not math equations. (Yes, I'm aware that chemistry is just complex math. But it's complex math with chemicals and not numbers)