Novell and Microsoft Claim Customer Support

munchola writes "Novell and Microsoft have commissioned a survey to prove that customers love their interoperability and patent deal. According to the survey 'Ninety-five percent approve of the collaboration between Novell and Microsoft,' while 'four out of five believe their organization would consider doing more business with Linux dealers if Linux providers establish an alliance with Microsoft.' As CBRonline notes, however: 'Few people have claimed the deal is bad for Novell or Microsoft's customers. The question has been whether it is good for the open source movement, open source developers, or indeed Novell itself. Those issues do not appear to have been addressed by the survey.'"

Well...

[urbanradar]

...if businesses using Linux were to suddenly find themselves without support one day because their Linux partner has just lost a legal battle against Microsoft, they probably wouldn't like it as much.

Just saying.

Re:Marketing auto-fellatio?

[urbanradar]

The people on Slashdot and other such forums and Novell's paying customers are mostly not the same people.

Re:Marketing auto-fellatio?

[Macthorpe]

Not to spit on the results of your own personal survey here (actually, it really is), but could that possibly be because 'me and my Linux pals' aren't exactly a representative sample of the computing community?

Re:Marketing auto-fellatio?

[Anonymous Coward]

That'd be the point -- pleasing or angering noisy teenage Lunix fanboys has no effect on Novell's paying customer base.

As predictable as snow in winter

[netbuzz]

Customers *always* like to hear that their vendors are playing nice-nice together; the details matter little -- at least in the short run. ... Or maybe it's just that Microsoft and Novell have wowed 'em with these cool billboards that are beckoning drivers in the Bay Area and Massachusetts:
http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/9636 [networkworld.com]

Did I miss Casual Friday ?

[Joebert]

How can a survey like this go unnoticed by the Slashdot audience untill after it's been conducted ?
Did anyone here actually participate in this survey ?

Re:Just one survey?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't be absurd. Marketing types know how to write surveys that give them the results they want. There are courses on this.

spred the fud

[wardk]

why even bother reporting such nonsense?

it's not news, it's BS.

I suggest slashdot and others ignore it altogether instead of indignantly reporting it.

PSB

[phoric]

From the article: "PSB is a strategic communications firm that specializes in research-based recommendations for its clients. PSB has conducted research studies for Microsoft over the past 8 years." Wow, a POSITIVE survey that was commissioned by Microsoft, to the customers of Microsoft, by a company who regularly does commissioned reports for Microsoft. Who woulda thought?

Re:Paying MS Customer != open source movement

[smilindog2000]

Of course it doesn't, most of the people involved in the open source movement are not paying customers to either company. So why would MS and Novell try to make them happy.

You sound like a typical sales guy, not that that's bad. They are always focused on what they can sell this quarter, and not concerned about two years out. Novel is probably also listening to their sales guys. I find they under-estimate the power of the open-source community, and resent it for not paying any commissions. Most paying customers for Linux ask a real geek which distro to buy, and that generally means one of us open-source guys. I had a client company ask me just this question last week, and the decision I helped them make (RedHat - definately NOT Suse for EDA), will probably grow with that company for at least a decade. I figure over the long-run, Novell is out possibly a million bucks, just for pissing me off. And I'm just one geek. Yeah, they ought to care.

this whole deal is pure bullshit

[Alien Being]

If MS really cared about interoperability, they would not have been playing dirty tricks with APIs, protocols and file formats for the last twenty years. MS wants no part of Open Systems. Their talk about intellectual property rights is just a veiled threat, "buy from us or we'll pay some SCO-like operation to sue you."

The question that was missing from that survey is "do you trust Microsoft to keep their promises and not attempt to lock you into proprietary products?"

Re:But some of us are.

[Albanach]

Nor will I ever recommend Novell products until Novell changes their attitude.

Interesting. So Novell enter an agreement that protects you from being sued by Microsoft, and as a result you'd recommend not using their products in future? What's your business case for that?

Re:Marketing auto-fellatio?

[everphilski]

More money than time. Linux is more secure than windows ... sure. But Windows has (1) more and (2) a better selection of applications. He mentions three PC's for (basically) TiVo's. Could he have done MythTV boxes instead? I'm sure he could. Is a Windows Media PC just a little bit slicker (with a remote to boot) and a lot less time consuming to set up? You bet. Some of us have a family and other commitments to attend to, instead of spending every waking moment tweaking our linux boxes...
I'm on the fence myself, 1 windows PC, 1 linux box. I use the right tool for the job. I game on the windows box, program on the linux box. People here give Microsoft too little credit for a good enough job well done.

Great for PHB / Gartner Group / Rob Enderle Types

[mergy]

Let's face it. 'Surveys' like these and the ones from Gartner and the wonderful columns from people like Enderle are all to try and soothe the pointy-headed bosses and other execs so they think they know something about something happening in the server rooms of the world.

These sort of 'surveys' and the type of 'research' by these sorts of people/organizations is such a waste anyway. It is the equivalent of Cliff-Notes(TM) for the IT world so it makes perfect sense that some PHB will now come to one of us and say 'Hey, did you hear about the MS/Novell agreement, should make things even better for us eh?'

Geez, get back to work...

How do you know they "protect" me?

[khasim]

So Novell enter an agreement that protects you from being sued by Microsoft, and as a result you'd recommend not using their products in future? What's your business case for that?

Since the actual wording of their agreement is still a secret, how do you know that they're providing any "protection" at all?

Since they've both stated that this agreement will expire in 5 years, why would I want to risk their products 6 years from now? Migrations are expensive.

When was the last time an end-user (not a distributor/vendor) was sued for patent infringement?

Statistically, if an end-user is being sued by Microsoft, that end-user already has a license agreement with Microsoft.

Microsoft does that all the time. Many of those stories are posted on /. (particularly the ones about schools being sued).

One of the PRIMARY advantages of Open Source for the end-user is the absence of license requirements. I have to spend time/effort/money making sure that the copies of MS-Office we use are licensed and that I have proof of those licenses. And that proof is acceptable to Microsoft should they ever audit us.

Yet I can deploy Linux without any CAL's or anything. And OpenOffice.org without any per seat requirements. And so on.

So, the "business case" is savings TODAY versus a nebulous threat that has never been exercised against any end-user in the past ... combined with the very real and previously documented threat of license audits and lawsuits.