De Icaza Regrets Novell/Microsoft Pact 264
Ian Lamont writes "Novell Vice President and GNOME architect Miguel de Icaza sounded off at a MIX 08 panel on a number of topics. First, he claimed that he was 'not happy' with Novell's cross-patent licensing agreement with Microsoft, saying that if he had his way, the company would have stayed with the open-source community. He also said that neither Windows nor Linux are relevant in the long term, thanks to Web 2.0 business models: 'They might be fantastic products ... but Google has shown itself to be a cash cow. There is a feature beyond selling corporate [software] and patents ... it's going to be owning end users.' He also tangled with Mike Schroepfer, a Mozilla engineering executive, about extending patent protection for Moonlight to third parties. However, de Icaza did say that Novell has 'done the best it could to balance open-source interests with patent indemnification.' We discussed the beginnings of the deal between Microsoft and Novell back in 2006."
Web 2.0 eh? (Score:5, Interesting)
But I still fail to see how Web 2.0 will make an operating system irrelevant. The browser has to run on something. The server has to run on something too. And with the talk about "local web 2.0 apps", they might even be the same machine. Then you'll really need a good OS to schedule and mediate the needless and vast layers of extra complexity.
GNOME going in too many directions (Score:5, Interesting)
Sun for certain will not work with a direct competitor to Java. Red Hat will rightfully avoid including something that requires them to go in bed with Microsoft over patents.
Linux kernel development shows that big free software projects need both enthusiast but also corporate contributors. So GNOME, not unlike the kernel, garnered support by companies like Sun, but also countless small guy contributors. With Mono de Icaza put powerful centrifugal forces that work against GNOME.
just my
sigh (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Poor judgement (Score:4, Interesting)
He just realized what slashdot "jerks" were saying from the start. Any Novell open source is "fruit of the poisoned tree" to the community. Even previously open projects they worked on like samba were in serious trouble of being hijacked by MS IP. (note how MS tried to hijack them in the EU settlement after trying to pay off Novell failed) Novell can only "share" stuff like Moonlight and Mono with other COMPANIES that have Cross-license agreements with MS... SCO, Apple, IBM, etc. Even if they write stuff from scratch (they're not covered for copying MS technology either!!) it's always considered "poisoned" because nobody outside Novell can prove that MS IP wasn't looked at to develop the tech. (That's what SCO started suing IBM for at the beginning) The agreement they signed didn't allow them to DEVELOP technology WITH Microsoft, only not to have their customer sued for using the products Novell provided. He's realizing that's a BIG difference to what he was selling when telling every body the deal was so great.
In short the suits "above" him knew this up front, what the deal really meet and they took the money anyway. He's the only person "surprised" by this.
Re:Poor judgement (Score:3, Interesting)
To say that this is the beginning is not inappropriate. The beginning of a world where MS does not have a stranglehold on all things related to computing. It may have cost Novell quite a bit to figure it out, but they did, and in admitting as much they set an example for others to use in deciding their own personal courses.
Lately, more and more people are taking up some variant of GNU/Linux and writing off any investment they have in MS only software that won't run under Wine. I feel confident enough to say that we'll see more business/countries/education systems/people saying good bye to MS forever... or at least until they who will remain in Redmond decide to create something worth switching back for.
Google? No way. (Score:1, Interesting)
Now, they've introduced dozens of products. A lof of them are popular, some not so much. The one thing they seem to all have in common is that they don't work all that well. From annoying bugs to issues that make some of the features worthless, the quality just isn't there anymore. Ex1 - I used google toolbar for easier searching, autofill and popup blocking, and bookmarks, which I loved since they'd follow me to different computers. Better popup blocking is now built in to browsers, search is there too, and autofill works correctly maybe 25% of the time. The bookmarks hardly work at all because I can't stay logged in for more than a few minutes, and I've found nothing addressing why.
Anyway, google's market penetration in to software has been very weak. Google Apps are used by no one. How can you claim they are going to dominate operating systems?
Re:Ah. I see. (Score:1, Interesting)
Makes no sense. Unless you make it: Let he who has never used proprietary software, given the choice, cast the first stone. If you want the analogy with sin to stand, sins are committed voluntarily or they are not sins.
Re:Web 2.0 eh? (Score:5, Interesting)
I think he means this in the same way that Marc Andreessen meant it back in ~1996 or so when he talked about making the Browser as the new platform. In same ways, the way Java is a platform, and makes the OS "irrelavent". Essentially, all of them see Web Applications as the destroyer of coupling and vendor lock-in (well at least to Vendor desktop software, you'll be just as locked in to the Web 2.0 applications if they have your data, and won't let you share or mix and match). The thought being that, as long as the OS/platform has a decent Web Browser, it doesn't matter if it's Linux, FreeBSD, QNX, Windows XP/Vista, or MacOS. The experience you have with Google Mail is mostly derived from the quality of the browser implementation of specific technologies, and Google's ability to deal with the sub-standard aspects of that implementation across browers. It's pretty much identical to me on my Windows machine, on my Linux machine, or my MacOS machine. Thus the OS is irrelevant.
I'm not sure I believe in the mindset of these folks. They are moving off into a land of even less reliable, less robust, and less secure. However, having control of the central server, and only being dependent upon the browser and less dependent upon DLL's upon a remote machine is interesting. However, I'm not convinced that in the long run it'll be a viable solution. I really like owning my data. I really like having it all work off line. I know work is being done in those areas, it'll definitely be interesting.
Again, the point of this isn't the the Operating system will be less useful, or necessary. It is just that any good user agent will get you access to enough "applications" that are good enough, it won't matter what Operating System you run. Any "native" OS applications that aren't browsers could just as easily be replaced with Web 2.0 applications, and move along with life.
Not that I agree with any of it, it's merely my explaination of the perspective I think those folks are bringing to the problem.
Kirby
Re:Google? No way. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Web 2.0 eh? (Score:4, Interesting)
I have never seen an audience so under-whelmed and outright scared. They just could not deal with the notion that Netscape was proposing that the OS was irrelevant. "But... but... where's my Windows desktop?".
They left essentially being told "no, please don't work on this -- we wouldn't want it". I had the strange feeling they heard that a lot, and whatever this concept was it died pretty stillborn. The version of Communicator they finally came out with was far far less ambitious than the demo I saw that day.
Exactly! (Score:3, Interesting)
Probably, the closest thing I can think of is something like mfg.com -- and that's a Web 2.0-ish business that interacts with a program like a Solidworks and the people using it -- not something that tries to replace it.
It'd be unnecessary and a little silly to run a CAD program on that scale in a browser, and it's boggling to me that de Icaza doesn't seem to see that.
Re:No (Score:2, Interesting)
To be fair, about the only things I've seen that can hook directly to Kolab are Kontact and Horde, though. But still, Kolab works extremely well for me as a personal Exchange replacement.
Re:Ah. I see. (Score:3, Interesting)
So I should quit my job because they use MS Windows as their platform?
Re:Ah. I see. (Score:4, Interesting)
<Engage flame retardant vestments of the pious>
No. I swear this idiot thinks he is the next Linus or something. He has made one stupid decision after another in regards to Microsoft and pseudo-MS technology, and now its biting him in the ass. His stupid mistakes are the reason I can no longer run SuSE in good conscience. I hope MS ends up shoving it up his ass and Novell takes a hit for their trouble. Thats what they get for screwing up my fave Linux Distro.
OTOH, if it wasn't for their collective ignorance, I'd have never discovered Kubuntu, which totally rocks. So, thanks Miguel for being a sellout. You have been assimilated and I have been freed. Have a nice day.
Re:No (Score:3, Interesting)
I can't touch base with this. Novell's death watch has been on so long it reminds me of 'imminent death of net predicated' Metcalfe-style comments. Novell's 2007 fourth quarter results [novell.com] (Note: PDF) reported a net income of $245 million, around $10 million more than the same quarter the year before.
No juggernaut, but Yahoo Finance reports a market cap of $USD 2.19 billion.
Gone are the giddyup days when Novell owned the NOS market, but Novell keeps on cranking out software products for a remarkably loyal user base. When you contrast Novell's braindead marketing with Microsoft's predatory marketing machine, it's amazing Novell is even alive, let alone a stable, profit-generating company.
e-Directory is a mature, scalable and stable enterprise directory product. The ZEN family of products is pretty cool. They've almost finished up removing e-Directory dependencies from their apps line in favour of full-feature LDAP interfaces, and they still sell enough Groupwise licenses - but I'll give you than one, because there is no excuse for that.
Netware is dead, but they know it, and they've got two solutions for replacement (OES2 and SLES), but their apps line isn't even tied to those solutions. So they've got a bit of coming and going there.
I think Novell hasn't done badly, given Microsoft's outright attempts to fsck them (most recently screwing their desktop management product line via Vista). *Plus*, they've held the line on SCO, even if they didn't know what they were doing at the time and it was all an accident, which is all quite possible.
Their great blemish in this community is the deal with the MS devil, and I can't find anything good about that, although, as other posters have noted, the bean-counters probably have a different view on that, to wit the cash.
Our view of Novell on /. - which I share in spirit and some of the details - doesn't mean they're going away anytime soon. My 2 cents worth, anyway ...YMMV.
Re:Not slashdottish (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm always disappointed when I see the abuse heaped on de Icaza by the Slashdot crowd, simply because he doesn't quite hate Microsoft enough. The guy has spent years developing free applications, and has likely written ten times more open source code than his detractors will ever produce. If you actually read his opinions or listen to him speak, it's clear that he is committed to the ideals of free software, he just doesn't buy into the whole partisan "micro$oft sux!" attitude. I wish people would get some perspective on this issue and learn that you can disagree with someone in an informed manner without resorting to childish name-calling. That kind of behavior reflects far worse on the abusers, and confirms the wider perception of Slashdot geeks as childish and belligerent fundamentalists.
Microsoft's dominance is a fact, we (e.g. the free software community) may not like it, but we have to deal with it. De Icaza's stance is that people will use
His more controversial stance is that suggesting that the Microsoft technologies like
Ultimately, it isn't good enough to say to users and developers, you can choose between great proprietary solutions and mediocre open ones. Free software needs to be as good as or better than non-free software if it is to succeed. If it isn't, then most people will inevitably choose the proprietary solutions and free software developers will have to clone them to keep up. So if people don't agree with Miguel de Icaza, then maybe they should concentrate less on attacking him and more on producing great open solutions that will blow Microsoft and everyone else's out of the water.
Re:Not slashdottish (Score:3, Interesting)
They don't do these. Can you blame people? It is up to me to choose which desktop environment to use. I see KDE lot more neutral, professionally coded, nobody blogs how great OOXML is, nothing requires Mono and especially on Gnome case, doesn't bitch amateurly about the OS I use (OS X) and its filesystem down to bugzillas. So I type install bundle-kde instead of bundle-gnome on my OS X.
Novell is dead once they stopped being rival/alternative to MS. RIP for a long time. They took that great distro with them too. I know people who ordered Suse Linux CD from 5000 kilometres away before broadband age because they loved it. Now why should they choose Suse? Not to get sued by MS?
Re:Ah. I see. (Score:3, Interesting)
He owes a great apology to Gnome people, Mono developers, soon Silverlight developers and the original, real Suse people.