To view parent comment, click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
I have yet to see any evidence that Novell isn't committed to giving back to the community. They've open sourced projects such as YaST, their build service generates .rpm's and .deb's, and they've consistently released their "Novell only" (slab, new KDE menu, OOo improvements) back to the community.
Those are Linux technologies. Logically, if Microsoft were going to help with "interoperability", it would (as the only vendor capable of doing so) be concentrating on integrating Linux technologies into Windows, and/or releasing specs or source code to allow Linux to interoperate with Windows. There is little to no evidence that they are doing that - indeed, all the evidence points to the fact that Novell´s management, having been shafted by Microsoft in the past (and come on, we all know how that feels), couldn't wait for them to do it again.
Microsoft knows that Linux users' worst nightmare is having Linux contaminated by Microsoft "IP", which is the number one (and perhaps the only) reason they are doing this - to make the nightmares come true and set the stage for pwning computing for the next 25 years as well as the last.




Member since:
2006-02-02
I think there is no doubt that the deal *IS* about getting interoperability working, however the question is if it will be about interoperability with Linux and open standards or just with Novell.
I have yet to see any evidence that Novell isn't committed to giving back to the community. They've open sourced projects such as YaST, their build service generates .rpm's and .deb's, and they've consistently released their "Novell only" (slab, new KDE menu, OOo improvements) back to the community.