Novell takeover rumours...

[As seen on xkcd but I can't find the right page]

<fx:awakes from Cryogenic sleep>

Scientist: Do you know COBOL?
Me: Yeah. Why?
Scientist: It's the year 9999.

 

I don't think so - the licence for 'proper' unix goes back decades,
and I'd imagine the big players all have perpetual licences for the
technology... it's the newer linux stuff that's the risky area.

 

SUSE has an 80% share of Linux installations on IBM Z-series hardware...

 

The _real_ risk isn't the reality of what is or isn't owned and/or
licenced. It's the litigation and FUD and generally fucking expensive and
stifling treacle that the entire industry risks being mired in.

 

Novell had a tremendous opportunity, particularly when Schmidt and Ellison
were pals at the helm of Novell and Oracle. Schmidt rather admits now that
he made a hash of said company. I was hoping Oracle would move now.
Networking, Unix, Linux, Oracle dB, OpenSQL, OpenOffice, Java, Sun hardware
and probably EMC and VMware all under one roof seemed like such a dynamite
option. And Oracle has money to spend.

I expect like may of these things personalities were involved.

 

Name me three OS suppliers that aren't Unix derived.

 

Quick question - does what's been happening with software patents scare
you even slightly?

 

Must be either incredibly complicated or completely self-evident to a
certain class of geek. Not sure which, but I don't quite see what the
fuss is about either.

 

In one usenet post? Srsly, this type of discussion belongs in a
*.advocacy flame fest which, thankfully, UKRM seems to be immune.

 

I'd assumed you were aware of some of the political issues the IT
industry's been going through over the last few years.

Short version - patents are being widely abused to throw multi-million
dollar lawsuits at anybody and their dog for damn near anything.

Just a couple of examples, chosen randomly from a huge range...
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/19/
microsoft_salesforce_patent_litigation/

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/11/01/acacia_research_corporation/
Whether software patents are even enforcable has been back-and-forth
through the US courts to the highest levels...
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/06/28/us_supremes_software_patent/

Then there's the whole MS-vs-Novell patent dispute from a few years ago
(the agreements of which were due to expire next year), together with the
sorry SCO fiasco which finished up with Novell being declared outright
patent holders for Unix.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/11/20/microsoft_claims_linux_code/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO-Linux_controversies

 

Oh, and...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2010/nov/01/smartphone-patent-
lawsuits-diagram

 

How does that affect me?

 

I can name one.

 

Imagine (say) that suddenly all the freebie Linux/Unix clone users had to
pay annual licence fees to MS.

 

It would certainly wipe the smug grin of the cunts' faces.

 

Interestingly, when I fired up MacSoup this morning it came up with
five brand new Novell-based ngs.....

 

But where's the downside?

 

Umm, they're clones. They don't (in theory) share code with Unix. That's
kind of the point of them being clones. Therefore no licence fee would
be applicable.

There are non-Unix features for which licences may be required (see MS
vs TomTom for the FAT filesystem driver) but that's nothing to do with
Novell's IP portfolio.

 

What value was there for Novell in effectively squashing Unix?

 

/me waves 2 fingers in the general direction of UKRM and Microsoft