Microsoft Paid Novell $356 Million in '07 147
Anonymous writes "At the end of this piece at Channelweb.com, it's reported that Microsoft paid Novell $355.6 million last year as part of their 'interoperability' deal. It's no small wonder, then, that Novell executives are saying the deal has been a huge success so far."
what did Novell give in return? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:what did Novell give in return? (Score:5, Funny)
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everybody has a choice. what sort of defeatist talk is that?
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Especially since it would involve making unauthorized modifications to your boss's or your company's property.
Re:what did Novell give in return? (Score:5, Insightful)
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What's that then?
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Novell had to accept MS's "protection"... (Score:2)
Customers? (Score:5, Insightful)
It'd be interesting to see if the money they got from their customers in '07 equals or exceeds that number.
If it doesn't, I'd think they have a somewhat skewed and short-sighted definition of success. Me, I'd call it getting paid off.
NASDAQ:NOVL Total Revenue (Score:5, Informative)
It'd be interesting to see if the money they got from their customers in '07 equals or exceeds that number.
Novell, Inc. ( NASDAQ:NOVL ) reported total revenue of $932.5 million dollars for the year to October 2007.
http://finance.google.com/finance?fstype=ii&q=NOVL/ [google.com]
Re:NASDAQ:NOVL Total Revenue (Score:4, Interesting)
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If it is more than a third,is this also suspicious?
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Sounds alot like Novell. Microsoft has been good at using its cash like this in the past so it's no surprise. Now Novell goes under will be what's interesting here and who gets the UNIX rights.
LoB
Don't trust them (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Don't trust them (Score:5, Insightful)
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But guess what? "Changing infringing code" only works for copyrighted code, not code infringing a patent.
Lern2clue.
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Apple was an unusual case because Microsoft was investing in them during the hight of the DoJ investigations of their anticompetitive behavior. My own thinking is that Microsoft was terribly afraid that Apple exiting the market would mean that they would be broken up or crippled behind very onerous consent decrees. Apple thus was
Re:Don't trust them (Score:5, Insightful)
i actually pity them. been partners of any sort with ms just seems to be the kiss of death.
Re:Don't trust them (Score:5, Insightful)
Novell at the moment may not be the most faithful to the GNU ideals at the moment, but I wouldn't go as far as to say that Novell "can no longer be trusted".
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Well, while I could agree on the substance (after all they haven't done anything against Linux and the FOSS community yet), still their deal with MS stinks: usually when a big corporation like MS sees something interesting in a much smaller one, they buy it with all assets, embrace some products and/or kill the competing ones.
Not this time, though: MS m
Re:Don't trust them (Score:4, Informative)
That is not true.
For example, their active support for Microsoft's attack on the ODF standard can IMO only be seen as an aggression against the FOSS community.
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The patents issue aside, where's the benefit of having two standards? If one standard is chosen, and it happens to be for fundamental design reasons (which cannot be fixed by extensions) less ideally suited for the task that you want to implement, it's still much less work (and much less bug-prone!) to implement it using the less-ide
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Just because H.323 was available, does this mean that the IETF should have adopted it instead of RTP/SIP? Obviously when one is largely dealing with TCP/IP networks only, the latter standard is *far* better, but H.323 can be used there too (as well as many other environments-- I would expect it should be reasonably simple to run H.323 over a cell-switched or circuit-switched network for example, wi
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The GNU ideals are GNUs. Frankly I find a lot of the GNU rantings to be annoying. I love Linux and use lots of FOSS and contribute to FOSS but I don't like the FSF religion.
The entire deal with Microsoft is just odd. I have no idea what Novell is getting money for.
Trust Novell? I don't trust Novell, IBM, Microsoft, or Google. If you trust any company you are going to eventually be disappointed.
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Same here. There was only one, mind you, but we did it.
What do the SUSE people think of this? (Score:2)
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Re:What do the SUSE people think of this? (Score:5, Insightful)
For interoperability, Novell SLES is pretty pleasant. I work for the NHS in the UK, and moving hospitals away from being almost pure Windows is not an easy thing. SLES fills a lot of niches that Windows currently fills (file server, database platform et.), for a fraction of the cost. One of the things I'm working on is to make greater use of SLES. And if you point to Red Hat, and say "Well, they do the same product, except they're more idealistic", Red Hat don't have a current deal with the NHS (where Novell do, and provide fantastic pricing).
Couple that with eDirectory, Identity Manager etc. and you've got a lovely heterogenous infrastructure to play with.
I like Novell. Yes, they took money from the Beast. However, the Beast is currently being watched very carefully, and has a lot of other (probably unexpected) battles to fight.
I tend to run Ubuntu and Debian for home use (and quick build servers/firewalls). But in business, you need to bring a lot of other factors in. And for something the size of the NHS, alas, you can't always choose the idealistic route. Pragmatism and practicality are large factors.
As long as SLES keeps on being a great product, performing well, and being a really low cost product (for a commercially supported enterprise grade OS), I'll keep on using it.
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As far as at least one Microsoft Account manager I know, if they absolutely have to lose a sale to Linux, then it had better be to Novell/SUSE than the devil incarnate called RedHat.
IMHO, SLES/SLED is just different enough from RHEL/Fedora that I get frustrated when I have to make chang
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i started with sles, so i might be slightly biased here, but there are several areas where i feel sles is better than rhel.
from usability viewpoint, yast, with all its problems, seems to be much better than rhel offerings.
first, yast is a pretty centralised system for configuring things, which feel much better than system-config-something modules that can't even be launched from a single location, as far as i know.
second, yast offers more modules.
th
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Disclaimer: I like C# and
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It used to be SuSE and YaST not SUSE or YAST
The rest is meaningless.
RaBID SuSE FaN
(openSUSE still kicks ass)
Well, I wasn't exactly the most rabid SUSE fan... (Score:2)
I became rabid anti-SuSE is what (Score:2)
Two ways to control corporations (Score:1)
1. government regulations
2. free market competition
in a Free Society the government is supposed to be for The People. and it should act as an arbiter of fairness in respect to the above, insuring that access to the market is available to entrepreneurs, and that monopolies do not form, either in fact or by collusion
the above sounds like a Pretty Tall Order. But We the People do have all the legal authority necessary to insure that we do have a proper Free Society.
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Unfortunately, it's the government itself, through patents and copyrights, which is acting to perpetuate the existing monopolies.
A fair society shouldn't have the current intellectual property laws. Patents shouldn't be given to processes and meth
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patents and copyrights are what entice entrepreneurs to make improvements in our circumstances. the protection of intellectual property is literally "the lamp by the golden door" .
our protection of intellectual property is one of the elements that has made us the prosperous society that we are
Re:Two ways to control corporations (Score:5, Insightful)
So, let me tell you about this opensource thing...
"our protection of intellectual property is one of the elements that has made us the prosperous society that we are"
Our 'protection' of intellectual 'property' has kept us as far less prosperous society than we could have been.
Competition is what drives innovation and the evolution of technology. Handing out intellectual monopolies slows that innovation and evolution. Protecting someone from competition makes them slow and inefficient; to realize exactly how inefficient you just need to look at the former Soviet state-run businesses, or other state-protected monopolies in the west.
Just imagine the world we'd be living in today, had technology been allowed to develop competetively. Imagine the medicines we'd have if 'protected' pharmacorps couldnt spend 80% of their revenue on administration and marketing. Imagine the operating systems we'd have if most of the resources spent on them didnt get tied up in a single company that cant even produce a product better than their last one after six years (nevermind being outevolved by a rag-tag bunch of companies and individuals working in a _competetive segment_ with _unprotected_ software).
Patents and copyrights are a blight upon the economy and upon innovation.
about "open source thing" (Score:1)
and that is OK, -- anyone can agree to place their work in the public domain -- or to reserve a copyright. that is up to the original authors
but that has no bearing on the fact that the availability of patent and copyright protections have served to help provide financial incentives for the development of many good works
the absence of such protection is a dis-incentive to spending capital on research and development
and no, you and John Lennon
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Copyright is "I did this, do something different yourself", sounds fair enough.
Patents is "I do or don't do this, but nobody else does it".
Even patents aren't evil by themselves but seeing the current state of affairs I prefer them to be unenforceable. Less people being pushed to innovate by patents is better than not being able to use the double linked list.
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Patents and copyrights are a blight upon the economy and upon innovation.
You're partially right, but mostly wrong. I don't like how copyright and patents have been applied in this country, but there's absolutely no doubt in my mind that the parent is mostly correct, and you're mostly incorrect. You're right that an open, IP-free society increases competition, which also increases innovation. However, at the same time, it drastically reduces the actual payoff for any innovation. America's economy has thrived almost exclusively for one reason, and one reason only: it has been
Straw Man: Re:Two ways to control corporations (Score:2)
But, the ultimat
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I wrote patents professionally for a while (it's a good living, and easy). I agree that patents are completely mishandled and misregulated in this country -- patent examiners can't possibly be expert enough in every field to see what is truly novel and what is just written to make them THINK it's novel.
And the intersection between granted patents and prosecution of those
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The People are the Government (Score:1)
the government is a huge, out of control bureaucracy
the people by fiat have representatives who do have the authority to alter the government in any desired manner. but this mechanism is de facto controlled by ?
= ? = what do you need to get yourself elected? what does anyone need to get elected?
==> name recognition
= ? = how do you get name recognition ?
answering these questions to yourself *honestly* will help
A third way . . . (Score:2)
4. Moral/ethical pressure
5. Union actions
6. Fraud
7. Monpoly manipulation
Full Service? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Full Service? (Score:5, Funny)
-S
Was blackmail involved? (Score:2, Insightful)
It may be that Novell hasn't sold its soul at all. It is really hard to see that Microsoft got any value for its money.
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Like I said, spending a few hundred million on getting businesses and the press to think Linux and OSS
GPL (Score:1, Interesting)
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I think not.
MS paying for open radeonhd driver? (Score:1)
This is looking like what happened to Corel (Score:5, Insightful)
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I certainly hope not
I think Ms is going to have to hurry unless they are ready to join Old Blue, in the Out to Pasture department
and the reason I say this is simply that the under-tow of sentiment that I'm sensing now against Ms. is essentially the same as what there was against Old Blue, Back in the Day.
Dissent started as a whisper, down the Halls of Academia. And grew louder, as voices picked it up in the Computer Room. And the End Results are
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old news (Score:1)
So much for progress... (Score:2, Interesting)
Why is that?
"Future Periods"? (Score:5, Interesting)
No single customer accounted for more than 10% of our revenue in fiscal 2007, 2006, or 2005. During fiscal 2007, we received $355.6 million from Microsoft related to the Microsoft agreements discussed above, which is being recognized over future periods.
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Re:Can someone explain this wallstreet-ese (Score:4, Informative)
In layman's terms, all Novell is saying is that "We received this huge influx of cash all at once, but the money doesn't represent income in the traditional sense. Thus, to prevent us using this number to misrepresent our actual earnings, we have to spread it out over several years."
It's not a tax trick - it's required by the SEC (Score:4, Informative)
If you sell someone a 3-year contract which they pay you for upfront, you don't declare the money they gave you as income on this years balance sheet because you haven't incurred all the costs associated with that revenue yet. You prorate the income over the period of the contract and each year or quarter you recognize both the revenue and the cost associated with that contract on that year or quarters balance sheet. It's the only way to keep your balance sheet from grossly misstating your business situation.
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Why put a disclaimer? 99.9% or more of all
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I'd like to see some sales figures on what Microsoft is actually doing to sell these subscriptions. This type of deal is just like Microsoft's purchase of Unix licenses from SCO. They'll never use them. This is all no
640k (Score:4, Funny)
I would have thought 640k would be enough for anyone.
game over? (Score:1, Insightful)
Does Microsoft's Monopoly Power Extend to Government and Media? [anonymouse.org]
Patents? (Score:2, Interesting)
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In the 90's, Microsoft paid a UNIX company to do a port of MS Internet Explorer to HP and/or Solaris and they paid them well. Nobody wanted IE on UNIX but the reason for this was that this one company was a licensee of Micro
Hush-money (Score:2)
Where do I collect the money? (Score:2)
Oh, this is SO going on the list (Score:2)
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Except the ones who are dead.
Here's what Microsoft bought .... (Score:3, Insightful)
How? By paying Microsoft a ROYALTY for each copy of SLES that it sells Novell is making an implied statement that its distro contains MS IP.
Ballmer called the payments "an IP bridge". He could have said the payments were an admission of guilt.
Microsoft has a problem though. They've been claiming that Linux violates their IPs for several years now. The law requires that they inform infringers of the exact infringements so that damages can be mitigated. Microsoft has not done that.
Finally, an OSS house turns a profit (Score:2)
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Maybe we have it all wrong? UNIX? (Score:1)
Microsoft's New Strategy? (Score:2)
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has stated that he believes the Microsoft-Novell relationship has been a success for both parties but is just part one of a grand strategy to further cement Microsoft's dominance. Building on that success, Microsoft will now take that strategy to a whole new level: instead of just paying software vendors to not develop for Linux, Microsoft will now pay consumers to use Windows Vista. "It's a win-win for all of us." said CEO Ballmer.
Gardener analyst Robert Thompson
Prediction: MS will be the driving force for Linux (Score:2)
I don't know how this will happen, but you have to admit it is so crazy that it could become a reality!
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Microsoft.
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I know a little about the workings inside Red Hat - they won't spend anything on anything, employees, hardware, advertising, nothing. I doubt they would extend anything substantive to influence public policy.
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You dont have enough $ to pay for your own laws.