Shuttleworth attempts to lure OpenSuse developers to Ubuntu

Post by **Patrick** » Sat Nov 25, 2006 2:54 pm

First Mark's email:
http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse/2006 ... 03765.html

then some responses from the Suse people:
http://andreasjaeger.blogspot.com/2006/ ... nsuse.html
http://www.suseblog.com/?p=165

sulfide · Post by **sulfide** » Sat Nov 25, 2006 3:09 pm

yea i was reading about this last night, I'm going to have to agree with the opensuse guys. I think if people wanted to leave, they would already know where to go. Even some ubuntu blogs have mentioned it was uncalled for and "just not done". This was a mail to the ubuntu dev list after the fact which provided some comic relief

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubunt ... 22578.html

Tsuroerusu · Post by **Tsuroerusu** » Sat Nov 25, 2006 4:35 pm

Patrick wrote:then some responses from the Suse people:
http://andreasjaeger.blogspot.com/2006/ ... nsuse.html
http://www.suseblog.com/?p=165

Stephan "Beineri" Binner also decided to chime in: http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/2553

A thing about Mark's email that actually pisses me off quite a lot is this part:

Mark Shuttleworth wrote:I think the position taken by Novell leadership in their contract with Microsoft is hugely disrespectful of the contributions of thousands of GPL programmers and contributors to SuSE, and I know that many are looking for a new place to get involved that is not subject to the same arbitrary executive intervention. Ubuntu is one option, as are Gentoo, Debian and other communities. Please accept this mail in that spirit.

First of all, yes, Novell's deal with Microsoft is very much against the spirit of the GPL, and I can already now say that unless Novell changes things quite a bit, or don't incorporate future versions of the FSF's software, they are gonna have their asses toasted by GPLv3.
Having said that, I think that Mr. Shuttleworth is in absolutely NO position to talk about who is, and who is not, respecting the GPL. Sure, Novell may have worked around the GPL (Not saying that is a good thing), but Mr. Shuttleworth's "almighty and oh so great" distribution known as Ubuntu stuffs every damn proprietary driver that they can get their hands on into their distribution, in direct violation with the GPL both in the spirit and the letter of the license. As recent announcements have shown us, they intend to continue to do that, and extend the ranges of which they do it, as they apparently are gonna incorporate NVIDIA and ATi's proprietary drivers into the next release of Ubuntu. They actually already include the kernel modules for those drivers in their linux-restricted-modules packages, but now they are also gonna include the very much proprietary X libraries.

Anyway, if you go read the digg story of this, you're gonna see all the Ubuntu fanboys praising their mighty ruler, you'd almost think that Ubuntu was the Apple of open source with all those stupid-ass fanboys whoring over it!!
If it had been Andreas Jaeger who had started this off by posting something like this (Which was posted by someone who wanted to throw the ball right back where it came from) on the Ubuntu lists, he'd be receiving death threats right about now.

One of the comments on digg states:
[quote=""cday", a user on digg,"]Mark Shuttleworth is a class act, and Ubuntu is a very classy piece of software. It's come a long way in a very short time. It's polished and friendly, and just gets better. I have an idea that within a very short time Novell's SUSE won't be missed at all. I hope the OpenSUSE developers take Mark up on his invitation. With Java being open now too, things should get very interesting.

It's all good. In the end it may prove that Novell did everyone a big favor, though I doubt if it will be in the way they intended[/quote]

All I have to say to that is a big: YEAH RIGHT DUMBFUCK!!

openSUSE being irrelevant you say? Well, a picture is worth is worth more than a thousand words, SO HAVE SOME!!!

http://www.thecodingstudio.com/opensour ... RC1/23.gif

http://www.thecodingstudio.com/opensour ... RC1/28.gif

http://www.thecodingstudio.com/opensour ... RC1/25.gif

http://www.thecodingstudio.com/opensour ... RC1/30.gif

http://www.thecodingstudio.com/opensour ... RC1/31.gif

http://www.thecodingstudio.com/opensour ... RC1/32.gif

http://www.thecodingstudio.com/opensour ... RC1/33.gif

http://www.thecodingstudio.com/opensour ... RC1/35.gif

http://www.thecodingstudio.com/opensour ... RC1/34.gif

Vogateer · Post by **Vogateer** » Sat Nov 25, 2006 5:02 pm

Tsuroeurusu, you're as level-headed as ever.

Tsuroerusu · Post by **Tsuroerusu** » Sat Nov 25, 2006 6:00 pm

Vogateer wrote:Tsuroeurusu, you're as level-headed as ever.

Well, thank you very much. I have noticed that too, my avatar change might be very appropriate.

Linc · Post by **Linc** » Sat Nov 25, 2006 6:13 pm

Much to the chagrin of Novell, I am inclined to go with Mark on this one. I still think this whole partnership with Satan thing was a really bad idea to begin with and look what they did as soon as the handshake was over - not only screw Novell, but Linux too. I bet that that bald headed bastard laughs himself to sleep every night thinking about suckering those Linux guys into working with him to help him spread more FUD.

And as for posting a bunch of screenshots here to show support for Novell, I can't and won't do that because I run a *LOT* of Linux computers, and none of them run Suse. And with this partnership thing with Microsoft going on, I don't think any of them will anytime soon either.

Those of you with like mind should join me over at Bruce Perens petition at http://techp.org/petition/show/1 and sign up to try and convince them to stop the nonsense and get back to doing good Linux.

Post by **Patrick** » Sat Nov 25, 2006 6:29 pm

Linc wrote:Those of you with like mind should join me over at Bruce Perens petition at http://techp.org/petition/show/1 and sign up to try and convince them to stop the nonsense and get back to doing good Linux.

Done

Tsuroerusu · Post by **Tsuroerusu** » Sat Nov 25, 2006 6:59 pm

Linc wrote:Much to the chagrin of Novell, I am inclined to go with Mark on this one. I still think this whole partnership with Satan thing was a really bad idea to begin with and look what they did as soon as the handshake was over - not only screw Novell, but Linux too. I bet that that bald headed bastard laughs himself to sleep every night thinking about suckering those Linux guys into working with him to help him spread more FUD.

I am not saying that Mark is completely wrong, which I think I described in my post, but going ahead and posting that to the two main openSUSE mailinglists is just asking for a big big flamewar and getting people upset and irritated, or maybe even hurting their feelings. Roughly said Mark is saying "Novell is doing bad things, and all of you who do what you enjoy doing should come over to me, because I am all better!". I think there is a reason the SUSE people havn't jumped up and quit their jobs over this, because I'd imagine they like the distro that they maintain, and wants to work on it.

Linc wrote:And as for posting a bunch of screenshots here to show support for Novell, I can't and won't do that because I run a *LOT* of Linux computers, and none of them run Suse. And with this partnership thing with Microsoft going on, I don't think any of them will anytime soon either.

That is your choice to make, I make my own. Right now, I run SUSE Linux 10.1 and intend to be running openSUSE 10.2 two weeks from now. I do think what Novell has done is incredibly stupid, and I am all for Eben Moglen adding some stuff to GPLv3 to gut this thing completely (I've never been against anything in the GPLv3, I'm all for it - sorry Linus!). I have been considering switching from SUSE to like Debian or FreeBSD after this whole Novell thing, and I have made the "Microvell"-joke lots of times, but after having thought about it for a while, I have decided to stick with SUSE, because it fits my needs the best, if anyone know of a distro with better KDE support than what is now openSUSE, feel free to let me know, and I still consider Kubuntu a huge disappointment when thinking about all the things Mark and Canonical are saying about the Dapper version being an enterprise class distro and "oh it's so great" etc. etc.
If I went and contributed to GNOME or KDE, Novell would benefit in the long run, if I went and contributed to Fedora, Novell would also benefit, so I might as well just participate where I normally like to, at openSUSE.org, it's not a matter of me not caring about this whole Novell thing, but I wanna contribute to a distro that I personally like to enjoy and would recommend to others, that way I eat my own dog food too.
And let's get something straight, when I say that I "contribute" to openSUSE, I mean bug reporting, writing docs in the wiki and stuff like that.

Linc wrote:Those of you with like mind should join me over at Bruce Perens petition at http://techp.org/petition/show/1 and sign up to try and convince them to stop the nonsense and get back to doing good Linux.

I actually already did that, and it was me who posted that petition digg to bring attention to it.

Linc, just a little something, and please do not take this too hard, I am asking the following out of curiousity, not to annoy you. Having listened to TLLTS show for over 1½ years now, and over time having "back-listened" to like episode 60 or something like that, I have heard you say "I use Linux because it's better", which I interpret as, and especially after the whole "discussion" with RMS a few weeks ago, if there was a proprietary operating system that was better than Linux, you would use it, or >maybe< prefer it.
After reading Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols articles on this whole Novell thing (Hell freezes over: Microsoft, Novell partner on Linux and Why I'm sticking with Novell's Linux desktop) which illustrate an open source view on this, and after hearing you clearly state that you're not a free software guy nor mind proprietary applications, drivers and software in general, I am somewhat surprised that you are so critical of this. As I said at the out set, please don't get mad at me.
I personally am, more or less a free software guy these days, and I personally am very much against Novell doing what they're doing, both because I think it's against the very spirit of free software and open source, including the GPL etc. etc. but having read and heard both your, and Eric Raymond's, arguments on various things, as I said, I am a little surprised that you would be so critical of this, as you can see on DesktopLinux.com, Steven is more relaxed about this.
Again, this is all out of curiosity.

Judland · Post by **Judland** » Sat Nov 25, 2006 7:14 pm

Personally, I don't trust Mark Shuttleworth or his company much more than I did (or do) Novell. For some reason the Ubuntu people get my "spider-senses" tingling ever time... just like Novell did after acquiring SuSE.

Other "corporate Linux" companies, like Red Hat, Mandriva, Xandros, or even Linspire, don't seem to have these ominous shadows around them. But I do see them around Novell and Ubuntu/Canonical. Why? I don't know. But I seemed to have pegged Novell correctly.

Tsuroerusu · Post by **Tsuroerusu** » Sat Nov 25, 2006 7:17 pm

Judland wrote:Other "corporate Linux" companies, like Red Hat, Mandriva, Xandros, or even Linspire, don't seem to have these ominous shadows around them. But I do see them around Novell and Ubuntu/Canonical. Why? I don't know. But I seemed to have pegged Novell correctly.

At the end of the interview with Zack Rusin recently, Zack said something like "Novell is a company, they are not an open source company like Red Hat, they happened to buy two open source companies", after this Microvell-deal (Isn't that a good nickname for it?) Zacks remarks makes a lot of sense.

Judland · Post by **Judland** » Sat Nov 25, 2006 7:24 pm

Right, so I'd rather put my money and support into companys/people that share my views about what software is and how it should be used.

Novell/Microsoft software is NOT on that list.... this, unfortunately, includes SuSE. There are better solutions available.... for me.

Tsuroerusu · Post by **Tsuroerusu** » Sat Nov 25, 2006 7:42 pm

Judland wrote:Right, so I'd rather put my money and support into companys/people that share my views about what software is and how it should be used.

Novell/Microsoft software is NOT on that list.... this, unfortunately, includes SuSE. There are better solutions available.

Before I say further, let me just say that I certainly do not disagree with you on what you're saying.

To me, I like the distribution openSUSE a lot better than Ubuntu, and I like the fact that they don't pee on the GPL anymore by including binary-only drivers and all that stuff. Yes I think Novell took a big giant piss on the GPL with their deal with Microsoft, but even people as high up in the hierarchy as Nat and Miguel, did not find out about it until a week from it's announcement. I do not blame the developers, they do their job and make a fantastic distribution, that I have enjoyed using for over two years now. If I could "support" SUSE individually of Novell, you could be damn sure that I would, but I do really not like to punish the wrong people for something they really did not cause. If you go look at the openSUSE mailinglists, you're gonna notice something, the vast vast majority of the developers hanging around there are the German and Czech SUSE developers, there's really few Ximian guys, if any, that I notice on a regular basis.

My description of this is getting cloudy, what I am trying to say is essentially what Ladislav Bodnar said in Distrowatch Weekly on the date of the announcement:

Ladislav Bodnar wrote:While Novell continues to endure the wrath of the open source community, spare a thought for the developers of openSUSE. Since this highly popular distribution is still largely developed in Germany where the original SuSE Linux was born, it is quite likely that the deal caught its core developers by surprise just as much as it shocked the rest of the Linux world. So far, however, there is no indication of any drastic changes affecting the openSUSE distribution. The project has just released the second beta of openSUSE 10.2 and is on target for the December 7th final release.

If you make a decision to boycott Novell's products, should that include the openSUSE distribution? Although it might seem acceptable as a way to punish Novell for its part in the controversial deal, please remember that by refusing to install and use openSUSE, you'll be also punishing the project's innocent developers who continue to produce what they believe is the best Linux distribution on the market and whose only crime is that they happen to be on Novell's payroll. Unless they themselves call for boycotting the project or decide to walk away from it, DistroWatch would argue that it is OK to continue using the distribution and supporting the project as before. For more information about the impact of the unpopular deal on openSUSE, please read this web log post by Andreas Jaeger, the distribution's release manager.

Linc · Post by **Linc** » Sat Nov 25, 2006 7:44 pm

Tsuroerusu wrote: I am not saying that Mark is completely wrong, which I think I described in my post, but going ahead and posting that to the two main openSUSE mailinglists is just asking for a big big flamewar and getting people upset and irritated, or maybe even hurting their feelings. Roughly said Mark is saying "Novell is doing bad things, and all of you who do what you enjoy doing should come over to me, because I am all better!". I think there is a reason the SUSE people havn't jumped up and quit their jobs over this, because I'd imagine they like the distro that they maintain, and wants to work on it.

We all know that wasn't his intent and actually reading the letter, he says he wants to give a safe haven for actual coders to continue their craft without the worry of some corporate boob making deals with non-opensource companies with the developers backs turned. Putting the letter/offer where he did was a good choice because it's a prime place to get seen by all parties involved. I am sure he knew not everyone would appreciate it, but there may be a few who do, and there may be a few more who wake up and help change Novell policy for the better.

Linc, just a little something, and please do not take this too hard, I am asking the following out of curiousity, not to annoy you. Having listened to TLLTS show for over 1½ years now, and over time having "back-listened" to like episode 60 or something like that, I have heard you say "I use Linux because it's better", which I interpret as, and especially after the whole "discussion" with RMS a few weeks ago, if there was a proprietary operating system that was better than Linux, you would use it, or >maybe< prefer it.

I use Linux because it's better. I quantify "better" by being Opensource, by being more functional, by being Unix-Like, by a whole lot of different reasons. But Opensource certainly is one of them. That being said, do I think *every* program I use has to be opensource or free? Nope. If something is good enough, I am willing to pay for it, and pay for support as well if I need it. Much the same as all the other people and companies that are keeping companies like Novell afloat.

After reading Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols articles on this whole Novell thing (Hell freezes over: Microsoft, Novell partner on Linux and Why I'm sticking with Novell's Linux desktop) which illustrate an open source view on this, and after hearing you clearly state that you're not a free software guy nor mind proprietary applications, drivers and software in general, I am somewhat surprised that you are so critical of this. As I said at the out set, please don't get mad at me.

I am critical of this because of *who* the deal was with. I personally believe that Microsoft has hijacked and stifled the computer and software industry for the past 20 years. Doing *anything* to work with or support them is taking a giant leap backwards. Further, they play dirty pool, as evidenced by the giant FUD machine they started in one hand while signing good will contracts with Novell with the other. I mean, I saw this crap coming. Why didn't Novell?

I personally am, more or less a free software guy these days, and I personally am very much against Novell doing what they're doing, both because I think it's against the very spirit of free software and open source, including the GPL etc. etc. but having read and heard both your, and Eric Raymond's, arguments on various things, as I said, I am a little surprised that you would be so critical of this, as you can see on DesktopLinux.com, Steven is more relaxed about this.
Again, this is all out of curiosity.

Like I said - the disappointment here comes from who Novell chose as it's bedfellow, not as much from working with a non-opensource company. Microsoft just has nothing legitimate to offer the Opensource community whatsoever and I cannot believe that anyone in Novell thought otherwise.

jsusanka · Post by **jsusanka** » Sat Nov 25, 2006 7:52 pm

I don't see why everyone is up in arms about Ubuntu and proprietary drivers - I like the way they do it now where I can apt-get them if I want to - but if they want to automatically install the binary driver for my video card and wireless card then so be it - I think I can live with that.

Suse did it with their product the only difference being I forked out 60 buck for it. so I don't really see a difference.

I personally like the reason why Mark S. started ubuntu and that was to give something back to what gave him his riches in the first place and that was thwart certificate service which he built using open source tools - that just goes to show what open source can do - I wish I could come up with something that would make me that rich using open source. I also like that the distro is one cd and their no "enterprise" version or "desktop" version. comes on one cd and you make what you want - I like that theory.

I just sure wish suse/novell never did this deal - I just hope it works out for them.

mowestusa · Post by **mowestusa** » Sat Nov 25, 2006 7:56 pm

Did we have to post the pictures? I'm enjoying this thread, but I think the pictures messed up the page formating and I hate horz. scrolling.

Could we resize them? Thanks. I'm too poor to afford a display bigger than 1024X768.

thelinuxlink.net

Shuttleworth attempts to lure OpenSuse developers to Ubuntu

Shuttleworth attempts to lure OpenSuse developers to Ubuntu

Re: Shuttleworth attempts to lure OpenSuse developers to Ubu

Re: Shuttleworth attempts to lure OpenSuse developers to Ubu

Re: Shuttleworth attempts to lure OpenSuse developers to Ubu

Re: Shuttleworth attempts to lure OpenSuse developers to Ubu

Re: Shuttleworth attempts to lure OpenSuse developers to Ubu