Novell trousered $355.6 million from Microsoft last year
Comment We might be easy, but we're not cheap
TWO OF NOVELL's executives are pleased with themselves for having gotten into bed with the Vole, they reveal in their bogs.
John Dragoon, the company's head marketeer, quotes Gartner saying that "67 per cent of data centres run some combination of Linux and Windows." A fact which he obviously views as creating opportunities for Novell in its strategy of cozying up to Microsoft.
Jeff Jaffe, Novell's CTO, burbles on about how swimmingly Novell's overall technical strategy is progressing, especially with regard to its joint software interoperability roadmap with Microsoft. Specifically, he mentions Novell's assistance in porting to Linux the Vole's Silverlight assault on Adobe's Flash and Sun's JavaFX.
And well they might be happy, though perhaps not for the strategic marketing and software interoperability reasons they claim. ChannelWeb notes that Novell's 2007 SEC 10-K filing reports Microsoft paid it $355.6 million.
That kind of money will turn any company's head, and Novell's management might have been seen as derelict in their obligations to shareholders not to have taken it.
But we think it possible that Novell's just taking Microsoft for an expensive ride here.
Novell might well help the Vole develop software that interoperates with Linux, fully anticipating that the resulting products - typically buggy and crippled by restrictive Microsoft EULAs - will fail in the marketplace wherever already well established proprietary products or free-as-in-freedom FOSS alternatives are available. µ
Comments
mono
You may be justified in your cynicism, however the mono project is an interesting and welcome by-product of the novell-microsoft alliance. I think having a choice other than java for a decent, productive, cross-platform development framework is a good thing for both communities.Microsoft money is tainted
When you accept a deal with the Devil, you lose your soul. With Microsoft, it is the same thing.No one but Ballmer knows at this point in time, but I bet that, in a few months or years, Microsoft will find a way to leverage that money to make Novell do something it would not normally want to do.
Besides, Microsoft and OSS go together like water and fire. Novell is crazy if it thinks that it got that money for nothing. It is probably going to find itself smack in the middle of a heated license argument between GPL 2.0 and GPL 3.0 advocates, plus Microsoft on the sidelines watching it take the hits and laughing all the way to the bank.
Yes, Microsoft makes buggy products. That hasn't stopped it from becoming the most powerful software company in the world. I don't see how this will be an exception.