The Novell/Microsoft compact

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I just don't have enough background in the Open Source Software environment to comment knowledgably about how this new deal impacts OSS as a whole. I know there are severe misgivings that Novell has sold out, Novell will go the way of a lot of past Microsoft partners, or Novell will by proxy poison Linux with Microsoft's 'adopt and extend' tendrils. It is not without reason that the OSS community views Microsoft as the poster-company for closed-source development.

Now I'm just speaking for me. Speaking as a person who takes vendor lock-in in my datacenter as a cost of doing business, the prospect of only being able to get Linux from Novell doesn't strike fear into my heart. Novell is already a provider of Operating Systems in my datacenter, so this doesn't change anything. It just means we're a bit less exposed to patent-based lawsuits, and I wasn't terribly concerned about that anyway.

The prospect of increased interoperability between SLES and Windows, and hopefully by proxy eDir on NetWare, is a good one. We have a lot of call to replicate identity information between AD and eDir, which is a role handled through custom software. We can't afford pay-for software like IDM. The possibility of federating identity between the two will make some things a lot easier. GroupWise on AD? Exchange on eDir? Could happen! Wouldn't that be a kick in the pants?

In terms of open source in general, what we do use is generally provided by Solaris not Novell. Part of that is an artifact of the fact that most of the xNIX we're running around here is Solaris, not Linux. We have a couple of SLES servers in production, but again generally speaking the only OSS we're running on those is the OS itself.

Virtualization is another area where we'd see some gains. If those two can work together to make Windows more paravirtualization-friendly, or SLES more windows-in-VM friendly we might actually use it. Right now ESX Server is the only real choice, and that's the way we're going to dance for the time being.

And now we all wait with bated breath for what the heck Red Hat is going to do after all of this.

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The true owner of the UNIX copyrights (aka Novell, not SCO) publicly acknowledged that some of Microsoft's patents might be infringed in Linux.This is a really big deal.