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Mike
http://www.SelectWealthSystem.com/?t=wc

Don’t forget that Sun also made a deal with Microsoft. Neither company has clean hands. Both employ Free Software developers doing cool things, along with lots of people doing decidedly uncool things. Both are doomed, although neither will actually close up shop.

Probably the question is, will they send some of their available cash your way in exchange for writing some really-Free software, before they lay you off or get bought up by some Evil Empire? Toss-up.

Judge them both on actions alone, not PR

I take it you like the Linux desktop? Let’s not beat around the block here: Novell/SUSE is THE biggest contributor in the world to the Linux desktop. There is simply no other company that hires the amount of Linux engineers to work directly on the desktop, that promotes the use of it as widely as it does, and that has taken it seriously while grounding its future in its success.

If you think Novell is riding on the “razor’s edge” you’ve been listening to too much FUD from some negative open source headlines. Novell is doing pretty damn well, in fact:
* More Linux engineers
* More copies of SLE being sold than ever
* Stable high stocks
* Many deals recently with very large OEMs: AMD, IBM, Dell.

That you think they let off the AppArmor developers “on a whim” is pretty curious. I’d love to hear where you’re getting your information from, or how you’re deducing that.

The fact that you think Novell is set for a buyout from Microsoft is mildly hilarious.

Why does everyone give Sun a pass on partnering with Microsoft but Novell gets raked over the coals?

Sun is *not* an open company, they try to keep as much closed as possible, and although they have been moving towards being open again, they have a long ways to go before they can ever match the contributions Novell has given us.

But besides all these things, did you forget that Sun and Microsoft struck a deal years before Novell ever did?

http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/media/features/sun_microsoft.html
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2004/apr04/04-02SunAgreementPR.mspx

For example: if Sun was hiring to ease integration between OpenSolaris and Linux (particularly integrating ZFS into Linux, after they put it under a compatible license), and Novell was hiring for working on integration between SuSe and Microsoft products, I’d definitely go with Sun. On the other hand, if Novell wanted developers to work on projects which benefit Linux (ex: Mono, Samba, etc), and Sun wanted developers to try to compete Solaris against Linux, I’d probably go with Novell (although working with Ian Murdock would be interesting).

My point? Novell and Sun are very large companies, with departments that many times have differing purposes and directions. If someone put a gun to my head and told me to choose, I’d choose the one offering a position through which I’d have the best opportunity to help the Linux and Open-Source community. On the same token, I’d choose Microsoft over Canonical, if I believed the position at Microsoft would give me a better opportunity to contribute to the Open-Source community. It’s about what you do, not what your company does.

Worse, they make sure to not help Linux. Example: DTrace and ZFS are not released under a licensing that is compatible with Linux.

Considering Novell’s contribution to the Linux desktop, server and security, it’s curious that especially an Ubuntu user, a distribution that leeches everything from others, would criticize it - how’s that XGL/Compiz and AppArmor looking in the next Ubuntu release now?

Ah, the irony.