Novel in bed with M$

[Craig White]

On Fri, 2006-11-03 at 18:19 -0700, JT Moree wrote:
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> My thoughts were that MS will do what they always do.  partner with
> Novell to steal as many trade secrets and knowledge as possible then
> tell Novell to take a hike.  There should be an official Microsoft Linux
> within 3 years.
> 
> This does two main things for Microsoft.  They look like they are
> playing nice with Linux because 'Hey we support Linux'.  And they start
> grabbing Linux Marketshare to add to Windows Marketshare which will
> increase MS marketshare overall.  no MS Linux will not be free or
> redistributable.  "If suse and Linspire can do it why can't we?"
> 
> Of course they will embrace and extend samba and other unix services so
> that they don't work with the upstream versions.  They might release the
> source code but not quickly.  They have enough lawyers to keep a lawsuit
> going long enough to wear out anyone who might sue and then they'll
> settle out of court for $130 mill.
> 
> Or they may not release source code at all.  It's obvious the company
> has no fear of customers, competitors, or governments on multiple
> continents.  They can drag out lawsuits for so long that the source code
> issue becomes moot because by the time the suit might get close to being
> finished a whole new industry paradigm may have taken over.
> 
> Even if a suit is won against them, they'll have plenty of time to
> 'remove' the offending software.  Then they can hack and compile samba
> binaries and call it Microsoft networking for Linux.  without source
> code how do we know it's really a hacked samba.  They've done it before.
> (not with samba)
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samba is GPL

enough said

Craig