OT but interesting: "The GPL violates the U.S. Constitution"

On Sat, 08 Nov 2003 15:41:40 GMT, Jan Panteltje
wrote:
On a sunny day (Sat, 08 Nov 2003 06:06:48 GMT) it happened Tony Hill
wrote in
m:

When it was a question of trying to convince some municipal
governments in Europe to use MS products over SuSE Linux, then the US
government could simply claim that they were trying to promote an
American company's interests (and, by connection, the intrests/jobs of
American citizens) over a foreign company. Now though it would be a
question of promoting one American company over another American
company, not something that government should really be doing.

Hey, I had to read that five times before I understood it (I think...).
Yes from that point of view OK.
I though this morning: 'Would I have spend 200 million+ on Suse?'
The answer is 'NO' for an other reason, it is very possible for
someone to take a Suse distro, change a few things, and re-release
it as 'MySuse' .....

Sure, it's possible to do, but very difficult to sell if you don't
have the name behind it (though Novell's name along should carry it
there). Perhaps more importantly, you don't have the people who are
experts to develop and support custom solutions as you customers need
them.

I think that the SuSE buyout makes pretty good sense for Novell. It
gives them a complete package of a well-known name in Linux, the
software, the existing contracts and most importantly, a bunch of
people who know the Linux business.

This is done a lot with programs, I did it with some stuff, people have
done it with thing I wrote (actually asked me for permission, I said fine,
the more the better...).

Sure, that's part of the beauty of open source. I've worked on the
development of a product that was almost exclusively made from
open-source software.

So how 'secure' is that purchase by Novell?
Brings me back to your point of view... jobs yes, OK, Americans are very good
salesmen really, I have noticed.
They can even sell hot air and people will buy it, and accept!
But for 'the other countries' I think some have already made their own
versions of Linux, maybe at one point EU will try to regulate so there is an
official multi language Linux release...
That would have political value, and keep the jobs local so to speak.
This all is for sure still in motion.
There have been some directives to use Linux now IIRC in the EU.
Interesting times, as always :-)

The EU themselves are not very well positioned to produce the actual
Linux distribution though, so who do you think is best qualified for
the job? Probably one of the largest distributions that already has
some multi-lingual support, ie SuSE.

I'd imagine that a lot of the SuSE Linux jobs will remain in Europe,
there's no reason for Novell to try and move all the employees (mostly
based in Germany) just because the Novell headquarters is in the US.

-------------
Tony Hill
hilla underscore 20 at yahoo dot ca

Tony Hill wrote in
.com:

The EU themselves are not very well positioned to produce the actual
Linux distribution though, so who do you think is best qualified for
the job? Probably one of the largest distributions that already has
some multi-lingual support, ie

Mandrake



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On a sunny day (Sat, 08 Nov 2003 23:56:46 GMT) it happened Tony Hill
wrote in
:

The EU themselves are not very well positioned to produce the actual
Linux distribution though, so who do you think is best qualified for
the job? Probably one of the largest distributions that already has
some multi-lingual support, ie SuSE.

I'd imagine that a lot of the SuSE Linux jobs will remain in Europe,
there's no reason for Novell to try and move all the employees (mostly
based in Germany) just because the Novell headquarters is in the US.

-------------
Tony Hill
hilla underscore 20 at yahoo dot ca
Well, business model, these days... India?
Do the Chinese qualify?
Cheap labor country, company seated in US, some office in Germany...
Max Profit's idea.
And in the east they are awfully good at copying disks....
;-)

In article ,
says...
Keith R. Williams wrote:

With MS in europe, it looks
like they might follow the "We ruled it wasn't a monopoly so -you- can't
say it is..." Looks like the same thing to me, trying to make our laws
global laws.

Nope. Totally different kettle-o-fish. M$ does business in
Europe and is subject to their laws as well as ours.


Well we'll have to see what happens. If MS doesn't think our Gov will step
in, wonder why they are lobbying for pressure?

What they think and what happens are totally different things.

I'm betting they end up
doing something STUPID just to help/protect MS..

I'm not taking that bet (I "bet" on sure things... collected on a
T. Woods bet against the field tonight). I don't think the EU
cares much about any US threats right about now.

--
Keith

On Sat, 08 Nov 2003 23:56:46 GMT, Tony Hill
wrote:

On Sat, 08 Nov 2003 15:41:40 GMT, Jan Panteltje
wrote:
On a sunny day (Sat, 08 Nov 2003 06:06:48 GMT) it happened Tony Hill
wrote in
om:

When it was a question of trying to convince some municipal
governments in Europe to use MS products over SuSE Linux, then the US
government could simply claim that they were trying to promote an
American company's interests (and, by connection, the intrests/jobs of
American citizens) over a foreign company. Now though it would be a
question of promoting one American company over another American
company, not something that government should really be doing.

Hey, I had to read that five times before I understood it (I think...).
Yes from that point of view OK.
I though this morning: 'Would I have spend 200 million+ on Suse?'
The answer is 'NO' for an other reason, it is very possible for
someone to take a Suse distro, change a few things, and re-release
it as 'MySuse' .....

Sure, it's possible to do, but very difficult to sell if you don't
have the name behind it (though Novell's name along should carry it
there). Perhaps more importantly, you don't have the people who are
experts to develop and support custom solutions as you customers need
them.

I think that the SuSE buyout makes pretty good sense for Novell. It
gives them a complete package of a well-known name in Linux, the
software, the existing contracts and most importantly, a bunch of
people who know the Linux business.

It make sense for Novell but what do you think they'll do with it? I hope
they don't just attempt to turn it into a vehicle for pushing
Netware/IPX/SPX. Their history of selling high priced solutions is what
got them into trouble in the first place - e.g. completely missed the small
business LAN market.

With WordPerfect, admittedtly M$ was up to dirty tricks on "upgrades" at
the time but I still feel that Novell could have done a better job at
fighting against it. WP was still the best product and had the momentum
but M$ was given free reign to establish their proprietary "standards". I
hope this won't be just more of the same strategy from Novell.

Rgds, George Macdonald

"Just because they're paranoid doesn't mean you're not psychotic" - Who, me??

On Mon, 10 Nov 2003 09:32:27 -0500, George Macdonald
wrote:
On Sat, 08 Nov 2003 23:56:46 GMT, Tony Hill
wrote:
Sure, it's possible to do, but very difficult to sell if you don't
have the name behind it (though Novell's name along should carry it
there). Perhaps more importantly, you don't have the people who are
experts to develop and support custom solutions as you customers need
them.

I think that the SuSE buyout makes pretty good sense for Novell. It
gives them a complete package of a well-known name in Linux, the
software, the existing contracts and most importantly, a bunch of
people who know the Linux business.

It make sense for Novell but what do you think they'll do with it? I hope
they don't just attempt to turn it into a vehicle for pushing
Netware/IPX/SPX.

I think that even Novell has given up on Netware. I know everyone
else has.

Their history of selling high priced solutions is what
got them into trouble in the first place - e.g. completely missed the small
business LAN market.

With WordPerfect, admittedtly M$ was up to dirty tricks on "upgrades" at
the time but I still feel that Novell could have done a better job at
fighting against it. WP was still the best product and had the momentum
but M$ was given free reign to establish their proprietary "standards". I
hope this won't be just more of the same strategy from Novell.

I agree, simply buying SuSE isn't enough to make it a success, but it
does at least lay the groundwork for them. Along with the software
they have acquired some good people with existing contracts. Now it's
just up to Novell to execute well and maybe they'll see some success.

If not, hopefully they won't just turn around and sell SuSE to Corel
like they did with WordPerfect. While Novell might not have managed
to make WP a success, at least they didn't nearly drive it into the
ground like Corel did. Mind you, now that Corel is finally rid of
Michael Coupland, WP is seeing something of a revival.

-------------
Tony Hill
hilla underscore 20 at yahoo dot ca