Novell SuSE Linux Technical Resource Kit (free)

[gaf at blu.org (Jerry Feldman)]

On Sat, 7 Aug 2004 07:29:45 -0400
"Jules Gilbert" <julesg at newebmail.com> wrote:

> Kiddies:
> 
> Like it or not, I think we are faced with a lot of companies that,
> having embraced Linux, are trying to find ways to 'rope off'
> proprietary segments of it for themselves.
> 
> Not unexpected I suppose.  But now we have to come up with strategies
> to thwart such efforts, to keep all parts of Linux free, so that users
> don't always to worry about intellectual property lawsuits, etc.
I think there are a few issues here. The first is that a business must
make a profit. This is true for businesses in the Linux community as
well as for other communities. Then it comes down to how to make a
profit in an OpenSource environment. Upon acquisition of SuSE, one of
the first things that Novell did was to open up YaST. 

Additionally, both SuSE and Red Hat have enterprise products where the
enterprise product is considerably more expensive than the personal or
professional products. It comes down to product differentiation. So, in
this case where can these companies provide product for profit and stay
true to the OpenSource community:
Support services - Businesses want to be able to call a vendor without
having to wait on the phone.
Products that run on the advanced hardware, such as clustering. 
And, a reduced cost of ownership. This is the tough nut. How can we set
up a system such that it requires much less labor than its competitors. 

Certainly software patents are a bane to our entire industry, not only
the Linux community, but also to the Windows community. Microsoft has
"acquired" some technologies that they certainly did not invent, but
they are possibly going to patent those that they can get away with.
Maybe IBM will patent demand-paged virtual memory (which they did not
invent). 

-- 
Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>
Boston Linux and Unix user group
http://www.blu.org PGP key id:C5061EA9
PGP Key fingerprint:053C 73EC 3AC1 5C44 3E14 9245 FB00 3ED5 C506 1EA9
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