>From the last link I provided: "Alfresco's survey of 10,000 users finds Red Hat adoption tripling, while Novell usage stays stagnant. A global survey of open-source enterprise users of Alfresco software has found that deployments of Red Hat Linux have grown twice as fast as those for Novell SUSE Linux since Novell signed its controversial patent and interoperability agreement with Microsoft in November 2006."
They go on to detail ways their study is general and reflects enterprise opinion world wide. The Free Software Foundation's has the best opinion on the harm done to free software. They are independent software freedom experts. If the above is true, enterprise users agree with them or think Red Hat offers better value. I'd like to enterprise customers are bright enough to equate freedom to their bottom line costs. All of the possible outcomes of the deal were in M$'s favor. If the world rejects Novell, a competitor is eliminated. If the world buys into M$ taxed free software from Novell, M$ gains ownership of a new generation of free software and revenue to eliminate other companies that did not sign up. Either way, they gained Novel's buy in for their new round of secret sauce and legitimacy for Steve Ballmer's dishonest patent threats. http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Linux-and-Open-Source/Author-of-Linux-Patent-Study-Says-Ballmer-Got-It-Wrong/ They can say, "See there? A Linux company respects the value of our IP." If you were not paying attention, you might believe them. If Red Hat growth rates are an accurate poll of opinion, enterprise companies were paying attention. Red Hat's reaction punches holes in M$ patent claims and, in the long run, gives them a lower cost of business. It is interesting that enterprise customers moved while Novell was being paid by M$ for their deal. On Friday 08 August 2008, Dustin Puryear wrote: > What I've seen of Novell's numbers don't seem to indicate that there > has been any substantive (read that as: financial) repercussion to > Novell because of this agreement. _______________________________________________ General mailing list [email protected] http://mail.brlug.net/mailman/listinfo/general_brlug.net
