By Brian Proffitt
Managing Editor
Sometimes you just look at things and realize that they are just
plain funny.
That was what ran through my mind this week when I saw this
headline from Computer Business Review: “HSBC Signs Up for
Microsoft’s SUSE Linux Support.” The double-take took a bit to
settle in, because for a second I wondered if Microsoft actually
owned SUSE Linux now.
But then, maybe I was just tired this week.
It was one of those weeks when things just seem to be
disconnected, you know? There was the Rob Enderle missive that
mentioned one of my articles as an attack on Forbe’s Dan Lyons,
which was a surreal feeling, to be honest, because I didn’t know
whether to laugh or get upset. I mean, c’mon, if I was going to
write an attack article, I think you’d know it. I decided to
laugh.
That’s the way the week started. And once you start noticing
some things are funny, pretty soon you see humor in lots of things.
For instance, there was the massive multi-pronged press assault
surrounding the release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux on Thursday.
RHEL dominated the press cycle that day because they managed to not
just release a new server; Red Hat also announced new business
models and programs at the same time, so many different stories
managed to appear in the pipeline.
What tickled me about all of this? There has been hardly a word
about how evil Red Hat has become. I remember a time when not too
long ago we were all harping on the Raleigh, NC company for their
similarity to a certain company in Redmond, WA. A few grumbling
here and there, but much more subdued than the way things were
before last November.
Today, Novell is the Bad Guy of the Linux community, a mantle it
took from Red Hat the day it announced its partnership arrangement
with Microsoft.
Funny how things change.
I’m sure Novell is thrilled, but they certainly had to expect
that kind of reaction. Well, next week is their annual Brainshare
conference in Salt Lake City, so I’m sure they will enjoy some
peace and quiet, mixed with some warm and fuzzy feelings.
Oh, but then there’s Bruce Perens’ press conference, “The Open
Source Community Rains on Novell’s Parade,” which will be held
across the street from the Salt Palace convention center. That
should be an interesting event.
(It should be noted that I will be attending both Brainshare and
Peren’s conference next week, leaving LT in the capable hands of
Carla Schroder.)
How companies and distributions are perceived seems a fleeting
thing these days. Today Novell is Public Enemy No. 2. Tomorrow, who
knows? It occurred to me that in a larger sense, the role of the
two major distributions have slowly changed into something
completely different from their predecessors. When Red Hat first
started, it was the bastion of commercial progress, while Debian
was the pure temple of freedom.
Now, today, it is Fedora who is shifting back towards as totally
free distribution, while Debian’s child Ubuntu is marching towards
the proprietary end of the software spectrum for included apps.
Funny how things change.
Something else that was funny this week: there used to be a time
when you couldn’t get the executives at SCO Group to not talk. Now,
its a much different situation, as I discovered when I tried to
contact SCO for an interview with Darl McBride, since I was
literally going to be in the neighborhood. No response at all.
Funny how things change.
Is there a point to all of this? Maybe not. After three weeks of
fussing at the state of hardware and Linux, maybe I needed a small
dose of itony before getting back to work next week. The deeper
meaning in all of this may just be that once in a while it helps to
step back a bit: you get a better perspective sometimes.