October 5th, 2007
Apology by Novell, accepted or rejected?
Miguel de Icaza’s interview with Paula Rooney reads like an apology, but as in all those weepy romantic comedies that will come out in the next months, it comes too late.
Novell is like the unfaithful lover who comes to your door while still engaged and begs you to take it back.
Here’s what the script tells you to do next. After you listen to the apology you kick them out the door, turn around and cheer yourself.
Novell made its bed with Microsoft. It got engaged to Microsoft. It took Microsoft for better or worse, and this is the worse. Now that it sees just what Microsoft is about, it wants the open source movement to forgive it, to accept its apology and to continue dating it, to continue paying for its SUSE Linux licenses.
I have no doubt, reading all the comments that appear on my own posts here, that there are many, many developers and buyers and enterprise users who will gladly accept all this. Frankly much of the open source movement is about as cute as Jack Black, which is to say not very.
But this “I feel your pain but please hug me” from Mr. de Icaza is, frankly, a little much. His calling Google “the Great Kazoogle” is a distraction. Google’s behavior is not the issue here. Microsoft’s behavior is the issue here.
It’s time open source moved on. And not just because I’m such a big Kate Winslet fan. It’s because, if you’re going to commit to something, and perform the equivalent of mixing precious bodily fluids with something, it really needs to be a two-way street.
Miguel de Icaza has learned to stop worrying and love Microsoft. I get it. That’s his job. He works for Novell. This is nothing personal. It’s just business.
But it’s not just business. It is personal. This is something Microsoft, and those who work with Microsoft, have never understood about the open source movement. They treat it like bad men treat good women, and that’s just wrong.
I’m the guy on this beat. I talk to open source developers all the time. They don’t like being feminized. They do take this personally.
They should.
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Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for 30 years, a tech freelancer since 1983. You can follow Dana on Twitter. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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| 10/06/07
