Samba doesn’t like the beat

Well, things continue to look sour for Novell. The Samba project has just declared that they “disapprove strongly” of the Novell deal with Microsoft. We all know that the Linux community is very very skiddish to start with, and now Samba seems to be putting some teeth into that disapproval.

I would expect Mozilla, Evolution, AbiWord, and other major projects to declare their distrust very soon, if only to appear on the right side of history. This is going to be a self-fulfilling prophecy: noone will trust the Novell deal, so therefore noone will deal with Novell, which only further erodes the trust and interoperability. Novell’s Linux days are numbered. And if Novell’s Linux days are numbered, then, well, Novell’s days are numbered.

Microsoft seems to be following a classic Klauswitz strategy: pick off the weakest members of an alliance, and instill fear throughout, which will make all allies retreat into themselves (and disolve the collective strength of the alliance). Novell is that weakest member: Mandiva is too small to matter, Red Hat is too zealous and big to try, and Ubuntu is too much on the desktop and not servers (where it counts). Novell, on the other hand, is known for its Intellectual Property foibles, desparate for cash, and known to ‘bend the spirit’ of the GPL. Microsoft gains a whole round of questions among CIOs and CTOs when considering Linux, and that gives them a shot in an otherwise losing battle.