Justin Steinman on Novell: never been better

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Monday, 23 April 2007 19:48

Opinion and Analysis

Ok, back to questions from me. People like the ‘Boycott Novell’ site say things like: “Microvell, give us the details. Until Novell makes the details of their patent covenant public, they cannot and will not be trusted nor fully embraced by the Free Software community.” Will you ever ‘give them the details'?”

We are a public company. We will publish the details of the Novell and MS agreement. However we are currently undergoing a voluntary stock option review as we have made very public. We are one of 500 American Tech Companies doing the same thing right now. Until we finish that, we cannot legally by US SEC regulations publish any material data about our business transactions. The Novell and MS agreement is considered material data. Once we are finished with the voluntary review, we will publish the details of the Novell/MS agreement, as legally required by the SEC.

Do you have a rough time frame on when this might happen?

I honestly don’t know. It’s being done by outside counsel.

Justin, won’t the boycott people say that’s an excuse? 

It’s a requirement by the SEC. Boycott Novell can say what they want, we are a NASDAQ listed company, we have to abide by the SEC rules. There is no conspiracy here.

Justin, the Boycott Novell people are also asking if Novell charging some kind of patent tax for SLES and SLED, given claims that Microsoft is charging a patent tax for every copy of Windows?

No.

You’ve nothing else to add?

No, there’s nothing more to say. We are not charging a patent tax.

Ok, now for the final question of the interview, and one that’s probably a bit silly. Given that the world seems to be going crazy over Ubuntu’s version of Linux, with modified versions like Kubuntu, might we see a Novell version of Ubuntu, maybe creatively titled… Nubuntu?

I could see us in the future taking the SuSe Linux Enterprise Desktop to the consumer market, as Linux matures and we ramp up our support staff. I could see us taking SLED to the consumer market. But we will not be calling it Nubuntu.

We do have Open SuSe, which is for technical enthusiasts. Not for my mom, but for tech enthusiasts.

And there endeth the interview, after which I thanked Justin Steinman for his time. Remember, oh Linux lovers, that your humble author is not a Linux expert, which is why I wanted to make sure I had some questions from Stan Beer and Sam Varghese in the mix, iTWire’s more Linux oriented writers.

Still, Linux is something I am interested in, having used many different operating systems starting with BASIC and CP/M back in 1979 as a four year old. Given Stan Beer’s and Sam Varghese’s issues with the Feisty Fawn that is the latest version of Ubuntu, I’m keen to try it all for myself to see what all the fuss is about. I’m sure I’ll be writing up my own experiences with Linux in the not too distant future, so stay tuned!