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I want to address the recent layoffs that have taken place at Novell. As is very obvious by now, there have been layoffs at Novell, and some of them did hit contributors to the openSUSE community employed by Novell.
If you recall, Novell's former best friend for SUSE Linux was Microsoft. Microsoft and Novell have a partnership where the two parties had certificates that indemnified SUSE users from any intellectual property liability. In addition, Microsoft officially recommended SUSE Linux Enterprise for hybrid Windows/Linux shops.
Additional information about potential causes of layoffs and an example of how Novell employees become drones for a paycheck, accepting nonsensical policies in the process
openSUSE is a free, open project. Although Novell sponsors it heavily, the project belongs to the openSUSE community. Things were not always this way; before Novell's acquisition of SuSE, SuSE internally managed the course of the distribution, with little input or participation from the user community.
It's almost time for another openSUSE release, and i'm sure there will be many articles written about it in the near future. openSUSE 11.1 plans to bring a whole bunch of new features to the desktop. But what about the company behind the SUSE logo? Novell get a lot of bad press, but do they really deserve it?
As part of a Novell Open Audio series on openSUSE, they will be interviewing various openSUSE developers to find out more about the project, particular involvements and new technologies in the distribution. Today’s interview features a talk with Martin Lasarsch, an openSUSE evangelist.