Dancing with the devil
Dec. 20th, 2006 09:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
paserbypRon Hovsepian, 45, spent 17 years at IBM before he joined Novell in 2003 as president of North American sales. After only a few months being named Novell CEO, Hovsepian inked a $442 million deal in November 2006 with Microsoft that covers Windows and Linux product integration, patent protection, and marketing. A short time after, all hell broke loose.
First, the open source community accused Novell of selling its soul to the devil. Second, Microsoft chief Steve Balmer fanned the flames by saying that Linux uses Microsoft intellectual property and that Novell's SuSe OS is the only Linux distribution with patent protection from Microsoft.
For now, Hovsepian will have to use all his political skills, for which he has a well-deserved reputation, to keep both open source advocates and Microsoft happy. With the controversy still alive and Novell still in a fight for its life, there's no reason to expect Hovsepian will get too comfortable in the months ahead.
First, the open source community accused Novell of selling its soul to the devil. Second, Microsoft chief Steve Balmer fanned the flames by saying that Linux uses Microsoft intellectual property and that Novell's SuSe OS is the only Linux distribution with patent protection from Microsoft.
For now, Hovsepian will have to use all his political skills, for which he has a well-deserved reputation, to keep both open source advocates and Microsoft happy. With the controversy still alive and Novell still in a fight for its life, there's no reason to expect Hovsepian will get too comfortable in the months ahead.
