[K12OSN] needed: recommendations for Linux flavor with ongoing support

[Petre Scheie]

Trey Sizemore wrote:
> On Wed, 03 Jan 2007 11:21:17 -0500
> "Terrell Prudé Jr." <microman at cmosnetworks.com> wrote:
> 
>> Unfortunately, Novell's patent deal with Microsoft makes that highly
>> dangerous now.  I used to recommend SuSE Linux, even on this list, as
>> an LTSP platform.  Now I have to avoid SuSE like the plague.  Sad,
>> but true.
> 
> Why on earth would you consider this "highly dangerous"?
> 
Novell has become a pariah in the FOSS community because of the MS deal.  Not everyone 
thinks this, of course.  But enough people seem to--witness the Samba project, and 
Jeremy Allison's resignation from Novell--and GPL3 is being modified to prevent deals 
like the one between Novell & MS, such that Novell may have a hard time shipping future 
versions of Samba.  No doubt there will be other projects that adopt GPL3, making 
Novell's future murky.  Choosing SUSE at this point may not be 'highly dangerous' but 
perhaps 'dubious'.

Petre