The Novell-Microsoft Wheeler Dealers Speak
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| But the main takeaway, as they might put it, for me
| is that this is an anti-Red Hat deal, and Novell is thrilled about that.
| Justin Steinman reveals that to market their SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
| against Red Hat they ask, "Do you want the Linux that works with Windows? Or
| the one that doesn't?" It's just appalling. Let me ask you developers who are
| kernel guys a question: When you contributed code to the kernel, was it your
| intent that it be used against Red Hat? How about the rest of you developers?
| Is that all right with you, that your code is being marketed by Novell like
| that? I also have questions about antitrust issues, with Microsoft being
| Novell's partner in such deals and sales pitches. Nothing speaks louder about
| Microsoft's true determination never to be actually interoperable than this
| conference.
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http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20070930081040440
How much is Microsoft's patent protection worth?
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| Novell has a duty to the community to sell its excellent open-source software
| for what it is: excellent open-source software. It should not (as it does -
| I've talked with its salespeople - and which it has gone on the record as
| noting that it does) use lame patent FUD and equally lame patent protection
| to sell that software. It does not need to. We don't expect better of
| Microsoft - it has been competing this way for decades. But we should expect
| and get more from one of our own.
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http://blogs.cnet.com/8301-13505_1-9788106-16.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=TheOpenRoad
Related:
Microsoft’s virtualization hypervisor needs Red Hat support, too
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| With efforts such as the interoperability lab, Microsoft is reinforcing
| its promise that when its hypervisor actually ships — now slated for late
| 2008 — Novell’s SLES-based virtual machines will sing nicely on the
| Windows server platform.
|
| That’s not all. On Sept 12, Microsoft and Sun also announced an expansion
| of their alliance in which the two companies will ensure that Sun’s
| Solaris VMs runs well on Windows and Windows runs well in a virtualized
| state on Solaris.
|
| But what about Red Hat’s Xen-based virtual machines?
|
| The competitive standoff with Red Hat notwithstanding, Microsoft must
| realize by now that unless it extends the same level of compatibility to
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux and all other Linux distributions on its
| hypervisor that this gesture at interoperability is meaningless.
|
| Microsoft’s alliance with XenSource once provided some measure of
| confidence that Red Hat would run as well on Viridian as Novell’s Linux.
| But Citrix’s planned acquisition of the open source XenSource calls that
| into question.
|
| Citrix is one of Microsoft’s closest longtime allies in the proprietary
| software world and to date has not participated in the open source
| market. As Microsoft announced the planned release of the Viridian CTP
| yesterday at VMWorld, for example, it also unveiled an extended
| virtualization alliance with Citrix to standardize on Microsoft’s Virtual
| Hard Disk Format as a common run-time environment for virtualized
| operating systems and applications. That’s not surprising, given
| Microsoft’s former agreement with XenSource on VHD.
|
| But the tightening triumverate of Microsoft, Novell and Citrix — three
| longtime proprietary software companies cooperating on virtualization
| technology — makes more than a few open source advocates and customers
| uneasy.
|
| And the agreement with Sun on Wednesday — ensuring Solaris Linux runs
| well on Windows virtualization hypervisor — leaves Red Hat alone in the
| cold.
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http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=1415
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