More Linux poison, just as they do in the EU.
,----[ Quote ]
| "The majority of our customers have mixed-source environments, and they want
| their platform vendors to make things work together," said Roger Levy, senior
| vice president and general manager, Open Platform Solutions at
| Novell. "That's why we entered into a technical collaboration agreement with
| Microsoft. As a result, Novell is the first vendor to develop and ship
| technology that will allow a paravirtualized Windows Server 2008 to be hosted
| as a guest on the Xen hypervisor. Microsoft's decision to put the hypercall
| API under their Open Specifications Promise will make it even easier for
| Novell, our customers and partners, and the entire open source community to
| develop high-quality virtualization solutions that deliver true
| interoperability between Windows and Linux."
`----
http://weblog.infoworld.com/virtualization/archives/2007/10/microsoft_makes.html
Ah! It's the anti-GPL 'license' trick. Bury Novell.
Microsoft Makes the Hypercall
,----[ Quote ]
| Microsoft's decision to license the hypercall API is the right call, although
| some pundits and competitors might balk at the licensing scheme.
`---- ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
http://www.microsoft-watch.com/content/server/microsoft_makes_the_hypercall.html?kc=MWRSS02129TX1K0000535
Red Hat voices concerns over Microsoft patent model
,----[ Quote ]
| While Red Hat welcomed Microsoft's recent decision to comply with the
| European Court of First Instance's antitrust ruling, Michael Cunningham,
| general counsel for Red Hat, stated that the company was still concerned
| about Microsoft's patent model.
`----
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,39290318,00.htm
XenSource: Xen hypervisor made for servers, not OS
,----[ Quote ]
| XenSource has worked closely with Red Hat and Novell to integrate Xen into
| their latest Linux distributions and is collborating closely with Microsoft
| on its implementation of Xen, dubbed Viridian, for Windows Server 2008.
| Citrix does not own an operating system but sells a platform that offers
| desktop and application virtualization, and now server virtualization.
`----
http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=1592
So you can see how Xen converges with Viridian under the new Citrix/Microsoft
regime.
Related:
Is Microsoft’s Europe agreement a big deal?
,----[ Quote ]
| If open source developers find greater protection for their work and its
| results in Europe than in America that’s where they will gravitate. That’s
| the kind of regime the EU is trying to create. We ignore that and dismiss
| that at our peril.
`----
http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=1584
Half A Loaf
,----[ Quote ]
| Yes, open source will have access to the interoperability information
| on "reasonable" terms (ask independent open source developers how many can
| afford to cough up the $15,000 such access will cost), but nothing in this
| statement indicates the Commission has overcome Microsoft's "refusa[al] to
| make the [patent] licence compatible with the open source business model." In
| fact, we can expect that nothing about that patent license will be compatible
| with the most widely used open source license, the GNU General Public
| License.
`----
http://walkingwithelephants.blogspot.com/2007/10/half-loaf.html
EU tells open source to start paying MS patent tax
,----[ Quote ]
| EU Commissioner Kroes' deal with Microsoft creates real dangers to Europe's
| growing open source economy, warns the FFII. Using patent licenses that
| exclude businesses, the software monopolist has turned the EU competition
| ruling into a victory, and now gets implicit support from the Commission to
| proceed aggressively against its competitors.
`----
http://press.ffii.org/Press_releases/EU_tells_open_source_to_start_paying_MS_patent_tax
Late night baseball games, Microsoft concessions evoke big yawns at open source
water cooler
,----[ Quote ]
| It will benefit purveyors of proprietary software but not open source
| developers, agreed Michael Goulde, analyst of open source strategy at
| Forrester Research, Cambridge, Mass. “Some open source developers believe
| that Microsoft should make its protocols available for use royalty free. In
| some cases, there are open source license restrictions that make it not
| possible for the software to include Microsoft licensed code – because you
| can’t downstream the license. So, unless Microsoft goes way beyond what it
| has agreed with the EU to do, only a subset of open source developers will
| have much interest. They’ll continue reverse engineering Microsoft protocols
| and doing the best they can."
`----
http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=1582
Let's Make a Deal - The MS-EU Settlement
,----[ Quote ]
| The patent part is terrible. Worse than terrible. They are not blocked from
| offering patent deals, only constrained as to how much to charge for a
| license, which is not and never was the issue. So they'll beef up those
| initiatives, I'm sure. However, the good part is that they were compelled to
| separate the patent license offer out and make it optional. Thanks, but no
| thanks.
|
| [...]
|
| I'm guessing Microsoft lawyers are high fiving each other, having snatched an
| important victory from utter and total defeat. The rest is excellent, of
| course, and in no way do I mean to detract from the hard work and persistence
| that the EU Commission has shown. However, I don't think they understand how
| seriously broken the US patent system is currently, and how easy it is to
| abuse it, or they don't feel it's their job to fix the US problems, or how
| central patents are to Microsoft's current strategy against FOSS.
`----
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20071022114731199
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