04.18.07
Bruce Perens Audio Interview Re: Microvell
Here is an audio interview with Bruce Perens in which he discusses his "Raining on Novell’s Parade" event during Novell’s Brainshare conference, and much more.
Several days after Novell’s Brainshare conference, Scott talked to Bruce Perens about the reaction to his news conference criticizing Novell’s financial and development agreements with Microsoft. In this conversation, Scott challenges an earlier Perens statement that the agreement amounts to “SCO all over again.” In particular, Scott focuses on Microsoft’s recent willingness to engage the open source community in ways SCO does not. Scott also talks with Bruce about the increasing number of venture-funded open source startups who believe in software patents, and about his aversion to the Mono open source project. Finally, what are the prospects for a more effective open source lobbying organization?
Highlight: Novell was the first to acknowledge that Microsoft FUD tactics had substance. Novell then used anti-Linux FUD to market itself. 
Highlight: Xandros let Microsoft make patent claims and brag about (paid-for) OOXML support. 
Highlight: Linspire's CEO not only fell into Microsoft arms, but he also assisted the company's attack on GNU/Linux. 
Highlight: Microsoft craves pseudo (proprietary) standards and gets its way using proxies and influence which it buys. 
Highlight: The invasion into the open source world is intended to leave Linux companies neglected, due to financial incentives from Microsoft. 
Analysis: Xen, an open source hypervisor, possibly fell victim to Microsoft's aggressive (and stealthy) acquisition-by-proxy strategy.