01.01.08
What’s Good for Microsoft is Good for Novell?
CRN’s Ed Moltzen has just posted an item that cites Novell executives. One of them, John Dragoon, even references the Bill Gates-funded Gartner as if Microsoft-commissioned studies are something to rely on.
Both John Dragoon, Novell’s chief marketing officer, and Jeff Jaffe, Novell’s CTO, offer up blog posts today on the subject - - both praising the results of the arrangement with their one-time enemy from Redmond.
Dragoon spoke about Novell’s selfishness last year and this post’s title says that the “Partnership Is Working Out Just Fine”. Working out for who though? Among the things that Microsoft paid Novell for:
- Holding back cooperation with Red Hat, Ubuntu, Mandriva and others
- Supporting OOXML, i.e. helping Microsoft kill ODF
- Fueling a patent intimidation campaign
- Stifling the antitrust case in Europe
There are several more ill impacts of Novell’s deal - -which they even called it an “alliance” at one point — with Microsoft. Microsoft has truly gotten its money’s worth. Novell could have actually received more money for selling blood (see context).
Financially, Novell still does badly and attempts to embellish things. Selling lots of blood is a short-term investment. You then faint.
Happy new year, Novell. █
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.
hey said,
January 1, 2008 at 10:00 am
It is not just about ODF, if the defacto standard became an official one we would be destroying any competition against Microsoft on the desktop.
Roy Schestowitz said,
January 1, 2008 at 10:07 am
You must look back at OOXML in November 2006 and prior to that. It was nowhere. Microsoft uses GNOME and Novell (via de Icaza and ilk) to boast pseudo-support of OOXML. The same goes for Corel and Apple, both of which have deals with Microsoft.