04.04.08
‘Novell Booster’ in the Linux News
“zOMG! Zonker is teh boosterz!!one!!eleven!”
The phrase “Microsoft boosters” is typically used to describe reporters, analysts, commenters or entire Web sites that glorify Microsoft. It describes them collectively. Some of them exist solely for this reason and they operate with this role in disguise (some examples here).
There are several Web sites set up solely for the purpose of increasing Novell’s presence on the Web and small prints might indicate that the sites (or blogs) are intended for PR purposes, possibly owing to disclosure rules that are rarely enforced (not effectively anyway).
Interestingly enough, Novell’s community manager (Zonker) enjoys his posting privileges at KDE’s Dot, which is where he has just promoted OpenSUSE with the following announcement.
Ever run into the issue that you saw a cool new app on KDE-Apps.org and could not find a binary package for your favourite KDE version on your favourite KDE distro? The openSUSE Build Service allows creation of binary packages quite easily, so you can do the work yourself and help other KDE users who run into the same problem. If you are interested in learning how, the openSUSE community are organising Packaging Days II, which starts tomorrow.
Perhaps that’s just how Novell’s ‘acquisition’ of Zonker pays off. To be fair, several KDE developers are employed or funded by Linux companies in one way or another. But still, Novell may have bought itself more presence in the relevant press. That’s just a little disappointing.
In other news, Zonker took Firefox 3 for an early ride and bloggd about his experiences. There is no conflict of interests here and he posted this to his blog, as opposed a KDE site with a far broader audience.
Just grabbed Firefox 3.0 beta 5 — it’s looking real good so far, so I thought I’d post a few notes about the release. I spend far more time than is healthy at the computer, and Firefox is probably the application I use the most (next to Vim) so expect more commentary on this throughout the week.
vim >> Firefox? █
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.