04.12.08
Quick Mention: Simon Phipps Dismisses Novell’s Dismissive Remarks About Sun Microsystems
The last time we wrote about Sun’s rebuttal to Novell, it was only just a pointer from Simon Phipps. But here it comes from the man himself:
To get Sun’s side, I talked to the company’s chief open source officer, Simon Phipps, on Wednesday. He certainly didn’t pull any punches. In response to Hovsepian’s suggestion that Sun’s open source strategy — balancing open source and commercial interests — isn’t right, Phipps says:
Novell’s got a big problem. What they’re doing is trying to sell open source software as if it was proprietary software. The comment that Mr. Hovsepian made seems to be projecting Novell’s malaise onto Sun, but we don’t have that malaise. We ship a completely free piece of software that anyone can download and use without any restrictions.
As was said last week, Novell is just making enemies with remarks such as the ones made by Ron Hovsepian. It ought not to expect many collaborations with Sun in months to come. Failing to compete against Red Hat on the server and Ubuntu on the desktop, Novell turned to the ‘dark side’ and set focus on proprietary software that runs atop GNU/Linux. In many ways, Sun does similar things, but Novell chooses the brawl, not peace. █
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.