06.04.08
Xen is (Almost) Microsoft
If Simon Crosby implicitly suggests so, then it’s officially unofficial
The title is clearly an exaggeration but nonetheless a warning. As we recently showed, under Citrix’ regime, Xen(Source) grew closer to Microsoft and it’s gradually losing its GNU/Linux focus and excluding/neglecting all those other than Novell and Microsoft [1, 2, 3]. The following new article, “Citrix CTO Mum on Plans to Build on Microsoft’s Hyper-V”, quotes what used to be a main man of Xen.
Simon Crosby, the CTO of the Virtualization and Management Division at Citrix, can’t wait for Hyper-V to arrive. “The sooner that happens, the better,” he said.
Just like it has done in the past with server-based computing, Citrix will extend the Microsoft platform to make it more attractive, according to Crosby, without elaborating on what the company is working on. “We haven’t made any product announcements yet, but we will as Microsoft goes to market,” he said.
He also sees opportunities for Citrix running its products on top of Microsoft’s Hyper-V, for example, the recently launched XenDesktop.
This has been an interesting story of vendor capture, which we have been watching for almost a year. In essence, Microsoft used its close partners at Citrix to ’steal’ software that was very important for GNU/Linux. That’s just why we keep an eye on projects like Blender. Xen is, in many ways, manipulated in the same way as Novell gets exploited. Money buys defections.
Earlier on in the IRC channel, it was mentioned by a reader that Steve Lamb of Microsoft is making strides towards friendliness with the Linux community. This doesn’t seem to be the first such incident. It’s a case of keeping one’s enemy closer and this benefits Microsoft the most because Microsoft is trying to ‘fish’ developers from all sides. Ponder Mono. █
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.