08.07.08

Novell’s Mono in Microsoft’s Clouds

Posted in Microsoft, Windows, GNU/Linux, Novell, Mono, Servers, Java, FOSS at 4:45 pm by Roy Schestowitz

It’s more than just Moonligjht

Bob Sutor, a Vice President at IBM, had previously protested against Mono in his personal blog [1, 2]. While it was rather gentle and this does not necessarily reflect on or represents the views of his employer, watch the following new article. It had one of our readers assume or speculate that Sutor does not want Mono and asks developers to steer away from it (under the Big Blue Hat).

Bob Sutor, VP of open source and standards at IBM, told attendees of the LinuxWorld Conference in San Francisco, that what the open source community needs to make Linux popular as a desktop OS used by consumers and businesses are “some really good graphic designers.”

“Stop copying 2001 Windows. That’s not where the usability action is,” Sutor said during his afternoon keynote.

Sutor’s comments came a day after IBM announced at the show that it was joining Linux distributors Canonical, Novell, and Red Hat in building Microsoft-free PCs for business. The four companies agreed to provide hardware partners with the software to build desktops that would have alternatives to Windows and Office.

De Icaza and his colleagues may be trying to demote Java by pronouncing its death or inferiority [1, 2, 3, 4]. That’s precisely what Microsoft wants. Novell does its marketing free of charge and free of criticism (it’s not frown-upon if Novell criticises or neglect Java because it’s not a direct competitor). According to the following statistics, however, the tendency is far from a reality. It better characterises Microsoft’s strategy of self-fulfilling prophecies and gaming (boosting) of polls — something it got caught engaging in before (against Java).

Java has its detractors, but according to a recent reading of the Tiobe Programming Community Index, it’s still the dominant programming language, with little change in its overall popularity since August 2007. Runners up? C, (Visual) Basic, C++, and PHP.

Remember that Java is also GPL-licensed now. But no. Novell prefers adopting Microsoft’s proprietary technology (never mind the patents and more importantly their holder). Here’s why.

Novell creates and sponsors Mon-based projects like Banshee (welcome. subsequent dangers!) because it has exclusive ‘protection’ for their use. Microsoft has said that only Novell can use Mono ’safely’. It’s also becoming the copyright holder, which may or may not become more of an issue. It certainly would had Novell been acquired in a semi-hostile fashion, which some people consider likely dangerous.

“It’s about control and ownership and one must remember that Novell describes Microsoft as “a partner””Look ahead and see their strategy with Mono. While sacking engineers they hire .NET programmers. That’s a fact. It’s about control and ownership and one must remember that Novell describes Microsoft as “a partner”. It’s only ever hostile towards the likes of Red Hat and Sun (look back for vocal confrontations, none of which were with Microsoft).

There is, additionally, the opinion that “Microsoft is the next SCO Group” and that Novell too could become part of this (older examples in [1, 2, 3]).

As those new statistics at the top show, PHP and other Free P/Ls for Web programming are gaining traction. That’s where Novell is so crucial. Think along the lines of .NET SaaS for Microsoft, which bring more lock-in into ‘the cloud’. It’s there for Novell and Microsoft to enjoy together, at the expense of all those ‘other’ GNU/Linux and FOSS-based clouds that are already so dominant.

Cloud computing, netbooks explosion caught Novell asleep ?

Novell depends on Vars or channel sales…

Quite some while ago, Microsoft also ‘pulled a Zend’ also on WSO2. And yes… it’s about those darn clouds again. PHP is among those that rise and Java is dominant, so here is the latest from this Sri Lankan star.

Microsoft Shares Spotlight with Open Source platforms

Collaboration initiatives to extend interoperability across Microsoft .NET Framework, Java, PHP and other Web services platforms

After the Apache ‘donation’ and the reaction from MuleSource’s CEO, one must truly be cautious and suspicious. █

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