08.25.08
The Latest Things Microsoft Does to Novell, with Novell
The previous post showed just how Novell harms open standards, striving to replace them with something else which it calls “interoperability”. In a similar vein, Microsoft tries to rename SasS “Software + Services” and Intel, which viciously attacked a laptops charity, came up with the word “Netbook” and the acronym MID. They claim credit for ‘inventions’ and advancements they have nothing to do with, unless FUD and sabotage count as a contribution. Microsoft and “open source” is another good example as such abuse.
“They claim credit for ‘inventions’ and advancements they have nothing to do with, unless FUD and sabotage count as a contribution.”Furthermore, in order to show just how hard Novell pushed the term “interoperability”, watch this whitepaper which incidentally showed up in the news feeds over the weekend. The title is “SUSE Linux Enterprise: Differentiation Through Interoperability.”
It won’t be long before people stop talking about open standards like ODF and start talking about expensive (and potentially very dangerous) binary bridges, which Novell markets under its “interoperability” guise. Microsoft helps in marketing this term.
It was rather shocking to find that even Microsoft fan Joe Wilcox is disgusted by this relationship between Microsoft and Novell.
I really wish Microsoft and Novell would stop kissing in public. It’s disgusting.
But they’re at it again, with Microsoft heaping more money into the dowry. There won’t be a divorce until Microsoft says so.
This was seen before, even with Turbolinux. These public displays of affection are a case of posing for media while begging for positive publicity [1, 2, 3].
People just don’t buy it though. Watch this post from yesterday.
Few of my friends work at Novell and are hardcore OpenSUSE fans; can’t blame them OpenSUSE is a really good and polished distribution. Some others hate Novell for their pact with MS and are Mandriva/PCLOS converts.
As time goes by, there are more of those who think that Microsoft will buy Novell and those that claim it’s a code injection of patents-tainted Mono. Some say it’s intended to make Microsoft/Novell the next SCO — an assessment that even Groklaw had subscribed to.
“As time goes by, there are more of those who think that Microsoft will buy Novell…”In the wild yards of ZDNet (blogs), which has connections with Microsoft, you can still find Novell employees commenting without disclosure (we spotted a Novell CTO commenting there a few days ago). All those praises of the Novell/Microsoft marriage usually come from Novell employees and related figures (Microsoft comments there too). Here’s one from Richard Bliss of the GroupWise folks. The comment says nothing about him and Novell. Almost every other comment (not from Novell) slams this relationship. Marc Wagner, who has a proven record of hating GNU/Linux and surely enough writes at ZDNet, joins this debate also. He denies what other commenters say about Microsoft preparing to scoop up Novell. It’s all a matter of wild speculation really. In the mean time, however, Microsoft is expanding in Novell’s home ground, Fargo. From the news:
Microsoft Corp. in Fargo hires five
Microsoft Corp., Fargo, has hired Chris Rudolph as a software development engineer, Ravi Eda as a software development engineer in test for Microsoft Visual Studio, and Jake Friedl, Tino Simon and Joanna Brown as support engineers.
Rudolph graduated from South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, Rapid City, S.D.
Make of that what you will, but after the AppArmor incident [1, 2, 3], which were mentioned in the IRC channel yesterday, as well as those layoffs [1, 2, 3] that saw Microsoft hiring AppArmor’s leader, one has to wonder. █
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.
Lulu said,
August 25, 2008 at 7:53 am
“In late 2007 Novell laid off almost all the developers of AppArmor with the aim of having the community do all the coding. Crispin Cowan (the founder and leader of the AppArmor project) was later hired by Microsoft. … In a way it’s a pity that AppArmor is going away so quickly. The lack of competition is not good for the market, and homogeneity isn’t good for security. But on the other hand, this means more resources will be available for SELinux development which will be a good thing.”