08.23.08

CRN, DaniWeb® Think Novell Could Be Microsoft One Day

Posted in Microsoft, Windows, GNU/Linux, Novell, SLES/SLED, Ron Hovsepian, Deception, BSD, Corel at 7:56 am by Roy Schestowitz

What if…?

The idea of a GNU/Linux- or BSD-based Windows replacement (think Winux) has been kicked around for a long time. This notion is not so far fetched, especially if Microsoft buys Novell. While it’s not worth repeating the possibilities (we did so several times in the past), it is definitely worth noticing that, over time, other Web sites form similar opinions. They are willing to acknowledge, especially now with Midori and “7″ vapourware afloat, that big changes might be ahead.

Yesterday we showed that Novell had begun spreading GNU/Linux FUD, no matter how implicitly. It views SUSE Enterprise Linux as a special breed. The following new comment from Linux Today points out the change in attitude:

This writeup made me see a simple public call-out that the press and open source community and end customers can all ask Novell.
Please explain how this works ?
1) Your CEO said “”Our agreement with Microsoft is in no way an acknowledgment that Linux infringes upon any Microsoft intellectual property.”
(I remember a public letter/posting on Novell’s website with a strong denial right after the first deal in 2006).
2) Now you say:
Bruce wrote me that customers wanted the Novell/Microsoft package, in part, because it “provides IP (intellectual property) peace of mind for organizations operating in mixed source environments.”

It’s worth repeating whatever was said yesterday. Maybe Ian Bruce does not know what Hovsepian and Novell said before. He is new at Novell and he does not realise that he must lie to the public about the meaning of the deal with Microsoft, which, in reality, is a software patents deal.

Microsoft might crave Novell’s software patents. Moreover, we mustn’t forget that Novell owns UNIX and it could become a problem. This enables a continuation of an SCO-like indictment.

It’s no figment of imagination when one considers four possibilities:

1. Microsoft buys Novell and sells an ‘enhanced’ GNU/Linux, which others cannot have.
2. Microsoft continues to use Novell to pressure other GNU/Linux vendors until GNU/Linux is just one company that can be squashed.
3. Microsoft borrows technology from Novell to build a Windows replacement on its own.
4. Microsoft along with Novell (or with Novell acquired) launches a legal attack against GNU/Linux, probably with the exception of SUSE Enterprise Linux, which is an expensive Microsoft cash cow. It can be about patents or about copyrights (UNIX).

Here are a couple of interesting new articles:

Opinion: How much is that penguin in the Window?

How far this goes is anyone’s guess. Will Microsoft one day offer its very own Linux distro?

Microsoft and Novell: Buying In or Selling Out?

Microsoft could be investing in Novell for a complete buyout at some point in the future after Novell developers create the ultimate OS for them, using Microsoft’s money, of course. $300+ million buys you a lot of development.

If a worst-case scenario becomes a reality, then this site will cease to be targeted at a ‘Linux company’. As time goes on, Novell becomes more of a ‘Microsoft subsidiary’. Remember Corel. █

“If programmers deserve to be rewarded for creating innovative programs, by the same token they deserve to be punished if they restrict the use of these programs.”

–Richard Stallman

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08.22.08

Corel’s Days Seem Numbered After Selling Out to Microsoft, Just Like Novell

Posted in Microsoft, GNU/Linux, Novell, Deals, xandros, Corel, Linspire at 7:50 pm by Roy Schestowitz

Corel used to be about GNU/Linux, but then Microsoft signed a deal with it

Corel was once a company boasting a GNU/Linux strategy. It was a promising leader with plenty of resources at its disposal. Then, a mysterious deal was signed with Microsoft and the company embraced things like .NET. Initially it had promised to keep its GNU/Linux direction alive, but the promise didn’t last. Over the years it become more and more of a Microsoft-oriented company. It spat out Xandros though.

Xandros later swallowed Linspire. We foresaw Linspire’s death several months [1, 2] before it actually happened [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]. Their deal with Microsoft ruined them on so many levels. We received information about these issues, albeit privately. Eventually it materialised and Linspire is no more.

Moral of the story: Microsoft deals kill. It’s a dance with the devil.

In this week’s news, one can now find that Corel trying to sell itself, just like Linspire.

Corel in Talks to Sell Itself After Vector Ends Buyout Offer

[…]

Corel, founded in 1985 by Michael Cowpland, earned acclaim for its CorelDraw graphics program in the 1990s. In 1996, the company paid $170 million to Novell Inc. for the WordPerfect word-processing software, which competes with Microsoft Corp.’s Word. Cowpland stepped down in 2000 after sales dropped.

Probably related to this: Corel withdrew a buybacks offer.

Corel Corp., the maker of WordPerfect and CorelDraw software, said Vector Capital Corp. is withdrawing its buyout offer so Corel can pursue alternatives to increasing shareholder value.

[…]

Corel, founded in 1985 by Michael Cowpland, won fame for its CorelDraw graphics program in the 1990s. In 1996, the company paid $170 million to Novell Inc. for the WordPerfect word- processing software, challenging Microsoft Corp.’s Word. Cowpland stepped down in 2000 after sales dropped.

There were some shuffles at the very top level of Corel recently and it’s never an encouraging sign of corporate health. For background on the history of Corel and Microsoft, consider [1, 2].

Eventually, just as Matt Asay speculated couple of days ago, Microsoft will throw Novell into the ashtray. Right now it only needs to get a job done. It exploits Novell in order to ruin other GNU/Linux vendors, as well as put software patents and Linux taxation in place. █

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08.08.08

What Borland Can Teach Critics About Novell

Posted in Microsoft, Windows, Mono, Security, Asia, Database, Corel at 6:15 am by Roy Schestowitz

Something that we had been looking for yesterday was finally found. It makes a pretty good description of a problem that will be discussed here briefly because it’s the nasty technique Microsoft used against Borland. It tries the same against Adobe. Possibly Novell, too.

Here is the article, which is just over a decade old.

Fierce competitors Microsoft Corp. and Borland International, Inc. have moved their battle from the networked desktop to the courtroom.

Borland last week filed suit against Microsoft, alleging that the Redmond, Wash., giant has been systematically recruiting Borland developers in an attempt to eliminate the company as a competitor. Microsoft and Borland are rivals in the budding Java and Internet tools markets.

[…]

The suit alleges that Microsoft’s Bill Gates himself sweetened the pot. Gross eventually accepted the offer, which included an additional half-million dollar bonus, last September.

A noticeably angry Borland CEO Del Yocam complained about the nerve of Microsoft. “How flagrant, driving limos up to the front of the company. That is what riles you,” Yocam complained. Yocam said his No. 1 goal is to get Microsoft to stop recruiting.

They seem to be trying the same thing with Adobe at the moment. India’s mainstream press reported on this issue a few weeks ago (previously covered here) and some months ago there were senior-level defections of this kind.

There are good reasons to suspect that the same thing happens at Novell [1, 2]. Martin Buckley and Dr. Crispin Cowan are better-known examples of this.

We recently wrote about staff intersections and warned about Ximian’s influence on Novell. Novell is now recruiting .NET developers, so there’s increased convergence. IBM does not seem too happy about it and Bob Sutor is has become more vocal about it.

My one caveat with it is that it either requires .Net or Mono. I’ve removed the usual Mono applications from my Ubuntu Linux installation and am somewhat loathe to put anything requiring it on the machine. (This is a personal choice, as I’ve mentioned before.) Anyone doing a Java version or alternative implementation that is open source?

Having watched what happened to Corel and to Borland, it’s worth keeping an eye on the way Novell resembles Microsoft. It will probably become more noticeable over time. █

“Our partnership with Microsoft continues to expand.”

–Ron Hovsepian, Novell CEO

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07.29.08

Reactions to Microsoft’s ‘Embrace’ of Open Source at OSCON 2008

Posted in Microsoft, Novell, Deception, Deals, Open XML, FOSS, Corel at 3:34 am by Roy Schestowitz

‘Embrace’ (to Extend) versus Embrace for Promotion, Contribution

Leaving the spin from the press aside, it’s worth taking a close look at what Microsoft has done at OSCON.

Microsoft wants to blow FOSS developers a kiss while at the same time securing Microsoft’s income. Some innocent developers and passive Microsoft employees/recruits liaise with a company that, objectively speaking, has a criminal past and an appalling history. In fact, even recently it has proven that nothing whatsoever has changed. It is that same old spoiled brat that disregards the law, resorting to bribery, bullying, fraud, extortion, technical sabotage, and blackmail. It’s all well documented.

Bruce Perens and this Web site are far from the only sources that are critical of Microsoft’s latest moves. Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, for instance, is not buying it, either.

You see some people still believe that Microsoft offering patented protocols under “reasonable and non-discriminatory terms,” or “for free for noncommercial use without fear of lawsuits” is somehow some kind of olive branch to the open-source community.

As Tiemann put it: “A free-of-cost license that prohibits commercial use is useless to open-source developers. And therefore I cannot understand why anybody would think that Microsoft is doing the open-source community any favors.”

He’s got that right.

There are some more details from Vaughan-Nichols in ComputerWorld

The first announcement, that Microsoft was contributing a patch to ADOdb, a PHP database access interface, wasn’t that big a deal. It is, after all, self-serving. Microsoft’s contribution will enable people to use its own SQL Server instead of MySQL or PostgreSQL with PHP programs. Yawn. Nothing new here.

Apache too was considered over the weekend [1, 2, 3]. Microsoft uses Apache for document lock-in, making its formats more prevalent than the real international standard [1, 2. Apache might not mind this, but it’s being used against other groups of FOSS developers. Sean Michael Kerner had this to say, based on what he had seen at OSCON.

Ramji also said Microsoft has been working with the Apache POI project, which develops APIs for using pure Java to manipulate various file formats based upon Microsoft’s OLE 2 Compound Document format. Those include most Microsoft Office formats, except for the more recent Office Open XML formats, for which Microsoft has embarked on a massive campaign to see adopted as industry standards.

[…]

Overall, Ramji tried his best to ingratiate himself with the OSCON crowd — even wearing a Mozilla Firefox T-Shirt, and telling the audience that he wants to engage openly and honestly with the open source community. That’s a message that he’s been preaching for some time.

Steve Stites writes:

For several years the Microsoft astroturf has periodically reported on the activities of a pro open source faction within Microsoft. This factional fight is probably one of many within the Microsoft bureaucracy which apparently endures constant, intense infighting. But I don’t see what interest it is to anybody other than a Microsoft bureaucrat.

Another comment of interest:

Fourth, it means MS wants to seed the Apache Group with Code that they will attach their IP to. This way, they can extract funds from users in the future, with their contributions.

Is it a good deal for Apache? In the short term, it provides them with cash. Is it a good deal for MS? Of course, it gives them access to a code base and hopefully developers they desperately need. Is it good for the development and user community? NO!!! Why not? It means MS is once again employing their extend, embrace, and extinguish paradigm, which has worked so well for them in the past.

From Rex Ballard:

   Message-ID: <2fee4c71-f8a7-4abd-bc29-654ea71b24f4@x41g2000hsb.googlegroups.com>
   From: Rex Ballard <rex.ballard@gmail.com>
   Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.advocacy
   Subject: Re: Microsoft donate to Apache
   Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2008 23:08:59 -0700 (PDT)

To Apache, this deal seemed harmless, but it may harm other groups of FOSS developers. Tomorrow, hypothetically speaking, another group might sell out to Microsoft and be happy with it while hurting Apache. In that respect, it is the almost same as the funneling of money into Novell’s bank account, which made some pointy-haired managers happy but almost everyone else in the FOSS world nervous.

Of course Apache will deny all of this because they want to believe, they are being defensive, they took the money and then encouraged to praise Microsoft, which is now their sponsor. Corel too thought it would enjoy its little deal with Microsoft while continuing its development of GNU/Linux. Where is it today? What about MySQL? Honeymoons rarely last forever. Sooner or later, it’s purely down to business, to shareholders. █

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07.14.08

Embracing and Extending Open Source from the Inside — Yes, Again

Posted in Microsoft, GNU/Linux, Novell, Mono, GNOME, GPL, Virtualization, Xen, Corel at 3:31 am by Roy Schestowitz

“We believe every Linux customer basically has an undisclosed balance-sheet liability.”

–Steve Ballmer

Microsoft continues to show its total disregard for Free software. It only wants to exploit it.

Going against a hugely popular saying, Microsoft is firm in saying “never” to open source. Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer had a single answer to a question presented at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2008 regarding the possibility that the company’s flagship products will veer away from its current proprietary business mode. “No!”

Dana Blankenhorn responds to this too. He politely asks Microsoft’s CEO to just STFU.

I hate to go all Bond villain on Mr. Ballmer, but the question of whether Microsoft talks to open source, about open source, or even engages open source is just not relevant any more.

We are past the point with Microsoft where open source needs to fear the Giant of Redmond. Despite Mr. Ballmer’s bluster, the company lacks the legal weaponry to destroy open source, with patents or anything else.

SourceForge Revisited

We have done some research on Microsoft’s relationship with (and attitude towards) Free software. Two days ago we focused on Microsoft’s corporate role in SourceForge. We dealt with this before. Responding to the latest report, Groklaw raises an issue: “Question - Has Sourceforge lost its cotton pickin’ mind? Answer - Yes. Or else Microsoft is an inspiration. Who wouldn’t want to help Microsoft figure out who to sue?”

For those who are new to this, here is the gist:

1. CodePlex and SourceForge overlap
2. Microsoft funds them and gradually changes the meaning/perception of “Open Source”
3. The CEO quit recently. He is to be replaced.

Photo under the GNU Free Documentation license

Mono Revisited

Well, well. What have we here?

Banshee by default in Intrepid [Ubuntu 8.10]

Since F-Spot is installed by default Mono is now part of the base
install. So outside of all the debate around Mono, have we considered
installing Banshee as the default media player in Intrepid now that
Banshee 1.0 is released?

Banshee is of course Mono based. Novell seems happy about it because it gains control of the Free Desktop. Watch the bottom of the homepage: “The Banshee name is a registered trademark of Novell. This does not include Banshee source code, which is licensed under the MIT X11 license.”

“Banshee is of course Mono based. Novell seems happy about it because it gains control of the Free Desktop.”Novell is the next Corel. Let’s say that again: Novell. Is. The next Corel. This is how Mono is likely to take over GNOME. First the applications, just as we predicted. It’s infecting other distributions too, including Fedora, which is perhaps only beginning to wake up and smell the coffee.

Here is how it goes: First you neglect or phase out applications that are written using other (non-.NET) P\Ls. The core of GNOME needn’t be rewritten — yet. It’s like a staged introduction which application maturity and priority might make inevitable.

Virtualisation Revisited

It’s another case of “embrace, redefine, and extend” technology. It’s a strategy that revolves around dependency and weakening of the GNU GPL. Hyper-V’s purpose, for example, is partly to ensure that Windows is always the host and Linux just a guest. That guest, moreover, must be the Microsoft-taxed SLES.

Virtualisation is hugely important to GNU/Linux, as today’s news reminds us. Microsoft wants to put an end to this using money, manipulation, and acquisitions.

With Microsoft’s virtual control of Xen (it’s owned by its Partner of the Year, which begs for similar questions about VMWare), one has to wonder about the effect on Sun too. Microsoft is stealing critical bits of the FOSS stack. Sun tries to play a similar game; so did Oracle a long time ago.

Citrix/Microsoft seem to have turned Xen rather sour of the subject of Free software. Now there’s a confrontation.

A war of words has erupted between two bitter opponents in the Xen open source-based hypervisor (define) market. Citrix, which owns XenSource and drives the Xen project, has insulted arch-rival Virtual Iron, saying, among other things, that it owns the hypervisor while Virtual Iron just consumes the product.

This fired up Virtual Iron’s chief strategy officer Tony Asaro, who slapped back by saying Citrix chief technology officer Simon Crosby is out of line because Virtual Iron has been a substantial contributor to the Xen project and Xen belongs to the open source community.

A fuming Asaro told InternetNews.com “the dangerous thing Simon said is that Citrix owns the hypervisor. That’s wrong; Citrix bought Xen and sells the Citrix commercial product and are the drivers or owners of the open source project, but it’s the community that works on open source.”

Crosby’s “irresponsible statement about the open source community is counter to the philosophy of open source which he’s the biggest proponent of,” Asaro added.

There are some announcements to come from Citrix/Xen and Microsoft, according to Crosby.

Microsoft is trying to steal Open Source. █

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07.12.08

Reminder: Novell and Xandros Are Not Open Source Companies

Posted in Microsoft, GNU/Linux, Novell, Opensuse, FOSS, xandros, Corel at 3:23 am by Roy Schestowitz

Free software companies? Surely, that would a joke

As a gentle reminder, Novell insists that it’s merely a mixed-source company [1, 2, 3, 4], a concept that even Microsoft is trying to adopt for public relations purposes. It’s easy to subscribe to this agenda because opening up 1% of your code (abandonware) and keeping your crown jewels closed is an easy responsibility to live up to. there is also costly dependency which a ‘mixed stack’ leads to. It’s a total ‘bastardisation’ of the original goals of Free software because to a large degree it involves exploitation of Free software, e.g. the ‘Google way’ a.k.a. free-riding. with minimal returns compared to the available capacity (Google makes billions of dollars).

When companies like Nokia and Microsoft pretend to be contributing [1, 2], then surely it’s nothing like Novell. The truth is that Novell does contribute some code; some fairly valuable code, too.

Nevertheless, why isn’t Novell assisting the Utah Open Source Conference? That’s where much of Novell is located. The following scoop is an eye-opening change.

…we’re going to have the UTOSC 2008 (Utah Open Source Conference, August 28-30, 2008) at the Salt Lake Community College, Redwood Road campus.

And Novell is not one of their sponsors!

I suppose this is not because Novell is not really caring about open source at all, right?

Recall what we’ve stressed many times over the past week or so (because of Xandros [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]): Novell is the next Corel. It’s losing its focus due to the deal with Microsoft.

Looking into the past, consider this new and excellent article:

Where Xandros is sold in a box, Ubuntu is given away free. Where Ubuntu is seen to donate code back to the community, Xandros and Linspire have developed proprietary extensions. Where Ubuntu asks for manufacturers to free their drivers, Xandros and Linspire have signed patent covenants with Microsoft.

Then there’s SLED/SLES, and OpenSUSE which you can only use ’safely’ provided that you don’t make money from it.

The article also contains an interesting history lesson on Corel. Is this Novell’s vocation?

Cowpland, and Corel, may have made the classic mistake of realising too early where the market was going, and running before the market could walk. Within months Cowpland was forced to step down from the company he had founded, vowing to devote his time to working with unspecified Linux start-ups. “Personally, I intend to get my hands really dirty with a lot of Linux technology,” he told reporters. “I’m fascinated by the potential that’s now emerging.”

He was replaced as CEO by Corel’s chief technology officer, Derek Burney. “Open-source software isn’t a moneymaker”, said Burney, “Microsoft’s .Net strategy will change computing as we know it.”

By this time, Microsoft, which had an interest in keeping WordPerfect afloat for antitrust reasons, had invested $135 million in Corel. According to Burney: “There is a contract that says we have to put the .Net framework into our major applications within six months of the release of .Net.”

Shortly thereafter, Corel divested itself of its Linux distribution, and discontinued support for WordPerfect and CorelDraw on Linux. It has been assumed by many that this was an unwritten condition of Microsoft’s investment in Corel.

In August 2001, Xandros Incorporated announced that it had secured the rights to Corel’s Linux distribution and a US$10 million investment from Linux Global Partners, a Venture Capital firm. Like Corel, Xandros has its roots in Ottawa, Canada, and retained the majority of Corel’s original Linux software development team. Linux Global Partners also invested heavily in other Linux companies, the best known of which are probably CodeWeavers and Ximian (before it was sold to Novell).

[…]

The biggest problem for Xandros and Linspire has been the “patent covenants” that both companies signed with Microsoft, and the detrimental effect that these agreements have had on ongoing relationships with the Linux user and developer communities.

Jeremy Allison of Samba made the point when he resigned from Novell over the same issue. “Whilst the Microsoft patent agreement is in place there is nothing we can do to fix community relations. And I really mean nothing,” he wrote. “Until the patent provision is revoked, we are pariahs…. Unfortunately the time I am willing to wait for this agreement to be changed… has passed, and so I must say goodbye.”

[…]

To which, Alan Cox, the best known of Linux kernel developers after Linus Torvalds, replied: “That would be because we believe in Free Software and doing the right thing (a practice you appear to have given up on). Maybe it is time the term ‘open source’ also did the decent thing and died out with you.”

Can you see what happened to Corel? Two-way assimilation (Microsoft to open [1, 2], and open to the Microsoft API). Good luck to Novell and .Net Mono. The major news at the moment is about GNOME 3.0 (version number bump from 2.3). Miguel de Icaza once said that GNOME 4.0 would be based on .Net. A recent appointment makes the mind boggle a bit [1, 2]. Mono is already there. █

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07.09.08

Microsoft and Citrix Celebrate Love After Vendor Capture (Xen)

Posted in Microsoft, GNU/Linux, Apple, Novell, Virtualization, Xen, xandros, Corel, Turbolinux at 2:53 pm by Roy Schestowitz

“We will do some buying of companies that are built around open-source products.”

–Steve Ballmer

I

t was less than a day ago that we explained what had probably happened with VMWare. The story is similar to that of XenSource, which we have painted endlessly before as a victim of Microsoft and its ecosystem. It’s all about platforms, not virtualisation technologies, which Microsoft merely uses to defend its crown jewels. Virtualisation caught Microsoft asleep on the wheel and when it woke up it seemed too late. it has no choice but to play dirty to catch up.

Anyway, shortly after the grabbing of XenSource, Citrix and Microsoft celebrated with a big trophy. Citrix became Microsoft’s Partner of the Year. Now comes a vanity site which is similar to that of Microsoft and Novell.

magnify360 Brings Personalization to Citrix-Microsoft Website, OneGreatPartner.com

magnify360 (www.magnify360.com), the leading provider of 1-to-1 personalization technology, has been tapped to build OneGreatPartner.com, a Citrix community site for premier partner, Microsoft.

This orgy of influence and assets is part of Microsoft’s attempts to turn rivals into partners. With so many Linux companies and much GNU/Linux affinity out there, it’s hard to compete. If Microsoft could change the positions of its opponents, e.g. have VMWare favour Windows over GNU/Linux, then it gains great traction. Novell is another such example, not to mention Corel, XenSource, and even Xandros, which helps with OOXML. Turbolinux too showed off its love for Microsoft. Watch this video of Apple. It’s quite an eye opener. █

“Our partnership with Microsoft continues to expand.”

–Ron Hovsepian, Novell CEO

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Corel: Whose side is it on anyway?

Posted in Microsoft, GNU/Linux, Novell, GNOME, Patents, Open XML, HP, xandros, Corel, Linspire at 4:47 am by Roy Schestowitz

Corel has been a very bizarre company ever since its deal with Microsoft. Ambivalent, confused, aimless and reliant on other companies. That’s Corel.

It’s almost like Novell, only several years further down the line. The GNU/Linux identity of Corel is absolutely lost by now. As for Novell, that loss of identity is still ‘work in progress’.

Corel produces software only for Windows. It’s still proprietary, just as Microsoft et al prefer for it to be (Fernando Cassia calls it a mistake). Corel was among the first parties to declare support for OOXML. It was a big deal at the time. Here is the latest from yesterday’s news:

Once ousted from the desktop by Microsoft, Wordperfect is back and better

One of the first widely-used office suites on PCs was Wordperfect. Then Microsoft muscled into the game and quickly its Office suite became the de-facto standard, edging out competitors.

[…]

WPO X4 includes a range of PDF capabilities including the ability to import, edit and export PDF documents - including scanned PDFs.

WPO X4 is distributed in South Africa by Workgroup. Corel product manager at Workgroup, Kevin George, says that as well as offering good PDF support, WPO X4 is also compatible with Microsoft Office 2007 files as well as Open Document Format (ODF), used by OpenOffice.org.

More interesting perhaps is Corel’s ‘bastard child’ called Xandros. Apart from signing a software patent deal with Microsoft, it has been up to other deals and ITJungle summarises.

The commercial Linux distribution business just got a little bit less diverse but perhaps a little stronger while IT Jungle was off on holiday last week when New York-based Xandros acquired fellow Linux distro Linspire for an undisclosed sum.

[…]

Xandros, you will remember, is the company that was founded in the wake of graphics and office automation software maker Corel’s attempt to become a Linux distributor a decade ago, which it spun out in 2001 as a separate entity. Xandros has attempted to create a Debian Linux that plays nicely with Windows and has some of the same look and feel of Windows, to which the company created its own Xandros File Manager to make something that works like the File Manager in Windows. Most recently, Xandros has become famous as the supplier of the Linux embedded in the popular ASUS Eee PC, a tiny little flash-based laptop PC. (I got my wife one of these for Mother’s Day, and she adores it because she can lug it around everywhere since it is no larger than a hardcover book. Which she also lugs around, now that I think about it.) Just as Xandros was cooking up the second edition of its Xandros Server variant last summer, it acquired Scalix, the HP-UX OpenMail groupware program that was spun out of Hewlett-Packard, ported to Linux, and open sourced.

This brings us back to H-P again, and particularly its attitude towards patents. We’ve covered this before. H-P fights for its patents and, not surprisingly, it’s apathetic towards GNU/Linux. If it’s ever offered as a choice, then it’s taxed by Microsoft [1, 2].

Scalix too plays the software patents game with Microsoft (it has roots in Microsoft’s friend, Hewlett-Packard). It joined Xandros shortly after Microsoft and Xandros had signed that horrible deal. And lastly, speaking of H-P, recall what we wrote about GNOME the other day (further comments here) and remember that H-P and Xandros support Microsoft OOXML. To repeat this yet again, the concern here is that Microsoft tries to lock down the core of Free software inside Software Patent Prison, rendering it non-Free. To extent, this has already happened. █

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