Elliot offers to buy Novell Inc. for $2bn; Novell stock surge
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“The deal price is on the low side compared to recent deals that were transacted in the enterprise software space,” said Cross Research analyst Richard Williams.
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William said there could be more companies who would offer a similar bid for Novell as Elliot’s. HP, SAP, and Microsoft are expected to be the possible suitors.
Microsoft, already having a strong business partnership with Novell, sells Novell’s version of Linux to its customers.
This whole episode may explain why a lot of executives quit the company recently. At this stage, it seems unlikely that Novell will stay NOVL this year. █
“Now [Novell is] little better than a branch of Microsoft”
Summary: Panasonic signs an exFAT patent deal with Microsoft, Amazon continues to abuse, and Nathan Myhrvold’s abuse of the system is still being discussed
Microsoft has made a second intellectual property (IP) licensing announcement this week. After announcing a cross-licensing deal with Amazon.com (which had lots of NDA stipulations), Microsoft revealed on February 25 it had struck a deal with Panasonic for its exFAT technology.
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Maybe Amazon was just licensing exFAT/FAT, some argued. Sure, maybe Amazon licensed those technologies too; it’s impossible to tell, given what Microsoft disclosed and Amazon refused (or was not allowed) to discuss. But as I mentioned to some readers, when Microsoft is simply licensing exFAT/FAT, it calls that out specifically in the release, even if the licensee isn’t talking about how/what they plan to do with the technology.
In Amazon’s case, Microsoft called out the fact Amazon is using open-source technology (Linux, specifically) in the Kindle and on its back-end servers. Some open-source backers said they believed Microsoft did this to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) to hurt Linux.
Regarding Amazon’s patent deal with Microsoft [1, 2, 3], there is another new development justifying boycott of Amazon, which is one of the notable abusers of the USPTO (and patent offices in other countries too, Canada for example). Amazon is clearly part of the problem.
How Hard Is It To Realize That One-Click Buying Doesn’t Deserve A Patent?
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Amazon and Jeff Bezos (who a decade ago was a founder of a project to bust bogus patents) have aggressively fought to keep the patent alive. And so we’ve now entered the fifth year of the review process, which seems to involve some rather annoyed USPTO patent examiners, who are fed up with what appears to be Amazon simply dumping busywork on the examiners to avoid a final rejection of the patent.
In light of Microsoft’s latest intimidation against GNU/Linux (waving of the Amazon deal), one person writes the following, referring to the i4i case [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12].
You can imagine my laughter when Microsoft was declared by the courts to have violated a patent in their OOXML file formats. The patent owners, i4i of Canada, asked the courts to have Microsoft remove the features that were found to be in violation of i4i’s patents.
Now, what about all the customers that chose to use Microsoft’s Office product just to get the OOXML feature? If they suffer loss because of this Microsoft compensate them? What about the documents they created with OOXML, will they have to be converted? What about the people that refuse to let Microsoft remove the patent violating code to protect their investments and documents? Could i4i sue them?
Sawyer also points out that, contrary to claims of the system’s supporters, that “having a patent doesn’t mean that you really invented anything, or that the person you’re suing would actually infringe in a rational world.” Some of you may have seen some of the regular commenters here claim that there the only way to prove you’ve invented something is if you get a patent on it — and that anyone accused of infringing has clearly “stolen” the idea. Neither of those things are true. What Sawyer is pointing out is that getting a patent is just a sign that you were able to convince the USPTO (through a “pseudo-adversarial administrative procedure”) that you deserved such a monopoly privilege. It doesn’t mean you actually invented anything — and it certainly doesn’t mean you’ve done anything to promote the progress or innovation in general.
Summarising the above, the president of the FFII adds that “patent trolls are financed by traditional investment banks and hedge funds,” but even some VCs have no faith in software patents, based on another post from TechDirt (published a day beforehand):
VC Explains How Damaging Software Patents Can Be
Despite claims that no VCs would ever invest in companies without patents, we’ve been seeing more and more VCs moving over to the side of recognizing that patents are more often hindering their portfolio companies rather than helping them — and these are some of the most respected VCs around these days. Brad Burnham, who has already called for an independent invention defense for patents has responded to Nathan Myhrvold’s ongoing campaign to legitimize patent shakedowns.
It is worth emphasising that this whole debate started because of Microsoft’s patent troll who was running amok with an extortion racket. This shows just how much of a problem Microsoft has become to scientists and developers. It retards more than just the field of software right now and so does Bill Gates. █
“Software patents have been nothing but trouble for innovation. We the software engineers know this, yet we actually have full-blown posters in our break-room showcasing the individual engineers who came up with something we were able to push through the USPTO. Individually, we pretty much all consider the software-patent showcase poster to be a colossal joke.”—Kelledin, PLI: State Street Overruled… PERIOD
Summary: An excellent new audiocast covers lesser known facts about Novell’s deal with Microsoft
JEREMY Allison, whom we interviewed shortly after he had left Novell in protest, has just done a session with the SFLC where he talks about events predating the Microsoft deal. According to the audio (playable below), Allison was sent an early copy of Novell’s deal with Microsoft, which he said was like passing a crayon over section 7 of the GPL (v2). Allison resisted it, but the lawyers ignored his feedback anyway and requested deletion of the trail.
* Jeremy discussed that he resigned from Novell in protest over the Microsoft/Novell deal. (19:33)
The main new item there is Novell’s treatment of antagonism. The legal team patronised an expert advice, so what was it sharing a draft for? A pursuit for endorsement and “yes men”? Based on the bogus survey, that is a possibility. █
Microsoft, Taiwan Sign MOU On Cloud Computing Research Hub
Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) and the Taiwan government signed a memorandum of understanding Wednesday to jointly set up a research center for cloud computing in Taiwan, the U.S.-based software giant said in a statement.
As for its partnership with Taiwan’s government, Microsoft and Taiwan’s Ministry of Economic Affairs will jointly invest to establish a Software and Service Excellence Center in Taipei, with focus on R&D of applications of cloud computing technologies. This reveals Microsoft’s intention of establishing a hardware supporting system to realize cloud computing applications.
What makes no sense here is that they are using taxpayers’ money for this. Another fine example of “constructive capitalism” printing cash for Microsoft at the expense of those who will later pay some more, to the very same company whose operations and establishment they fund too?
What Microsoft is doing with Chinese banks at the moment is also worth paying attention to. Steve Ballmer has just signed a deal in Beijing. We wrote quite a lot about Microsoft in banking recently, e.g. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. █
“It’s easier for our software to compete with Linux when there’s piracy than when there’s not.”
–Bill Gates
Summary: Microsoft spreads lies about the role of counterfeiting and thereby attempts to capture Nigerian ICT; A new Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in Abu Dhabi blocks Microsoft competitors from ICT
Microsoft has taken its crocodile tears campaign up another notch. It’s all about lies and spin. At the beginning of this month we wrote about what Microsoft was doing Nigeria and now we find the “rich uncles from Redmond” summoning the ‘piracy’ propaganda yet again. It’s all about ICT, which Microsoft wants to absolutely dominate in Nigeria under the guise of “defense” (from so-called ‘pirates’, a phantom enemy).
Microsoft, one of the world’s largest software providers has launched a new operating system (Windows 7), saying Nigeria is one of the major countries of the world where the level of piracy is a threat to the Information Communication Technology (ICT) sector.
Meanwhile we learn that Microsoft has just captured ICT in the United Arab Emirates. Further east in Abu Dhabi we find the following new reports:
The Abu Dhabi Systems and Information Centre, the ICT arm of the Abu Dhabi government, has signed a master business and services agreement agreement with Microsoft Gulf to enable the emirate’s local government affiliates to purchase Microsoft licenses and engage Microsoft Consultancy Services.
The MBSA agreement together with a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Microsoft Gulf were signed by H.E. Rashed Lahej Al Mansoori, Director General, ADSIC and Charbel Fakhoury, Regional General Manager, Microsoft Gulf and witnessed by Linda Zecher, Global Vice President, for Microsoft’s Public Sector business.
This marks a continuation of policies which Bill Gates secured in its trip to Dubai, leading to yet another MoU — a contractual scam that we wrote about and sometimes properly explained in:
The deal comes just five months after ACS and Novell Inc.’s Provo office formed a strategic alliance in which ACS took over computer operations. Nearly 100 Novell employees went to work for ACS.
The following article provides some more background information about Novell and ACS.
Office equipment supplier Xerox Corporation is to buy Dallas based data center management and business process outsourcing firm Affiliated Computer Services in a cash and stock transaction valued at $6.4 billion.
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In June this year Affiliated Computer Services said it would take over the running of Novell’s data center operations in Provo, Utah as part of a global services deal which will see the outsourcer take Novell’s data center products to market. Under the IT outsourcing arrangement, around 150 Novell data center staff will move to ACS, including the infrastructure and application development and maintenance services operations. ACS will also take over Novell’s global SAP roll out by providing consulting and applications development and system integration services in a $135 million, five-year contract.
Summary: Moblin is a step forward for GNU/Linux, but software patents do not appear to be off the table
YESTERDAY we wrote about Moblin eschewing Silverlight, noting that it was (sometimes still is) based on SUSE [1, 2]. There is a complex history to it, which continues to present day.
As we explained two days ago, Intel is not a friend of GNU/Linux, but it must keep up with the competition, so Linux is not a platform that Intel can afford to ignore. Intel and Novell are quite close, as this very recent video of Guy Lunardi shows. Likewise, Intel is close to Microsoft, whose operating system it is constantly promoting these days; there is even collusion with Microsoft [1, 2, 3].
As we repeatedly showed, Dell had mysteriously joined the Microsoft/Novell deal very shortly before Microsoft’s patent attack began [1, 2]. Now we find this in The Inquirer:
Dell and Microsoft back Moblin
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During her keynote at the show, Intel corporate vice president and general manager of Software and Services Group Renee James was joined by Ian Ellison-Taylor, Microsoft’s general manager for Client Platforms and Tools to announce the collaboration.
This partnership is expected to help developers write applications once and have them run across Windows and Moblin devices, expanding the reach of Silverlight from the desktop and into mobile consumer electronic devices.
“We see this as a clear extension of our current efforts with Novell where we are building an open source implementation of Silverlight called Moonlight that is targeted at the broad range of Linux–based PCs,” said Ellison-Taylor.
Heise has some more details and Turbolinux, which also joined Microsoft’s Linux racket, is mentioned in variousplaces. This does not necessarily suggest that there is consistency here when it comes to “Linux tax” in Moblin.
Throughout its lifetime, Moblin swapped desktop environments and distributions several times. After the Ubuntu shuffle came OpenSUSE, but also Fedora was put at the centre about a year ago, before Moblin was passed over to the Linux Foundation. According to this, Fedora is still at the centre, which is somewhat baffling and the information may be out of date.
Atom-based devices can run Windows but also Moblin, an open source custom Fedora-based Linux operating system targeted at netbooks, handhelds, smart phones and car computers. Intel started the Moblin project in 2007 then passed it over to the Linux Foundation.
If Moblin becomes a serious player in open source mobile operating systems, it will contribute to a great deal of fragmentation. Android is just gaining its stride, and heading beyond just smartphones, while Google is likely to put big marketing dollars behind Chrome OS. It’s already announced that it is talking to hardware partners.
At IDF today, the first edition of Moblin Linux for smartphones were demonstrated. They could lead to Intel chip-based smartphones.
Intel has expanded the scope of Linux-based Moblin by porting the OS from netbooks to mobile devices and desktops, where it could compete with Microsoft’s Windows OS.
In its latest filing, Microsoft told its investors that it worried about Hewlett-Packard and Intel turning to Windows alternatives, namely GNU/Linux in this case. It sure looks like it is happening. So to characterise Intel’s work on Moblin as beneficial to Microsoft would be absurd. But that’s not the point; the question is, will Intel bend GNU/Linux in the direction of becoming Microsoft-taxed, just like SUSE? This is hopefully preventable as that would spell a defeat to the freedom of Free software in the mass market. █
“The strength of this platform [C#] and the innovation around it is the key element in preventing commodization by Linux, our installed base and Network Appliance vendors.”
The significant news comes through this press release from Tuxera. For those who do not know, “Tuxera was the first to implement reliable NTFS read/write support on Linux, Mac OS X, and other systems.”
On August 26, Tuxera Ltd anounced it has signed an intellectual-property (IP) licensing agreement with Microsoft; joined Microsoft’s exFAT driver-licensing program; and joined the Microsoft Interop Vendor Alliance. Tuxera, based in Helsinki, Finland, was founded by the NTFS-3G open-source project.
Tuxera has announced an “extensive co-operation” with Microsoft. Tuxera, the company formed by the NTFS-3G developers, has signed an Intellectual Property Agreement with Microsoft and joined its exFAT Programme.
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Tuxera’s CTO, Szabolcs Szakacsits said he looked forward to working with OEM customers saying “Adding exFAT into our existing NTFS product portfolio is the logical next step”. The exFAT driver is aimed at OEM manufacturers and will be available for Linux first, but no details of any open source plans for exFAT were disclosed.
Tuxera seems to be a very small proprietary software company, based on its Web site. NTFS-3G was considered open source however and the agreement around it is secret.
Tuxera, the Finnish company behind open-source file system NTFS-3G, has announced a confidential intellectual-property deal with Microsoft, under which it will be permitted to carry on distributing its open-source NTFS product and to offer new exFAT drivers.
Tuxera is based in Finland, where software patents are invalid. What were they thinking?
Could Microsoft have rewarded Tuxera in some way in order to rattle the NTFS case? We shall soon find out, hopefully. The secrecy around this deal may be part of the FUD factor that’s desirable to Microsoft. █
