08.04.08
Posted in Microsoft, Novell, Opensuse, SLES/SLED, Debian, OpenOffice at 4:06 pm by Roy Schestowitz
Getting the boot
This didn’t even take long [1, 2]. It was actually package management that broke the camel’s back (among other things) and Béranger has just decided to move to a solid Debian.
Next, I was trying to find newer Oo.org builds made for openSUSE 11.0. The openSUSE build service is a mess, anyone can have a repository there, and it was easy to find two repositories for Oo.org 2.99.* (3.0 betas) that were simply broken (not just RPM hell, but simply hell). Eventually, adding OpenOffice.org:/UNSTABLE/openSUSE_11.0/ provided me with a working 2.99.25-12 build, but to no avail (and it was ugly, and it had missing toolbar icons, and it was missing the integration with the GNOME open/save dialog, and it couldn’t load the Antidote RX add-on).
So I can’t use a vital Oo.org add-on under openSUSE 11.0. I had to dump Novell’s jewel. Oh well…
This may seem like unnecessary criticism of OpenSUSE, so moving to a more curious item, watch this.
MSI’s Web site also finally acknowledges a version of Wind carrying a Novell’s Suse Linux OS instead of Windows XP. People searching for the mini-laptop will have to turn to page two on the Web page to have a look. Unfortunately, it appears the Wind-Linux will come with a 3-cell battery instead of the 6-cell batteries on the devices coming out in August.
Previously, the Linux version of Wind was not on the company’s Web site.
So, here one can find some bogus or semi-hearted support where GNU/Linux is considered a Microsoft asset and is therefore being taxed (for mythical software patents). Furthermore, after Microsoft’s considerable discounts and tying up of key vendors, there’s little less than just a hidden option that is not very appealing, hardware-wise. Acer too offers inferior specs (yet a lower price too) for the Linpus-based Aspires. Is this a triumph? Microsoft’s market distortion must be combated, not accepted or even tolerated. Novell remains a big part of this problem. █
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07.23.08
Posted in Microsoft, GNU/Linux, Novell, Debian, Mono, Patents, Ubuntu at 7:04 am by Roy Schestowitz
Linux: Powered by Microsoft?!?!
A
month ago we showed Fedora crossing out Moonlight and moving Tomboy (with Mono) out of the way, at least as far as the Live CD is concerned. So does Debian on the face of it. Watch this:
* tomboy: very nice app, but controversial since it brings the
full Mono stack, so we don’t make it part of
gnome-desktop-environment.
The background of this is that gnome/gnome-desktop-environment metapackages tend to syncronize with upstream GNOME (and this is why they dragged tomboy in when installed). However, tasksel (i.e. Debian Installer) didn’t include tomboy in the default setup.
The necessary harmonisation between GNOME metapackages and tasksel turned out to be in favour of removing tomboy from metapackages instead of adding it to tasksel, because Mono is widely seen as “controversial” (see above).
This makes it much less likely that tomboy becomes part of the default install in the future. It’s important because Debian is one of the most influenctial Free software distributions available. Even Ubuntu is based on it and Ubuntu seems to be deep in Mono with the approval of Mark Shuttleworth. Could his mind be changed?
Getting a technical dependency out of the way is different from availability and habitual dependence. There are some other concerns about people getting ‘addicted’ to specific Mono applications because distributors encourage their use through inclusion and/or preinstallation.
Just the other day in Miguel de Icaza’s blog:
My friend Mirco Bauer has been maintaining and coordinating the Mono packaging for Debian for many years.
It now turns out that Tomboy has found its way into Firefox in the form of an addon.
Tomfox is a very cool Firefox extension. With Tomfox, you can directly create Tomboy notes in Firefox.
Whenever the question arise about Mono, Jeff Waugh and others attack the messenger. in fact, Sam Varghese has just complained about these attacks, which may only mean that he was on the right topic all along.
I’ve grown quite used to people from the GNOME Foundation indulging in this kind of attack. I’ve lost count of the number of times the foundation’s media spokesman Jeff Waugh has launched personal attacks on me; GNOME co-founder Miguel de Icaza followed suit a few months back.
What are they so afraid of? The only thing Mono critics are afraid of are the known impact of .NET patents and the gradual move of GNOME/GTK to the #. Watch what Beranger has just had to say:
Let’s revisit the GTK+ 3.0 issue, this time based on what Miguel de Icaza had to say about it. Indeed, «there is no actual plan for which features will be added, and when these features will be added», but I don’t feel de Icaza should be let have a say in the planning of the future GTK+ 3.0 and GNOME 3.0 — or else it will become “Mono Reloaded” within months!
[…]
Looking for some stupid Microsoft patents on a “System and method for activity monitoring and reporting in a computer network”? Here you are: Patent #6519639, Patent #6631412, Patent #7337223, Application #10/629,954.
One of the other dilemmas in the Debian project is also multimedia codecs, so the following new article is worth seeing.
Over 100 million DVD players have shipped in the US, and 100s of millions of mp3 players have shipped, yet Linux distributions like Fedora, Ubuntu and Opensuse don’t include software to create files that these devices can play. The reason is because implementations of the MPEG-2 and MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3 (MP3) are considered patented so the Linux Distributors are avoiding a risk of patent infringement lawsuits. I went searching for answers to basic questions like what are all the patents claimed for MP3 and when do the claimed MPEG-2 patents expire and I did not find these on the web, so I decided to create this summary of the patent status of MPEG-1, H.261 and MPEG-2. I’m not a lawyer and I’m not an expert on video or audio compression so there are probably some mistakes in this, but its better than anything I’ve found on the internet. This article is US specific, but the patent databases listed usually have other countries patents listed as well.
As stressed several times before, it’s not the patent(s) itself that needs to be considered in isolation; it’s the holder of the patent too. Other than Microsoft (and SCO maybe), no other company is aggressive enough to attack the work of volunteers with a FUD campaign, let alone legal action (with the possibility of proxies like Intellectual Ventures of Acacia, which host Microsoft employees [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11]). █
“Pearly Gates and Em-Ballmer
One promises you heaven and the other prepares you for the grave.”
–Ray Noorda, Novell
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06.28.08
Posted in GNU/Linux, SLES/SLED, Debian, Servers, HP, Mail, xandros at 6:15 am by Roy Schestowitz
In what could be seen characterised as a battle between Microsoft partners, there’s this comparison between the ASUS Eee (with Xandros) and SLED on the HP Mini-Note.
The biggest complaints I hear about the Eee PC are that the keyboard is too small and there’s not enough screen real estate. Even the new 8.9 inch only offers 1024×600 screen res. Some people also complain that the Eee PC runs a knobbled version of Xandros Linux. A Mini-Note running SuSE Linux Enterprise should address these issues.
Read the rest of this entry »
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06.26.08
Posted in GNU/Linux, Debian, Rumour, xandros at 3:25 am by Roy Schestowitz
To stay Microsoft-independent, ASUS should boot Debian, give Xandros the boot
The following curious observation is made by Linux Loops.
This message on the Debian Eee PC mailing list reveals that Asus and Debian are working together, or at least planning to, on software for the Eee PC. This, presumably, means that future versions of the Eee PC could run a modified version of Debian, rather than a modified version of Xandros, as they currently do.
Wonderful news if there’s substance to it. █
Related video in: How Much Did Mr. Typaldos, Mr. Carmony, and Mr. Hovsepian Get Paid to Stomp on Linux? (Updated)
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05.31.08
Posted in Red Hat, Microsoft, GNU/Linux, Novell, Debian, Ubuntu, Java, Virtualization, Xen at 12:31 pm by Roy Schestowitz
Another hypervisor ‘geek party’ to which only Novell is invited
Those who have read previous posts about virtualisation might already know that there’s a worrisome pattern wherein Novell’s (and Microsoft’s) rivals get excluded from so-called ‘interoperability’ benefits [1, 2, 3]. This is no accident. The companies work in isolation, provided their collective portfolios and royalties. It is a way of keeping players like Red Hat, Debian and Ubuntu out of the loop and thus pressure them out of the datacentre. It’s brutal and unfair.
Showing this is easier not by composing long rants, but by pointing to brand-new articles. Here are some bits with highlights in red, where appropriate.
Novell says its “SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 Service Pack 2,” or SP2, is the only Xen-based solution of its kind and includes support for Microsoft for Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2003 users.
Exclusive, eh? Coincidence? Here is another.
Novell’s Service Pack 2 for SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 released yesterday has one especially hot item in its bag of assorted goodies: the Xen 3.2 virtualization engine. Since both SUSE as well as Windows Server 2003 and 2008 run natively (and fully supported by Microsoft) on Xen 3.2, Novell customers can run both SUSE and Windows virtual guests on the platform with no loss in performance — or so Novell promises.
Bernard Golden, a Linux author and the CEO of Navica Inc. consulting, said cross-platform virtualization could be convenient for a Novell shop that wants to test or deploy a Windows application virtually on SUSE machines prior to a full-scale rollout without tying up a lot of Windows servers.
Some times ago, Citrix insisted that it paid so much money mainly for the Xen brand and less for the technology. Now it pulls a fast one, or as the article below puts it, it “pull[s] the rug from under people[’s feet].”
If you’ve been watching Citrix lately, you have probably seen the Xen branding and the product push with the XenApp, XenDesktop, and XenServer product lines. Good marketing to be sure, capitalizing on the Xen name in the virtualization space.
[…]
So really, it doesn’t appear as if a whole lot is changing or that the new policy is pulling the rug from under people. What do you think about it? Are you creating a Xen based product? Are you upset that you can’t call it “XenSomething”? Or are you ok with calling it “Something for Xen”?
Some go as far as saying that Xen’s future is not bright, but would that truly be loss? We already have KVM, which is more elegant.
While Citrix Systems’ Xen’s ubiquity may help the technology earn a legacy as the invisible hypervisor, it may also prove the most challenging next step for IT administrators and developers who want to find or develop software that leverages, supports or extends the Xen hypervisor.
Sadly, the article above also puts down and dismisses Java, but not everyone agrees.
SpringSource CEO: ‘The Future of Enterprise Java is Clear and Bright’
[…]
“Organizations now have a choice that reduces the complexity associated with legacy Java EE servers,” said SpringSource CEO Rod Johnson yesterday as his company attempted to redefine the application server market by releasing the SpringSource Application Platform, an enterprise Java application server that Johnson contends provides “a dramatically simpler alternative to legacy application servers and redefines the way in which Java applications are deployed and run.”
We recently shared another article from he same source and it suggested that Java is indeed set to thrive in the clouds. Of course, that’s not what Mono developers want you to believe. They are desperate to change people’s perceptions. e.g. by heralding very prematurely a demise of Java. Sounds familiar? We present a precious find below. █
“Ideally, use of the competing technology becomes associated with mental deficiency, as in, “he believes in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and OS/2.” Just keep rubbing it in, via the press, analysts, newsgroups, whatever. Make the complete failure of the competition’s technology part of the mythology of the computer industry. We want to place selection pressure on those companies and individuals that show a genetic weakness for competitors’ technologies, to make the industry increasingly resistant to such unhealthy strains, over time.”
–Microsoft, internal document [PDF]
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05.30.08
Posted in Microsoft, GNU/Linux, Novell, SLES/SLED, FUD, Debian, GPL, Asia, Interview at 2:16 pm by Roy Schestowitz
“It’s nice for you to admit your guys are running scared [of Free software]. They should be.”
–The sum of Microsoft’s fears (yesterday)
Remember Susan Hauser, who ’stole’ the voices of customers and tried to ‘override’ their views? We will never forget this fear mongering technique. She did not impress much in the audiocast from last October and neither did Justin Steinman and the other Novell/Microsoft salespersons. To a great degree, these marketing folks are responsible for Novell’s troubles.
“Microsoft needs trusted open source Web sited (not Redmond’s Fort 25) to offer them room to speak out.”OStatic is an “open source” site, but there has always been something funny about it (not just posts advocating Windows and Mac software). Other than the fact that they publicly dismissed our views on Mono, it’s part of the same network that at leas once in the past AstroTurfed for Microsoft (and got caught). It also employs OpenSUSE’s community manager, who receives a salary from Novell.
At the moment, there are more reasons for cautiousness. OStatic has just interviewed 4 people from Microsoft, which as regular readers would know, is just trying to hijack and ruin “Open Source”. In order to achieve this, Microsoft needs trusted open source Web sited (not Redmond’s Fort 25) to offer them room to speak out. It’s the path to people’s minds — especially people on the ‘other side of the fence’ (never preach to the cenverted).
Anyway, let’s interpret Susan Hauser’s response to OStatic. It’s heavily filled with toxic words.
OStatic: What goals do you have for Microsoft’s interoperability alliance with Novell, and what’s behind the goal of converting Linux users in the Chinese market to SUSE Linux Enterprise?
Susan Hauser, General Manager of Strategic Partnerships and Licensing at Microsoft:
“We entered into this agreement because based on customer feedback, we believed that there was an opportunity to grow our business by working together and to show leadership in the industry and the community in the following ways.”
Translation: We arranged a protection racket with Novell, paid it loads of money and then pretended that customers had certain requirements in order to justify our dirty little transaction.
[Note: Matt Asay and others have already confirmed that customers required none of the above (e.g. bogus ‘protection’). The only one perpetuating and spreading this lie is Susan Hauser, who stole the voice of customers (c/f reference at the top) to tell lies ‘on their behalf’, and behind their backs too.]
“Customers want their vendors to embrace interoperability. Microsoft and Novell collaborated – and continue to collaborate – on technical solutions for their shared customers to address critical interoperability technologies such as virtualization and web services. The sales of SUSE Linux support certificates and feedback we’ve received from those customers affirms that choice.”
Translation: Customers needed Microsoft to finally get its act together and stop the technical sabotage, or at least total its disregard for open standards. However, by liaising with Novell, we at Microsoft realised that we can carry on maintaining our proprietary protocols and then build secret binary bridges that only those who pay us ‘protection money’ will receive access to. The patent royalties we’re receive from customer affirm the fact that we got them screwed big time. They pay Microsoft for GNU/Linux.
“Customers want their vendors to manage IP issues for them. Both companies recognize that Microsoft and Novell intellectual property is relevant to their respective products and will be increasingly relevant over time. This agreement has provided customers with confidence these issues have been addressed. We have provided customers with IP Peace of mind. In addition, by having reciprocal respect for IP, we are able to collaborate technically and deliver technical collaboration solutions that benefit our customers.”
Translation: Customers don’t care about interoperability. They just want to cover imaginary debt for imaginary things. Both companies realise that they can build a collective and mutual intellectual monopoly and, as time goes by, they can maginalise competition because antitrust regulators look the other way. The agreement showed that we can sleep better at night, knowing that a corrupted system will permit this to happen. We provided foolish customers with a piece of paper which they never asked for and had them brainwashed to the point of believing that this paperwork was needed. Of course, without pieces of papers, bits of binary code magically cease to work. Programming is impossible without paper (no, not punch cards).
“Microsoft wants to continue reaching out to the open source community. Microsoft has begun participation in some important OSS projects and the non-compensated OSS community is being encouraged to experiment and grow through a broad covenant not-to-sue that benefits individual developers.”
Translation: To quote my boss Steve Ballmer, we need to “f**cking kill Linux.” In order to do so, we try to infiltrate FOSS project and convince them that they have a debt to Microsoft and that they need to pay up in order to ensure Microsoft does not take them and their customers to court. Additionally, they need to ditch that “cancer” called Linux and port their programs to Windows as soon as possible, using “open source” programs solutions like Visual Studio.
“There is a growing recognition among customers – in many countries including China - that there are significant costs to the business by running an operating system that is not supported by a commercial vendor. These costs include the staff time to do manual patches and bug fixes versus leveraging the seamless updates that are provided by Novell for SUSE Linux Enterprise as part of a support contract.”
Translation: China respects intellectual monopolies and ownership of mathematics. Additionally, no GNU/Linux distribution other than Novell ever receives patches. Users have to write their own. They have to keep track of Bugzilla and watchever and figure out how to fix every individual flaw. It’s really, really hard.
“In addition, companies are realizing that with limited budgets, it makes much more sense to use valuable IT staff on strategic projects that support the overall business than on manual tasks that are easily automated when a support contract is purchased.”
Translation: Novell is cheaper than something like Debian. And let’s not forget that if you don’t pay for your copy of GNU/Linux, then automation becomes impossible.
This hopefully sums up the spin doctoring which can be seen above. Microsoft is very good at something — it’s the mastery of FUD tactics and intimidation. It’s just a dirty old routine.
In other OStatic ‘news’, you can clearly see this pattern of FUD (or non-deliberate disinformation), which was once accidentally echoed also in the 451 Group’s blog. The GPL has already won; maybe not in the US (never been tested there to the end), but planet Earth is not the same thing as the United States of America. Why oh why are people still trying to suggest that the GPL is weak, invalid or untested? █
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05.16.08
Posted in GNU/Linux, Novell, Deals, Debian, GPL, Ubuntu, Mail, xandros, Linspire at 10:54 pm by Roy Schestowitz
Linspire
To be very clear and probably a little blunt, Linspire’s main distinguisher is CNR. At some stage last year, Matt Hartly even advised the company the have the entire business just centrered around CNR and rely on others, as it typically has (Debian or Ubuntu), to produce the GNU/Linux distribution. Linspire adds customisation, proprietary bits and CNR to make what we know as Linspire (or Freespire, which isn’t as free as the same implies). It’s pretty much the same with Xandros.
It’s unsurprising to find that Linspire’s presence is pretty much tied to CNR. Those two are now inseparable. Over at Linux.com you’ll find this article about Linspire using its ‘bread and butter’, CNR which is now free software, to approach Mint and Ubuntu. They all share the same codebase, but only Linspire will have great trouble with the GPLv3, due to its foolish deal with Microsoft.
Linspire, the San Diego, Calif.-based Linux distributor, is continuing to build up its CNR (Click-N-Run) software installation system with partnerships with Ubuntu parent Canonical and the Ubuntu-based Linux Mint distribution. Linspire recently announced that its beta CNR service now supports the Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron release and Linux Mint versions 4.0 and 5.
Here is a new review of CNR.
CNR or Click and Run is a free one-click software delivery service designed to standardize the process and eliminate the complexity of finding, installing and managing Linux software for the most popular desktop Linux distributions according to the Linspire folks.
[…]
CNR achieves what it strives to be, easy installation of programs, especially for newbies. What is great about CNR is that it integrates with the distro’s package manager and thus make making life much easier unlike other projects like Autopackage. However it is not as easy and great to use like Add/Remove in Ubuntu and is not as vast as the official Ubuntu repositories and many programs are not available but is not far behind. It is still in the beta-development phase so I expect more innovations in the future. And as I said before, it is great for purchasing and installing proprietary programs.
However most users of Ubuntu do not need CNR as such but it is good to have options as well.
Another non-announcement comes from Linspire about Cedega in CNR:
Cedega enables Linux gamers to play Windows titles on their Linux OS. Triple-A video games such as Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Battlefield 2142, World of WarCraft, Madden 2007, Civilization IV and many more, can be played on Linux using Cedega. This allows an easy, out-of-the-box gaming experience.
As we pointed out last week, eWeek doesn’t miss a beat when it comes to Xandros or Linspire. Almost immediately Henry Kingman covered this non-story. Bear in mind that Desktop Linux is owned by the bankrupt Ziff Davis, which hardly publishes anything these days, especially after SJVN changed directions (he publishes in Computer World, Linux.com, CIO.com, his personal Web site and IEEE) and Rick Lehrbaum made a career change.
Anyway, from the article:
CNR can also be used to install “over 900 free and commercial software games,” Linspire claims, in genres that span from classic arcade games, to action games, adventure games, puzzles, and boardgames.
In other words, that press release could brag about hundreds of other games. So, is it an article or a commercial? It’s hard to tell. Maybe somewhere in-between. On the brighter side of things, Linspire seems to be a source of inspiration to some.
Version 2.0 of the software will offer the iPhone SDK and the App store, which is similar to Linspire’s online store CNR.com which allows you to install software directly from the web, and can be used both by iPhone and iTouch users.
Xandros
Last week we saw Xandros and Viyya Technologies getting together and this week it’s an obscure (and probably small) company from India that says it joined hands with Xandros.
IIRA Technologies pioneer in the field of open source join hands with Xandros Inc. for basic OS and mail servers. After working on varied Open Source platform for long 8(eight) years, we found Xandros is most scalable, user friendly and network savvy. Xandros is the only OS having facility to communicate with almost all of the applications irrespective of platforms whether proprietary or open source.
The only other noteworthy news from Xandros (other than Asutek’s Eee PC coverage) would be Commtouch and Scalix collaborating on E-mail security technologies.
Commtouch and Scalix Collaboration Brings Real Time Messaging Security to Linux-based E-mail Servers — New Scalix Release Incorporates Commtouch Anti-Spam and Zero-Hour Virus Outbreak Protection Technologies
Here is the press release.
Scalix, a Linux e-mail, calendaring and messaging company and Commtouch® (NASDAQ:CTCH) today announced the signing of an OEM licensing agreement to bring real time Scalix AntiSpam and Scalix ZeroHour AntiVirus protection to the Scalix messaging platform.
It would only be fair to admit that I resent Xandros and Linspire. With Novell it’s a more complicated relationship because I used to love the company and even advocated its products. Then came the deal with Microsoft. It felt like a divorce, or at least a cruel betrayal. Even Groklaw seems to maintain its love-hate relationship with Novell. █
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05.14.08
Posted in Windows, GNU/Linux, Debian, Security at 12:49 am by Roy Schestowitz
A flaw which was found in Debian has stirred up a lot of discussion about security. People tend to forget where the real problem lies however, so here is just a quick clarification. I’ve personally accumulated literally hundreds of references about this, but here are a couple of more recent ones that provide the gist of it all:
1. Bots rule in cyberspace
USA TODAY REPORTS that on an average day, 40 per cent of the 800 million computers connected to the Internet are bots used to send out spam, viruses and to mine for sensitive personal data.
2. Botnets Running Rampant
How much money is being stolen by cybercriminals? No one knows, and no one even knows how to go about coming up with that number, IronPort’s Peterson said.
The reason for posting this off-topic story is actually a bit of input from one of our readers, who talks about Microsoft’s back door-happy policy. Looking at this latest article, which in essence shows Microsoft and its buddies at the Partner [sic] Group saving face, he paraphrases: “Microsoft Windows does not need a back door. Crackers, malware code writers and forensic investigators need not worry because Microsoft Windows is so insecure there is no need for a back door.” He also points out this recent Slashdot discussion, adding:
“Crackers, malware code writers and forensic investigators need not worry because Microsoft Windows is so insecure there is no need for a back door.”“It reminds me of the laptops captured near the beginning of Bush’s ongoing wars. The initial boast was that it was insignificant effort to crack the systems because they were running Microsoft Windows. Subsequent boasts steered clear of that and focused on the data captured.
“If you have trouble from the police, then you have bigger worries, with or without data. For the rest of us, there is an important warning:
“Police are never early adopters and usually adopt tools and methods only after they are in widespread use. Those that are stupid enough to default to Microsoft Windows and the compound that by connecting to the net, are asking for trouble from the various criminals and criminal organizations that made cracking Microsoft Windows popular enough for the police to pick up on it.”
It is worth highlighting some recent stories about police departments that have moved or are moving to GNU/Linux and/or Free software. Examples include:
There are many more such examples.
Other stories of interest:
The impact of poor security on the police is only a small part of a colossal problem. Our reader later adds: “It’s even more severe for large companies. Corporate espionage is multi-billion dollar business and can make or break products and even product lines. It still gets under reported, perhaps in part to Bill Gates’ lobbying.”
As the recent article from USA Today showed, 40% of all PCs are zombies. Sarcastically, asks the reader: “40% of all PC’s or 40% of Microsoft Windows PCs?” It’s quite a rhetorical question.
The Partner [sic] Group was mentioned at the start because it helps Microsoft extinguish the fire, so to speak, whenever that’s required. It achieves this by messing about with people’s perception. We’ve already shown in the past some lies from Jim Allchin about Vista security, fueled by the Partner Group, Rob Enderle and the usual suspects who cite one another for pseudo peer-review and validation. They orchestrate a blitz in vapourware-like fashion. The Microsoft-obedient press has for quite some tried not to incite public panic by unleashing the real figures and Mr. Geer even lost his job for ‘daring’ to suggest that “in zombies we trust.” In vapourware and deception need we trust instead? █
“In the face of strong competition, Evangelism’s focus may shift immediately to the next version of the same technology, however. Indeed, Phase 1 (Evangelism Starts) for version x+1 may start as soon as this Final Release of version X.”
–Microsoft, internal document [PDF]
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« Previous entries ·
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.