08.28.08
Posted in Microsoft, GNU/Linux, Novell, Mono, Patents, Fraud, Kernel, Samsung at 6:33 am by Roy Schestowitz
This Web site is called “Boycott Novell”, but we actually address a problem that has mushroomed since the Novell/Microsoft deal was signed. Novell is merely a first betrayal among a bunch.
Samsung is one among several Asian companies that manufacture/design electronics and also signed a patent deal with Microsoft. Samsung’s deal explicitly involved Linux. Among other issues with Samsung, there’s Mono on devices and outright corruption [1, 2, 3, 4]. But here is another new reason: [credit to an anonymous reader who pointed this out]
I just came from a presentation purported to be about a stackable filesystem from Samsung called SynergyFS. The talk was more of a hardware sales pitch with no technical details, and technology that “can’t be released under the GPL because if we give it to you you can give it to anyone else.”
Samsung definitely doesn’t get Linux and Open Source and deserves to remain on the “to avoid” list when purchasing new hardware.
Just last night, the following new cross-licensing deal was also signed by Nikon, which like several others in the far east, is going to pay Microsoft for the ‘privilege’ to make use of some knowledge. The consumer if paying addtional ‘tax’ to Microsoft when a camera, for example, is purchased.
Microsoft and Nikon have signed a cross-licensing deal that gives each company access to the other’s patents.
The deal is one of a growing list from Microsoft, which has been seeking to establish the heft and significance of its intellectual property effort.
Detailed terms of the Nikon deal weren’t disclosed, but the companies said Nikon is compensating Microsoft through the alliance.
So, Microsoft’s new business model is intellectual monopolies now that sales are dropping. Fortunately, Nikon does not appear like a GNU/Linux-oriented company, so this deal may be almost harmless to Free software.
This new deal is particularly interesting in light of this news from earlier this month.
Nikon exits Microsoft photo contest
Nikon has withdrawn its support for a photography contest hosted by computer giant Microsoft after a row over potential copyright infringement.
[…]
In a statement issued to Pro Imaging, Microsoft said: ‘We have since taken steps to obtain the rights to use every image to be featured in the subsequent stages of the Iconic Britain competition.’
Shortly afterwards came this:
Microsoft has always been rather strident on the topic of copyright infringement, as you may have noticed, which makes tale of its “Iconic Britain” photo contest all the more astonishing.
The competition was designed as part of the marketing campaign around Windows Live Image Search, with Nikon as the prize partner. Unlike most photographic competitions, which tend to involve photographers submitting their own work (crazy, I know), this one invited entrants to search for other people’s online pictures, then submit the ones they felt were iconic British stuff, in the hope of winning a Nikon camera. As for the photographers themselves, they get nada–not even a link-back to their site or a credit of their name. photos
Spotted the problem yet?
Only a fortnight ago, Tim Bray complained about Nikon, accusing them of lock-in servitude for Microsoft.
So, if I want to watch the Olympics online, I need to install Microsoft Silverlight. And if I’m interested in good-looking new high-end compact cameras, I’m super-interested in the new Nikon P6000; which writes a RAW format that can only be read by Microsoft WIC, available only on Windows.
Open, non-proprietary equivalents to all of these, which do not constrain your customers’ choice of platform, are widely available.
Nikon is a competent camera company. The IOC is a competent sports impresario. The Chinese government is a competent authoritarian dictatorship. Pity they’re all so fucking stupid about technology.
What exactly is going on between Microsoft and Nikon? Clues might emerge in the future, hopefully. Companies don’t have friends; they have interests. It’s not unusual for companies to liaise for creation of lock-in. █
Permalink
Send this to a friend 
View as PDF
08.27.08
Posted in Microsoft, GNU/Linux, Novell, OSDL, Interview, Kernel at 6:33 pm by Roy Schestowitz
Early in the day we wrote about Novell’s and the Linux Foundation’s cold attitude towards Free software. Based on the latest from the Linux Foundation, Ron Hovsepian and Jim Zemlin will be be doing another public chat where the deal with Microsoft is unlikely to be brought up and betrayal of the developers even discussed [1, 2, 3, 4, 5].
Here is just one of the few articles covering it (so far).
The free, invitation-only event will feature an address by Novell CEO Ron Hovsepian and a question-and-answer session with Zemlin.
Here is the press release:
– An address from Novell CEO Ron Hovsepian, which will include a Q&A
with the Linux Foundation’s executive director Jim Zemlin.
They give a lot of exposure to Novell in that event. How come?
Are the Foundation’s members aware of Microsoft’s proximity to Novell? What might be the impact Monofestation and other C# manifestations a lá Vala? The following new article about .NET mentions Novell’s role as though it’s part of Microsoft’s movement for development domination.
In addition to .NET, there are other implementations of CIL—the two most well known by Microsoft and Novell. Microsoft’s implementation is an open source offering for the purposes of research and education called the Shared Source Common Language Infrastructure (SSCLI). The Novell offering is called Mono, which is also open source.
This will make Novell a more attractive takeover target. And speaking of which, also based on the latest news, Microsoft puts resources in Utah. Again.
Microsoft has become an investor in Move Networks, a growing Utah company that streams television on the Internet for entities such as the NFL and Disney.
There are some more details about it here. Microsoft was recently seen expanding in Fargo, hiring 5 employees for its new base there. Prelude to a strategic move, a coincidence, or none of the above? Microsoft is already toying with Novell, so it’s probably a matter of preparation and just a matter of time. █
Permalink
Send this to a friend View as PDF
07.26.08
Posted in Law, SCO, Novell, UNIX, Courtroom, SUN, IBM, Kernel at 4:15 pm by Roy Schestowitz
Steven continues his fascinating series of analyses which revolve around UNIX and its so-called “imaginary property” (IP). The latest of Novell/SCO was mentioned 3 times a week or so ago [1, 2, 3]. This is a catchup post.
Here is another explanation of why Novell — and by association Microsoft — becomes more of a threat to ‘Open’ Solaris.
Here’s how it works: Novell owns Unix’s IP (intellectual property). SCO sold Unix’s IP to Sun. Sun then included some Unix IP into Solaris. Finally, Sun open sourced Solaris as OpenSolaris. Sounds like trouble, doesn’t it?
While Sun’s Chief Open Source Officer Simon Phipps described the line of logic above as “sheer speculation,” others see a major potential legal problem for Sun. However, analysts, lawyers and open source leaders also agreed that it’s unlikely Novell would ever choose to make trouble for Sun. Novell, however, has not commented on its intentions despite several attempts to get the Linux company’s take on the issue.
Sun Microsystems is no great foe of GNU/Linux, but then again, as the now-promoted Simon Phipps put it, Novell’s leadership does not keep up. His take was joined (or followed) by others at Sun [1, 2]. There’s some friction between Novell and Sun, which gets along best with Canonical.
Elsewhere in the news, there was plenty of coverage of SCO’s need for money that it has already spent. From ECT:
SCO will have to shell out more than $2 million to Novell for licensing Unix to Sun Microsystems, a Utah judge has ruled. The dispute in part hinged on whether Novell still owned pre-1995 copyrights to Unix, which it sold that year to SCO. The judge last year ruled that Novell in fact did own them.
[…]
A SCO company statement indicated the company will appeal Kimball’s ruling from last year and said it continues to disagree with the premise of the May trial. At that proceeding, SCO contended the case should have gone to trial on its original claims that Novell was interfering with its ownership of Unix.
“We are pleased, however, that the court agreed that Novell is not entitled to anywhere near the more than $20 million dollars it was seeking,” the SCO statement said.
Linux Journal had a go at it too.
The ruling, which comes nearly three months after the four-day bench trial concluded, was a mix of victories and defeats for each party, though Novell clearly came out ahead. The big victory was the court’s determination that SCO lacked authority to enter into its agreement with Sun Microsystems, and as a result, owes Novell just over $2.5 million (plus interest).
For a sense of completeness (because you only live once to witness the end of SCO):
Here is one which is more of an Op-Ed:
The SCO Group got bad news in court last week. Not an unusual event for this company, but I wish the need for such events would finally go away for good.
I’ve now been writing about SCO for five years — how time does fly when you have someone to despise. In my first column about SCO’s decision go into the lawsuit business rather than having to do all the hard work of making a product that someone might want to buy, I thought that someone would just buy the slime off. I was wrong — I guess there is some truth to the punch line of the old joke that “there are just some things a lawyer won’t do.” I guess IBM’s lawyers could not stomach the idea of rewarding such repulsive behavior.
There was also a semi-formal statement from Novell:
Novell issues statement on licensing fee dispute with SCO — Novell Inc. on Monday issued a statement about last week’s federal ruling in which the SCO Group was ordered to make $2.6 million in restitution to the Waltham, Mass. software developer.
That restitution amount is significantly lower than the $19.9 million Novell sought for what it called “unjust enrichment” by SCO because it collected royalty payments on Unix licenses from Sun Microsystems and other Linux users of Unix software without Novell’s approval and allegedly refused to account for them.
U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball, in a ruling issued last Wednesday, found SCO “breached its fiduciary duties” to Novell by failing to account for the revenues SCO received from Sun for rights to opensource its own version of Unix products called OpenSolaris. That Unix product is based on the SVRX code, which Kimball on Aug. 10 determined Novell to be the owner.
“We think this is great news for Novell and for the open source community. We’re very pleased this ruling reaffirms and strengthens Novell’s ownership of the UNIX SVRX copyrights and vindicates Novell’s continuing efforts to protect the open source community from SCO’s claims,” Novell said in Monday’s statement.
“This ruling underlines the court’s earlier decision, issued in August 2007, which found that Novell, not SCO, owns the copyrights to UNIX SVRX code, and further undermines SCO’s claims against Linux users,” according to the statement. “We see a pattern in the legal judgments made in this case: Decision after decision makes it clearer and clearer that SCO’s legal claims against Linux have no merit.”
The statement is also available from here. █
Permalink
Send this to a friend View as PDF
06.30.08
Posted in FSF, Microsoft, GNU/Linux, GPL, Kernel, ISO at 4:55 pm by Roy Schestowitz
S
everal days ago, Free Software Daily had shared an old video of Torvalds. The video was from 2001.
A reader who has watched the computing industry for decades wrote to share his opinion and interpretation of this apparent divide between Linus Torvalds and the Free Software movement. It was highlighted by some.
“Thank you for the reference to the Linus Torvalds talk about “the origins of Linux.” It was interesting. I’m not sure that I exactly agree with your characterisation of Torvalds’ view of the GPL.
“I do not understand why he says that “the GPL is a horrible document.” He does not elaborate, but if I try to read between the lines, I would say that it is because he is apolitical and he sees the GPL as a political document. He truly is a technical person who is just doing something that he finds to be fun and challenging. He is not doing it for political reasons at all.
“I don’t necessarily see this as a reason to distrust him. He does also say that he went for the GPL as a licence because he saw that there is a big problem with the BSD licence in that it allows contributors to make changes and keep them as secrets. He is fundamentally on the same side as Richard Stallman, whether he knows it or not. Perhaps one difference between them is that he didn’t quite have Stallman’s experience with proprietary software which upset him enough to start the GNU project and the FSF. In political terms, one would say that they have an uneasy alliance and it’s in the FSF’s best interest to use Linux for their purposes.
“As for the future, who knows? Perhaps if locked down hardware which only allows certain “approved” operating systems becomes the norm, it would upset Torvalds enough to take a strong stand.”
It is true that he vehemently dislikes DRM because it is a form of restriction that is never effective. He does, on the other hand, defend Tivoization — moreover saying that he likes it. He recently said in an interview that he was glad to see DRM fading away (at least for music distribution).
The introduction/popularisation of Digital ‘Manners’, ‘Trusted’ Computing and other not-so-polite and not-so-trusted technologies might — just might — change his mind.
“It’s truly understandable that, being an engineer, he can ignore the problem and let his colleagues deal with this burden.”When Torvalds set up a PC for his wife, and it was quite recently in fact, he chose Fedora. He reported bugs and some people in OS News spotted and elaborated on this. This might tell that he values Free software (somewhere deep inside).
Based on interviews, he seems fearful of distraction that comes from ‘politics’ and emotional attachment. Software patents opened up his eyes and some months ago he said he was worried about them. It’s truly understandable that, being an engineer, he can ignore the problem and let his colleagues deal with this burden.
Our reader later concluded by saying: “My gut feeling is that Torvalds is honest and that’s the fundamental reason which makes me want to trust him. I have less respect for someone who just goes with the flow and says whatever is convenient at the time. At least, he doesn’t concern himself with being “popular” or “unpopular.””
It was roughly a week ago that you could also found out what Richard Stallman thinks about Microsoft. Some people have argued that he does not pay enough attention to Microsoft but looks at a broader pictures instead.
“Microsoft suborned the One Laptop Per Child project, converting it into a massive Windows training campaign. The project says it is giving the purchasing governments ‘more choice’ by supporting Windows as well as GNU/Linux, but those governments will tend to choose Windows by default. In some countries, people will campaign to prevent that. If these campaigns succeed, the OLPC project may yet make a positive contribution to the world. Otherwise, it will do overall harm.”
Second, talking about the standards fight in which Microsoft succeeded in having its OOXML format accepted as an open standard in rivalry to the ODF format favored by OpenOffice.org and other free office applications, Stallman notes that “Microsoft corrupted many members of ISO in order to win approval for its phony ‘open’ document format, OOXML. This was so governments that keep their documents in a Microsoft-only format can pretend that they are using ‘open standards.’ The government of South Africa has filed an appeal against the decision, citing the irregularities in the process.”
Despite all of this, ISO continues to deny the obvious.
The main post of this post has been to show that Torvalds’ and Stallman’s thinking is not so different after all. They just happen to focus on different areas/angles of the very same thing, trying to resolve the technical and ‘political’ issues, respectively. Both sides ought to respect one another. They’ll both win that way. █
“When I do this, some people think that it’s because I want my ego to be fed, right? Of course, I’m not asking you to call it “Stallmanix”!”
–Richard Stallman
Permalink
Send this to a friend View as PDF
06.20.08
Posted in Red Hat, Microsoft, Windows, Novell, Ubuntu, Virtualization, FOSS, Xen, Kernel at 10:54 am by Roy Schestowitz
Actions speak louder than words
Thanks to this headsup, we finally know that not only Ubuntu has steered away from the dependency on Microsoft’s partner Citrix. Red Hat is doing something similar now.
Ever since XenSource had been acquired we have repeatedly argued that it’s yet another example of Microsoft (plus ecosystem) ’stealing’ free open source projects from GNU/Linux.
Here is an explanation of what Red Hat has just done.
Red Hat Takes Hypervisor Control Back From Citrix
Red Hat announced two important moves this week; open sourcing of Red Hat Network Satellite, and their own virtualization hypervisor oVirt. Open sourcing RHN Satellite is fundamentally about showing the industry Red Hat is still the keeper of the open source flame but the real strategic move is the development of oVirt. oVirt is built upon Kernel Virtual Mode, or KVM, which is virtualization built right into the Linux operating system, and has been maturing over the past two years. Until now Red Hat’s virtualization strategy has been built around open source Xen, much like other players such as Oracle and Sun Microsystems.
When Citrix took over Xen, it created a sticky situation for vendors depending on the Xen open source software for their virtualization strategies.
Considering the fact that GNU/Linux was neglected and Novell favoured after this acquisition, it’s not hard to see why Red Hat goes solo. █
Permalink
Send this to a friend View as PDF
06.18.08
Posted in Microsoft, Windows, SLES/SLED, Standard, Virtualization, Xen, Kernel at 1:24 am by Roy Schestowitz
There’s GNU/Linux and then there’s Novell’s own ’special’ Linux
Whatever the future of computing has in store, it becomes abundantly clear that virtualisation is an integral part of it, particularly on the server side. Microsoft and Novell have been preparing for this by building an alliance that quite systematically excludes all their rivals, including Novell’s Linux ’siblings’. Remember: “Novell and Microsoft” typically come before “Novell and GNU/Linux”.
In a new article from ZDNet Asia, Novell sheds some light on virtualisation, characterising it as the way forward.
Developments in virtualization technology are helping to assuage fear and uncertainty around the implementation of such projects, so users have less to risk now, says a Novell executive.
You are reminded that Xen is, in some ways, a captive of Microsoft as of late. The following new article from Microsoft’s pet press reminds us again how Novell leaves its siblings out in the cold.
Currently, SuSE Linux Enterprise is the only Xen hypervisor on which Microsoft will provide full support for Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2003 running as a virtual guest.
We wrote about this very recently. Now comes some similar news about VMWare. Here is the opening paragraph from the press release:
Novell(R) announced today it is collaborating with VMware to improve Linux performance in VMware environments by incorporating support for the VMware Virtual Machine Interface (VMI) into the SUSE(R) Linux Enterprise kernel. Demonstrating their commitment to provide open interoperability and optimization for virtualized environments, the companies have worked together to optimize SUSE Linux Enterprise for the VMware platform.
What is “SUSE(R) Linux Enterprise kernel”?
Some articles were later published to explain this in human-readable and hype-free terms. Here it is the first such article.
Waltham, Mass.-based Novell Inc. has added support for VMware Inc.’s Virtual Machine Interface (VMI) to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 10 SP2, which Novell says will make SUSE run faster on VMware’s ESX hypervisor.
Here is another article.
Novell Monday released updates to its Suse Linux kernel designed to make the operating system more efficient when running on top of VMware environments.
The upgrade to the Suse Linux Enterprise kernel lets it take advantage of paravirtualization techniques so it runs more efficiently as a guest operating system. Specifically, Novell has built in support for VMware’s Virtual Machine Interface (VMI).”The patch to the kernel provides increased performance and better interoperability,” says Carlos Montero-Luque, vice president of product management for open platform solutions at Novell.
What is this “Suse Linux kernel”? What ever happen to upstreaming?
This conundrum is further complicated by the following new report. Citrix (Xen) and Microsoft are working against standards again (or an attempt to establish some consistency). They are working against VMWare.
VMI was a proposed standard put forth by VMware in 2005 as a means of presenting paravirtualized guests to their hypervisors, with the idea that a single binary version of an operating system would be able to run on raw iron or VMI-compliant hypervisors. So far, it has not become the standard that VMware had hoped, but that is because the Xen hypervisor project, run by Citrix Systems these days, and Hyper-V, a Xen-alike hypervisor created by Microsoft Windows Server 2008, have their own ways of doing things.
You can hopefully see what is happening here. For further analysis see [1, 2]. █
Permalink
Send this to a friend View as PDF
06.12.08
Posted in Microsoft, DRM, GNU/Linux, Novell, Patents, GPL, Fraud, Kernel at 2:00 pm by Roy Schestowitz
“Play by the rules or pick up those toys and go home”
Microsoft’s understanding of open source consistently mirrors its own ambitions — ones that define it to be hybrid and vendor-dependent. Here is the latest example.
It’s official: Microsoft will not accept any external code contributions to its planned Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR), which will run Microsoft’s new scripting languages for the web and Silverlight content on .NET
Microsoft will, though, continue to accept source-code contributions to its slowly emerging implementation of Ruby for .NET, IronRuby. Contributions are helping to build IronRuby and shepherd the language towards the first-full release.
[…]
The reason Microsoft decided to leave the DLR closed, despite taking contributions to the languages that will run inside it, is to protect itself from unwanted licenses and IP claims.
If you look more closely you’ll find that what Microsoft wants is free labour — moreover labour that results in developers and end-user getting dependent on proprietary and pricey programs.
“Give us code, lots of code, more code…”
“But it’s ours. We control it.”
That’s not open source (Free software aside). The story behind Microsoft’s grab of Ruby with .NET is noteworthy also, particularly in light of those Silverlight-bound ‘extensions’. It’s mainly about control. Remember what Microsoft said just days ago and this quick interpretation also: “So could you ask, what is this collaborative development, this new syntagm [Microsoft’s] Mr. Matusow is using all over the place? Well, buried deep towards the very end of his post,”
Sadly enough, Nokia too seems far from committed. It is adamant about enforcing software patents, DRM and other consumer-hostile mechanisms. Bruce Pernes has just responded to that latest lecture from Ari Jaaksi.
…perhaps the community has some education for Jaaksi and Nokia. Jaaksi hosted me at a Nokia dinner in 2000, he’s a nice guy and has been interested in Linux for a long time. But Nokia’s barking up the wrong tree this time, because Nokia can do everything it wants with DRM, IPR, and SIM locks without bothering the Linux developers about it - and both Nokia and the Linux developers will like it better that way. It’s surprising that Nokia doesn’t understand that at this late date.
Here is what Pamela Jones said about this: “Do what you like, but if you wish to use the code, you obey the license. If not, please write your own. Personally, I won’t use DRM’d products. I can wait. I understand Hollywood is a problem for you, but until they wake up and realize they are destroying their old business model by scrupulously avoiding any new ones, instead trying to graft the old one onto a new age, I’ll just avoid their offerings. I can live without Hollywood, I find, when it’s something this vital. I understand that puts Nokia in a tough spot, because they want to do deals with Hollywood. Go ahead and do deals, but leave me out. And please don’t use FOSS code until you are ready to play by the rules. I just won’t buy or use any Nokia phones if you break the rules. I think that’s fair.”
Why can’t these 2 companies simply abide by the rules and spirit of the licences/establishments they embrace (OSI in the former case and GPL in the latter)? Novell is no exception. Novell too happens to be among those sinners. It uses GNU/Linux to sell proprietary software (”mixed source”) and it signs software patent deals. █
Permalink
Send this to a friend View as PDF
05.16.08
Posted in Red Hat, Microsoft, Windows, GNU/Linux, Novell, FUD, Deception, Ubuntu, Virtualization, Xen, Kernel, xandros at 9:45 pm by Roy Schestowitz
Novell makes Ballnux, not GNU/Linux (free software) anymore
Techtarget.com may be delivering this news a little too late, but it incorporates some quotes which the publisher sought from Red Hat, Xandros, Novell and some so-called ‘analyst’. The new article further illustrates the fact that Novell-type deals were more of an anti-Red Hat alliance (or an alliance against anyone who ‘dares’ not to pay Microsoft for GNU/Linux, including Ubuntu which is fairly dominant on desktops). You might find this article repetitive in the sense that it talks about news that’s over a fortnight old, but mind the following:
Novell extends interoperability with Microsoft
“This is just another good thing for Novell,” which has already increased its market share 9% due to the Microsoft relationship, said Chris Wolf, an analyst at Midvale, Utah-based Burton Group. “This gives Novell an increased opportunity for licenses and greater penetration into Microsoft space … and will hurt Red Hat. The results speak for themselves.”
[…]
Another Microsoft partner poised to benefit from the interoperability pact is Xandros, Inc.
Be careful of what the Burton Group utters. We previously wrote about this group in [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36] because it’s seen serving Microsoft’s agenda on a regular basis.
“Novell buys its own stock, moves jobs abroad (cheaper labour), and expects layoffs this year.”In this case, Burton’s message to you is that the Novell/Microsoft deal is grear news and that you, as a customer, will be better off choosing ‘Microsoft-approved’ distributions. Don’t be fooled though because Novell does pretty badly. Novell buys its own stock, moves jobs abroad (cheaper labour), and expects layoffs this year.
What we find in Novell-type deals is actually related and similar to what is already happening in virtualisation. Not only has the Burton Group recently spread FUD about VMWare, but others do this too. Xen has, to an extent, become “the Novell of the hypervisors space”. Yes, it’s very much the same with Xen, which became a tool for Microsoft to fight VMWare and all those ‘nasty’ Linux distributors that don’t pay Microsoft. Ubuntu can’t be blamed for moving over to KVM, which is said to be superior and more elegant anyway. More recently it was an IBM virtualisation expert who said this, but the flamewars continue.
As further evidence that Xen is now indirectly controlled by Microsoft’s needs (just like Novell), consider this from the news:
XenSource, now part of Citrix Systems, has been the mainstay of the leading open source hypervisor, Xen. Unlike other open source companies, it has always shown an affinity for working with Microsoft.
[….]
Before being acquired by Citrix, XenSource already had a technology partnership with Microsoft to help it prep Windows Longhorn, now Windows Server 2008, to run Linux in Microsoft-generated VMs. There were subtleties to doing that well, and Microsoft needed a knowledgeable partner. Xen needed to be a super performer on future Windows systems to compete against VMware. Thus an alliance was built.
Citrix, long a close Microsoft partner, acquired XenSource last August for $500 million. By September, Microsoft and the XenSource team inside Citrix were saying they’d use the same VM file format, Microsoft’s Virtual Hard Disk. You can’t get closer to your virtualization allies than that.
As we stressed on some occasions before [1, 2, 3, 4, 5], Microsoft brought Xen over to Redmond and later put former Microsoft employees in it (at least a General Manager). That’s how it seems anyway. If you have been following Microsoft’s proxy fight against Yahoo, then you’ll probably have an idea of how such brutal things work. Deform and subvert, until forced obedience is achieved. █
“There are people who don’t like capitalism, and people who don’t like PCs. But there’s no-one who likes the PC who doesn’t like Microsoft.”
–Bill Gates
Permalink
Send this to a friend View as PDF
« 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.