05.08.08
Posted in SCO, Novell, Mono, UNIX, SUN, Java, OpenOffice at 9:52 am by Roy Schestowitz
No-one’s killing anyone, yet
Recently, a few sources of tension between Novell and Sun were identified [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. Examples revolve around Novell’s ridicule of OpenSolaris, exploitation (arguably so) of OpenOffice.org, and neglect of Java in favour of support for its biggest rival.
A couple of days ago, as we only briefly mentioned in one of the links digests, SJVN raised an interesting speculation about whether or not Novell can attack OpenSolaris using its ownership of UNIX. We recently discussed the possibility of Novell ‘pulling an SCO’, based on something that Novell said last week. SJVN may have taken it a little too far, but people carry on talking about his piece. In ZDNet UK, for example, you find this: Could Novell kill OpenSolaris?
Sun’s just opened its developer conference with the long-delayed launch of OpenSolaris, the open source version of its Solaris operating system. But after all this time, will it live?
It’s taken Sun since 2005 to turn OpenSolaris into a proper release, which Sun intends will stand alongside Solaris as a community operating system - like Fedora is to Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
Bill Beebe jumps to Sun’s rescue and gives a reasonable explanation in defense of OpenSolaris, which he has been happily reviewing. He also comments about Novell.
Considering how Novell professed at the time that that they had no plans to sue anyone over Unix, you have to wonder how they’ll square that position with the current comments coming out of the SCO vs. Novell trial that just finished. They can’t have it both ways. Especially when it looks like the only reason they might consider revoking Sun’s agreement is as a blunt anti-competitive business weapon against a formidable competitor. You know, behaving like Microsoft.
These discussions and speculations might be worth returning to in the future. Below are some more articles that readers may find handy. █
Related new articles:
Enterprise Unix Roundup: OpenSolaris, Farm Team or Big League?
To make it big in the enterprise, a platform must be on par with the Unix operating systems, the current meme says. And — interestingly — in this world view, OpenSolaris is not in the majors.
Does OpenSolaris Matter?
I’m not sure.
Sun first announced OpenSolaris in 2005 but they keep finding ways to announce ‘first releases’. Yesterday was one such release.
OpenSolaris Wants To Compete With Linux - Oh Yeah?
Yesterday Sun Microsystems officially released OpenSolaris and suggested that it’s going to go head-to-head with Linux as a Desktop Operating System. Solarisx86 is nothing new and has been around about as long as Linux but it is historically proprietary and closed source. It was also very hardware-finicky and performance was slothlike.
OpenSolaris Just Wants to be Free
“Glassfish is dual licensed — CDDL and GPL. And as you’re aware, MySQL is GPL(2), as is the Java (runtime) platform itself. So three very big components of what’d be a complete OpenSolaris platform are available to the broader GPL community.
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05.07.08
Posted in Microsoft, Finance, Mono, GPL, FOSS, Database at 10:43 pm by Roy Schestowitz
It was probably a little hasty to say that MySQL remains open source (or Free software, with the GPL). That’s what many headlines state, but not so fast! As Matt Asay quickly pointed out, there is more to this story.
The core will always be 100 percent open source. The periphery…will not. Or might not. It depends.
Novell, which considers itself to be a “mixed -source” company, brings similar questions to mind. It already combines a lot of proprietary software for its clients. Then , consider some of the licensing issues that accompany its Microsoft deal. What about software patents? This possibility of dual-licensing no longer seems so far fetched. Will Novell take a similar route with SUSE Ballnux? Is it not doing this already? Here you have an analysis of dual-licensing as a tool for weakening or revoking the GPL. It’s worth noting because Novell betrayed the GPL more than once before.
Remember, less than 3 months later SUN announced MySQL acquisition.
This paints a summary of what could happen to a DL company even if nobody’s initial commitment is questioned.
* DL Company dies: what happens to the IP/trademarks/licenses?
* DL Company undergoes a change of control: what happens to the community?
* DL company sells/gives its open source interest to a third party…
Shouldn’t we have some sort of open source prenuptial agreement applying to DL companies and their communities?
In this particular context, think about control of projects like Mono or Moonlight and remember the lessons taken from Zimbra [1, 2]. When I corresponded with Marten a couple a weeks ago I was given the impression that they are still exploring possibilities of monetising MySQL a little more effectively.
Novell wants money, but trying to control GNU/Linux as a whole is not the way to go. It’s selfish and it’s harmful. There are other means, except support contracts, for extracting revenue from Free software, as Richard Stallman pointed out a week ago. Here is one new example of this:
Finally, do not expect anyone to do anything for free. Most groups wish to improve on their projects, but having “enough time” is always an issue. Be open to offering money, time, or resources in order to get your problem solved. Realize that for what you offer there may be a down side as well for the project.
Free hardware still has to be installed and properly setup. Money may be an issue because of foreign currency exchanges or because it complicates the individuals taxes. Offering people can be good, but realize that then the project will have to take the burden of training and answering questions.
Having good table manners is the key to working with open source projects.
This is also explained by Savio, who interprets and breaks down Marten’s explanation of the situation:
I’ve been thinking about this statement from Sun/MySQL’s Marten Mickos:
“There’s a difference between organizations that have more time than money and organizations that have more money than time.”
I coming to realize that OSS users split into three, not two, categories:
* A] An organization that has more time than money
* B] An organization that has more money than time but is used to getting what they need for free and is comfortable enough with OSS to rely on their own skills
* C] An organization that has more money than time
Making money from Free (libre) software needn’t involve making some of it proprietary. It totally beats the purpose and cause. It makes it non-Free software. Mindsets must evolve. Consider this good post from Matt Mullenweg for inspiration. █
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Posted in Microsoft, GNU/Linux, Novell, Mono, UNIX, Ubuntu, SUN at 7:54 am by Roy Schestowitz
“I’ve heard from Novell sales representatives that Microsoft sales executives have started calling the Suse Linux Enterprise Server coupons “royalty payments”"
–Matt Asay, April 21st, 2008
The headline is just a game of words and nothing personal, but mind the following take on OpenSolaris, courtesy of OpenSUSE’s community manager:
Ultimately, I can’t help but think that the problem that Sun is trying to solve with OpenSolaris is not a technical one, but one of control. Specifically, the company is not ready to cede control over its operating system to the community at large, and so it is instead trying to build a community around OpenSolaris rather than joining the larger Linux effort.
Look who’s talking.
Novell too tries to control GNU/Linux using Mono and copyrights, as well as an exclusionary software patent deal that covers Mono, among other things.
Unless you’re from Novell (or one of Novell’s paying customers), avoid Mono at all costs. We’ve been through many other reasons for this before.
Herein we find yet another reason (among more recent ones [1, 2, 3, 4]) for Sun to keep its distance from Novell/SUSE and hopefully maintain a good relationship with companies like Canonical. Novell is with Microsoft now, working on its digital island to gain greater control over components of GNU/Linux distributions and offer exclusive coupons (Microsoft openly calls these “patent royalties” now) for these crucial components. █
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05.06.08
Posted in Red Hat, Microsoft, GNU/Linux, Novell, Mono, Ubuntu, SUN, Java, FOSS at 1:04 am by Roy Schestowitz
“Novell wants you to know that selling its soul to Steve Ballmer was a really good idea.”
–The Register, 2008
A reader has just contacted us, pointing to the following forgotten article.
Microsoft is in the process of applying for a wide-ranging patent that covers a variety of functions related to its .Net initiative.
If approved as is, the patent would cover application programming interfaces (APIs) that allow actions related to accessing the network, handling Extensible Markup Language (XML), and managing data from multiple sources. APIs are the hooks in software that allow applications to work with another system.
Microsoft declined to elaborate on its plans for the patent, but intellectual property attorneys said that if it’s granted, the company could dictate how, or whether, developers of software and devices can link to the .Net initiative.
The patent can be found here. “That was 2003,” said the reader, then adding: “It’s especially pernicious when you notice that underneath the smoke and noise about ‘linux’ Novell signs onto and commits to spreading .Net patents at the expense of Java.” This issue was covered here recently.
Our readers continues: “The claim that .Net is a multiplatform standard is rendered false: .NET developers are further locked into a single vendor. Java, in contrast, is fully open source and has the developer community.”
Mono users — especially those who are also developers — love to rave about .NET like it was the second coming, but only yesterday we find articles such as this one from OSNews.
In part one, Bright heavily criticised the Win32 API, saying it was filled with legacy stuff and hindered by 15 year old design decisions. In part two he explains that as an answer to the complaints, Microsoft introduced the .Net framework, which was supposed to replace the Win32 API as the API of choice for Windows; in fact, the next release of Windows, Longhorn, would make heavy use of .Net. “It could have provided salvation,” Bright writes.
But it didn’t. According to Bright, .Net was fine technically, with a “sound” virtual machine, “reasonable” performance, and an “adequate” language (C#), but the library - “used for such diverse tasks as writing files, reading data from databases, sending information over a network, parsing XML, or creating a GUI” - the library is “extremely bad”. Bright explains that this is due to the target audience of .Net.
Knowing all about and bearing these deficiencies in mind, why would anyone ignore Java? Novell buys (pays for) Mono protection from Microsoft although at the same time Java is free (gratis and libre). In fact, last week’s announcement from Sun about the inclusion of Java in GNU/Linux distributions included the prominent mention of Fedora and Ubuntu, along with their parents (companies). Conspicuously missing was Novell/SUSE. Who is Novell kidding?
Meanwhile, also from the news, Sun bends backwards to make GNU/Linux developers and users happy(ier), unlike Microsoft which welcomes SCO staff (more on that very shortly). Here is what Sun has had to say:
Sun also had to cope with unrealistic expectations about how much time it would take to offer Java via open source under the GNU General Public License Version 2.0, a move made in November 2006.
“There was the expectation that it would be immediately carried into the universe,” Green said. But it has taken time to free up the bits and pieces of Java to make it available via open source, Green acknowledged.
Now, the Ubuntu Linux distribution includes OpenJDK, featuring open source Java, Green noted. This move announced last week means the open-sourcing is complete, he said.
If Novell refuses to help the GPL-licensed Java defeat .NET, then Novell will once again demonstrate its role as nothing but a Microsoft vassal. It has already done a lot of work which helped Microsoft cause damage to OpenDocument format.
Does anyone still believe that Novell is a pro-Free software company? As opposed to a company that uses Linux (with the lenient and permissive Linux philosophy) to promote Microsoft’s agenda? █
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05.02.08
Posted in Microsoft, Finance, Windows, GNU/Linux, Novell, Steve Ballmer, Deception, Mono, FOSS at 11:19 am by Roy Schestowitz
Image from Wikimedia
“Novell congratulates itself for snogging Microsoft” –The Register
Enthusiastic involvement and engagement with Microsoft by OpenSUSE’s lead was discussed here critically a couple of days back, especially due to the negative impacts of the Novell/Microsoft deal on OpenSUSE volunteers — the very same people that the community manager is supposed to invite and attract.
LinuxToday has some interesting comments about that too. Novell is not particularly popular among the many readers over there, at least based on the comments that are typically posted. The editors feel similarly. Here is one about Novell’s trust in Microsoft:
They still do/update “Get the Facts” with blatant lies and misinformation. They still play tricks to get their way, ISO-MSOOXML. They still strong arm PC OEMs as in forcing them to take the Vista pill cram it down consumers throats. They still oppose Linux anywhere it gains traction as in the Classmate PC deal where they came in and paid to have Windows installed after the laptops arrived with Linux. They have been going after the OLPC customers and they are purchasing customers for Silverlight because it is a lockin platform. No Jane, Moonlight is a joke and will never be fully compatible.
So why in the world would anyone think that Microsoft would play in the open source game? I’m sorry but only a moron would think they could get Microsoft to play along.
Microlinux Foundation?!?!?
As a timely reminder of the potentially negative impact of Novell inside the Linux Foundation [1, 2] consider this other headsup.
Novell has a seat on the board of the Linux Foundation, the foundation sponsoring Linus so that he’d be free to work on the Linux kernel. Yup, the same Novell from the ominous Microsoft-Nowell agreement related to Linux patenting. Do board seats have any odor?
It would not be impossible for Microsoft to at least attempt to join as well, arguing that it already runs some GNU/Linux servers. Remember Microsoft’s persistent attempts to join the Open Solutions Alliance, despite repeated rejections? Its former head has just jumped ship to another company.
Novell and Microsoft Busy Together While Adobe Battles Moonlight and Silverpatent [sic]
As already discussed in a previous post, Novell and Microsoft could take a little lesson from what Adobe did. Miguel’s blame-throwing does not help, especially if he continues in the same company with the same projects that bring benefit to Microsoft.
Adobe opens up Flash for the mobile world. A lesson for Microsoft
[…]
No side-deals to ensure a dearth of competition [link to Novell-type deal]. Maybe Microsoft could take a page from Adobe’s playbook. That is, if it wants to be relevant on the web.
Elephant in a Room of Gentlemen
In a separate new post it is now shown that either hypocrisy or ignorance leads to Microsoft disrespect for Free software.
Could it be, Mr. Ballmer, that you are classically overlooking a major opportunity for Microsoft because you simply don’t understand the open-source opportunity? Now would be a good time for a touch of humility and a smidgeon of good counsel from those around you.
As I told Matt Asay several times before, Steve Ballmer is a lost cause. But at least there are those mere chances of the man retiring or being pressured out the door. Among some recent articles of interest (starting with the most recent) consider:
1. If Ballmer bolts, who will lead Microsoft?
“Hey! Ho! Time for Ballmer to go,” a Wired.com headline proclaimed on April 29.
My rejoinder: “Hell, no. There are no Softies ready for a promo.”
2. Microsoft Should Fire Steve Ballmer, or Hire SuperNanny. Or Both.
What should happen is this: Ballmer should re-canvass Yahoo’s largest shareholders and ask what firm price in cash would get them on-board, and then offer it. No more futzing through middlemen bankers, just ask and deliver. I doubt this will happen — Ballmer is caught up among internal politics, his own increasing impotence, and childish Yahoo intransigence — so he is stuck and looking more and like someone who keeps threatening to ground his kids, but never does. As we have all learned from watching SuperNanny, the trouble is rarely with the kids; it’s almost always the nitwit parents.
Such is the case here, so my recipe for action? Fire Ballmer. Think how quickly things would change at Microsoft, and in this deal. And then hire SuperNanny and film some Microsoft meetings. I’d watch.
3. Steve Ballmer’s Nine Year Retirement Plan
Bill Gates is retiring from Microsoft this year and the exec he left in charge, Steve Ballmer, is ready to leave in nine years.
4. Does Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer need an intervention?
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer may need an intervention before this obsession with Yahoo–which is really about an obsession over Google–spins out of control.
5. Is the Sleeping Giant Finally Waking Up, or Just Rolling Over?
Like Nero fiddling while Rome burned, Ballmer seems to be preoccupied with GOOG while MSFT melts down - or at least while the first embers, which had already been apparent for years, now threaten to turn into something much more serious. Hence the recent ill-advised and fiscally irresponsible YHOO bid.
6. Microsoft FY08Q3 Results
[Microsoft employee:] Mr. Ballmer engaged in some good bluster Wednesday, saying that Microsoft could just walk away from the deal. Please, please, walk on by. I haven’t talked to every employee at Microsoft, of course, but everyone that I’ve talked to believes this is a bad idea. And that’s not hand wringing.
7. Is Microsoft’s Ballmer a bad dealmaker?
The bid for Yahoo that helped sink the market value of Microsoft (MSFT) by more than $20 billion in one day in early February is one of the latest in a string of acquisitions and major investment stakes Microsoft has initiated since CEO Steve Ballmer took over in 2000 that have been punished by the stock market as misjudgments.
“Some learn more quickly than others. It doesn’t look like Mr. Ballmer is learning that quickly,” says UCLA Anderson School of Management professor Richard Roll, lead author of a study that analyzed 11 years of merger and acquisition announcements by 2,589 CEOs at 1,740 U.S. companies.
8. UCLA Professor: Microsoft CEO Ballmer a ‘hubris-infected serial acquirer’ with dismal track record
9. Bear Stearns’s Advice To Microsoft
Co-founder Bill Gates can’t be thrilled with watching Ballmer drain the company’s cash. He didn’t get so rich by buying at the top of the market.
10. Will Deal-Making Chiefs Ever Learn? Maybe.
Mr. Ballmer was considered a “hubris-infected” chief under the study’s definition, because of Microsoft’s value-destroying deal to invest $100 million in Vertical Net in 2000. He followed up with deals for Intertainer and BroadBand Office, which were also followed by below-market returns for shareholders.
In all, Mr. Ballmer made 15 deals between 2000 and 2002, with an average market-adjusted shareholder return of negative 4.59 percent.
11. Mergers of Corporate Giants Not Likely to Benefit Consumers
“There is little if any evidence that increased corporate size in already-large national and international firms produces greater technological innovation,” writes Elizabeth Sanders, Professor of Government at Cornell University. “To the contrary, it probably leads to less, given lower competitive pressures, and the starving of research in debt-burdened companies.”
12. Can Ballmer pilot Microsoft through a changed tech course?
Can Ballmer steer Microsoft out of the roadblocks?
The highly competitive Ballmer, you might say, is the man who cried “nice.” And like the boy who cried wolf, no one believed him. The software giant’s attempt to make nice with much of the developer community by opening up its APIs for key products was greeted with a jaundiced eye by regulators at the powerful European Commission.
However sincere Microsoft’s stated change of heart may be, it is becoming clearer and clearer that Microsoft — which knows it has to change — is still struggling to find a fresher path.
What’s a poor CEO to do?
Now that Bill Gates has effectively left the building, Ballmer is free to transform Microsoft, a job made all the tougher by the enormous reservoir of mistrust the company has engendered over the years.
Case in point: the open APIs. Microsoft will give its competitors free access to the application programming interfaces and protocols it uses to ensure interoperability between its own products, a very significant change in business practices.
13. Microsoft Profit Drops; Forecast May Miss Estimates
The world’s biggest software maker said sales of Windows for PCs sank 24 percent and revenue from its online advertising unit came in at the low end of its projections. Microsoft’s report contrasted with positive comments from chipmaker Intel Corp. and computer company International Business Machines Corp.
[…]
Microsoft declined $1.60 to $30.20 in extended trading after closing at $31.80 at 4 p.m. New York time on the Nasdaq Stock Market. The stock has fallen 11 percent this year.
14. Microsoft says to borrow money for Yahoo deal
Microsoft Corp said on Monday it may borrow money for the first time in its history to fund a portion of its $44.6 billion unsolicited offer for Yahoo Inc.
15. Microsoft’s DreamSpark – What a Giveaway
The rest of the $44.6bn (£22.3bn) deal would be financed with an undisclosed amount of credit.
What that means is that it must squeeze as much money as it can from its operations to fund that debt and still pay dividends to shareholders, who will be looking for some payback from the Yahoo takeover. Giving away software is the last thing it would want to do in these circumstances, and the DreamSpark announcement shows just how worried it is about the future.
This hopefully shed some light on Microsoft’s situation. █
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05.01.08
Posted in Red Hat, Microsoft, GNU/Linux, Novell, Mono at 10:22 am by Roy Schestowitz
There he goes. From the home of Mono, having jumped through some hoops, he lands right inside Red Hat.
Matt Asay posted about upcoming CEO changes to be announced in a few weeks time. Well, it’s been a few weeks time, and although not a new CEO, Red Hat has landed a seasoned open source executive - Charlie Martin.
Let us hope the heritage stays away. Fedora already has some encounters with Novell’s (and Microsoft’s intellectual monopoly) Mono [1, 2]. █
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Posted in Microsoft, GNU/Linux, Mono, Patents, Standard, OpenDocument, Europe, Java, Open XML, Ecma, Fraud, ISO at 9:26 am by Roy Schestowitz
“37 letters with exactly the same words. Some of the senders didn’t even care to remove the ‘Type company name here’ text.
Simular letters has been circulating in Denmark as an e-mail from the Danish MD Jørgen Bardenfleth to customers and business partners.
I call it fraud, cheating and disgusting. If I wasn’t anti-Microsoft before, I am now. Disgusting !”
–Leif Lodahl
To so many experts who have watched Microsoft lying to the press (as well as to everybody else in the OOXML process) about the level of corruption well… this has been rather tough. The truth is known and well documented though; its availability and reach remains a barrier. When Microsoft controls the press, it can, to a greater or lesser extent, control the minds too.
The following short new post explains just why we are merely witnessing a repeating pattern.
We watched MS kill off great software. We watched them promise new features to keep people from moving to other software, then never delivering those features. We watched them lie in the press and on the stand. Many of the “haters” on the internet were developers for companies that MS knifed, often using unethical means.
Remember “The Slog”? Whining about Microsoft would be pointless if only the abuse actually stopped. However, as things stand, the company appears more brutal than ever before, probably because it has difficulties and fears in mind (long-term in particular).
Glancing very quickly at the positives reported yesterday, here we have a post about ODF development using real programming languages.
In case you’re a developer and are looking for libraries simplifying ODF development with technologies like Perl, Python, Java, PHP, Ruby, etc., you should check out this summary of ODF tools and libraries.
Also encouraging is the following expected next step. Java is coming to ‘boxed’ GNU/Linux distributions.
Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ: JAVA), Canonical Ltd. and Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), today announced the inclusion of OpenJDK-based (http://openjdk.java.net) implementations in Fedora 9 and Ubuntu 8.04 Long Term Support (LTS) Server and Desktop editions, furthering the promise of Sun’s open source Java technology initiative.
Will Java still be demoted, dismissed and suppressed by those who believe that an ECMA standard (with RAND) means that developers are secured from Microsoft’s wrath and that development with .NET lets Free software have control on the Web? █
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04.29.08
Posted in Microsoft, GNU/Linux, Novell, Deception, Mono, FOSS at 10:21 pm by Roy Schestowitz
“[If I ask you who is Microsoft’s biggest competitor now, who would it be?] Open…Linux. I don’t want to say open source. Linux, certainly have to go with that.”
–Steve Ballmer, February 28th, 2008
We saw this coming a long time ago, but now arrive the specifics. Microsoft’s former media partner, MS(NBC), which was criticised before due to biased reporting that favours the paymaster, turns out to be that who shall do the ‘dirty job’. It’s not alone by the way. The Microsoft-faithful Ina Friend from CNET has just come up with another very misleading headline, suggesting that “the Democrats vote for Microsoft,” referring simply to the use of Silverlight in some new Web site. The media will continue to betray and deceive, but let’s look at the technical problems at hand and not be distracted by dishonesty.
“XAML seems like another software patent trap which is most likely based on the RAND+OSP routine.”As we mentioned recently, it’s very important for Microsoft to disrupt — if not altogether eliminate — the open fabric of the Web in order to hurt many rivals, from software companies to Web technologies and search engines. It even makes some subtle lies to deceive about the nature and purpose of its technology. Novell helps Microsoft a lot in that respect.
Watch the comments in the new article at ZDNet, with the usual fallacy that “Silverlight is available for OS X & Linux” (it’s not!) and the boring Microsoft apologism that disguises this as “competition is good” (reminisce an insane case of OOXML versus ODF, pretending that competition between standards is the same as competing applications and vendors, with this most recent example coming from Microsoft Malaysia). Flash is not like Silverlight, for reasons that we mentioned before.
Who supports this charade inside the open source world? Probably the same guy (or group) who advocated OOXML and ActiveX. Be careful what you wish for, Novell. Oh wait! Novell has exclusive ‘protection’, unlike all those other ‘mischievous’ distros that don’t pay ‘Microsoft tax’.
XAML seems like another software patent trap which is most likely based on the RAND+OSP routine. Even Miguel de Icaza himself denounced this a couple of months ago.
Other comments in the new article include: “MS/NBC ties”; “Not a smart move by NBC” and some remarks from the usual Munchkin “No_Ax_to_Grind”. Novell should protest against XAML, not endorse it. It’s blindly in love with Microsoft and it harms many of those that surround the couple. █
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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.