06.27.08
Posted in Microsoft, Novell, Opensuse, Ubuntu, SUN, IBM, FOSS at 4:28 pm by Roy Schestowitz
“It is in Novell’s interest - selfish interest, I will admit - to advance-remove whatever those inhibitors be to the advancement of Linux and open source.”
–John Dragoon, Novell
N
ovell loves free software. Free — as in “free lunch”. It receives a lot of code without paying for it. It’s free labour, so what’s not to like? Novell admits that it is not willing to disengage from its proprietary past [1, 2, 3, 4]. It’s not prepared to say goodbye to its roots. It’s planning to just mix it all up; you know, just like its business partner, Microsoft. Novell takes pride in it, too. While the following article requires a subscription to read in full, the opening paragraph is too telling.
NOVELL HAS thrived by being able to offer customers a mixture of open source and proprietary software, even though it attracted the wrath of the open source community by doing a deal with Microsoft, according to chief executive Ron Hovsepian.
It would be interesting to read the remainder of this text and absorb the main messages of this article as a whole. Nevertheless, the Web site insists on living in the ‘Golden Ages’ when people always paid for the news. Groklaw, in the mean time, writes about Sun and NetApp, and therein also lies an important observation.
Releasing code is not all there is to it. Ethics, fairness, honesty — it’s the FOSS culture, and it’s the value add. Any company that tries to play by the old rules undercuts that advantage. It’s the one thing Microsoft can’t embrace, extend, extinguish. They can’t even offer Brand X, because we’d all laugh. It would, in any case, take decades to live down their rep. So players in this space need to morph that part of their way of doing business also. If you don’t believe me, look at Oracle’s play to try to undercut Red Hat. Blech. And Red Hat is doing fine, thanks. It always will, unless it starts importing proprietary tactics into the mix. The community is made up of brainiacs, you know. They know what is happening, and there are no secrets, long-term. So I would hope that all companies wanting to make use of openness as a model will scrape the proprietary crud off of them before they enter. We want to keep things clean in here.
That is exactly why Novell became a black sheep. Add to this the possibility that Novell is just IBM’s attempt to dilute the values of GNU/Linux and elevate intellectual monopolies at their expense. Novell has already admitted its selfishness and Sun appears to have acted in a similar fashion. Microsoft’s talk about open source is too obviously a self-serving (for Windows) affair.
Such companies, which brought themselves up in a non-Free software environment, cannot properly reform themselves; they hardly seem willing, partly due to shareholders’ expectation and analysts’ targets.
Sadly enough, a forceful community project, OpenSUSE, will continues to suffer from Novell’s and Microsoft’s shadows. Just watch how Sam Varghese puts it:
OpenSUSE 11: nice kid, bad custodians
[…]
More good news: you can still remove Mono, the infamous attempt to clone Microsoft’s .NET development environment, and all its insidious dependencies without breaking anything in OpenSUSE. I had to remove a total of 39 files, both applications and libraries, to get it off my system. Anyone who is planning long-term usage of the distribution would be well advised to remove Mono as it could lead to problems down the line.
OpenSUSE has all the applications that an average desktop user needs. It is a distribution with an excellent pedigree. If only it had better custodians.
OpenSUSE could be today’s market leader in the Linux world had it not been for that blasted Microsoft deal and unnecessary affiliation with Novell. For the time being, some people who experiment with OpenSUSE just run back to Ubuntu. Here are two new examples:
1. Fun with openSUSE 11.0
I’m told that because of Novell/Microsoft ties, OpenOffice as shipped with openSUSE has more features than the stock OO.o shipped with Ubuntu. I need to investigate this further to have an opinion on the matter (although I can say right away that I don’t have an issue with the politics of this deal …).
I still have a lot of investigating to do, however, in the interim I think that if I had to choose between Ubuntu and openSUSE, Ubuntu would be the winner - familiarity is a key factor.
2. My OpenSuse 11.0 experience. OpenSuse or Ubuntu? I have made my choice.
I will make a list of the things which I didn’t like about it.
1. The smoothness of ubuntu is still lacking in opensuse-11.0
2. On my Dell Latitude D600, the visual effects were not running as smooth as ubuntu.
3. I would agree that they tried to make the interface look better and more user friendly but it still doesn’t come close to Ubuntu.
4. I didn’t find much online support for the new release of openSuse-11.0
5. The start-up/loading time was at least 10 to 15 seconds more than Ubuntu.
6. I checked the system monitor and the programs were running slower in openSuse.
So he moved back to Ubuntu at the end. To many people, OpenSUSE just doesn’t shout out “Freedom” anymore. Not with Microsoft’s and Novell’s presence anyway. Mind mind users; developers appear could be affected similarly. OpenSUSE would reach a broader community of developers, drive-by patche offerers and bug reporters if it became Novell-independent (it’s currently just an illusion). People prefer contributing to projects, not corporations that liaise with a sworn enemy of libre software. █
Permalink
Send this to a friend 
View as PDF
06.21.08
Posted in GNU/Linux, Opensuse, KDE, Ubuntu at 1:43 pm by Roy Schestowitz
We are not evil on Saturday, so…
It has been an important week for the OpenSUSE Project and there was, expectedly enough, a short media blitz. More OpenSUSE reviews are likely to surface next week as many people install the GM over the weekend.
We cherry-picked some reviews earlier in the week, so we won’t repeat them here. What we do include below is a list of resources that serve as a point of reference for the historical release of version 11.0.
Regardless of our feelings about the project, congratulation to all the volunteer developers who did a fine job.
OpenSUSE: General
Weekly news came just before the big release and the same goes for this article about Rupert Horstkötter from the OpenSUSE project.
This week the openSUSE Project announced the launch of forums.opensuse.org, a merger of the three largest openSUSE forums. Continuing the openSUSE Forums euphoria we present you the Project Manager - Rupert Horstkötter.
Quite interesting was this announcement about an Education DVD which is based on OpenSuSE 10.3. The announcement came just before a much newer base, namely 11.0, was made available.
We’ve currently 3.7GB (!) of software on the Education DVD (2,4GB for each arch) - a huge progress compared to 10.2 with ~1,2GB for each architecture. But: some applications cover nearly the same area - so we need your help by dividing the “good” from the “not so good” for the next release.
Speaking of 10.3 and the road to 11.0, Ben Kevan wrote about reasons to upgrade.
You’re at the breaking point of what to do with your current openSUSE 10.x (hopefully at least 10.2) installation. You hear that openSUSE 11.0 is just about to come out, but why should you go from a .2/.3 release to a .0 release?
Then the big moment came.
Release of 11.0
Here is the press release announcing the final release.
The openSUSE(R) Project, a worldwide project sponsored by Novell(R), today announced that openSUSE 11.0 is immediately available for download at openSUSE.org. openSUSE 11.0 is the latest release of the community Linux* distribution, and a major update over the previous release with more than 200 new features specific to openSUSE and hundreds of application updates.
Articles about this release came from a lot of the media. Announcements from the British press include vnunet and The Inquirer.
Andreas Jaeger, chairman of the Opensuse Project Board reckons, “Opensuse 11.0 is a true reflection of the community that discussed, tested, developed, translated and promoted it.” All brown beer, beards and sandals, then.
The Register (also UK-based) wrote about it also.
OpenSUSE 11 a redemptive OS with a Mactastic shine
You can now add OpenSUSE, the community-driven sequel to Novell’s SUSE Linux distribution, to the list of significant releases. Version 11.0 of OpenSUSE is set to ship this week, ushering in a number of new features and solving most of the problems that saw OpenSUSE 10 get off to a bumpy start.
Here is an optimistic one from Tectonic:
The OpenSuse development team will today release version 11.0 of its open source operating system, an OS that could well be seen as the biggest threat to Ubuntu Linux domination. Faster installations, better package management and top-notch multimedia support are just some of the things that make OpenSuse a significant release.
Marti T. van Lin, a former SUSE and Novell fan, responded to this article rather sarcastically. He said:
Who wrote this article, “Zonker” maybe? 
1. Faster installations.
Right, installing Ubuntu takes about 20 minutes and openSUSE over an
hour on the same box.
2. Better package management.
Sure, if you ignore the dependency hell and it’s speed (or the lack
there of). Since 10.1 YaST package management is a POS, it takes 15
minutes, before it’s able to do anything useful *even if you disable all
“external” repositories* (packman and the likes). Using YOU (YaST Online
Update) frequently breaks dependencies.
Additional packages frequently can not be installed due to the broken
dependencies. I have frequently solved these problems by making symlinks
to newer libs, if an older version is missing and causing problems. Not
really a big deal for the seasoned user, but a no go for Average Joe
Sixpack.
3. Top-notch multimedia support.
Yeah right, to enable multimedia discrepancies, an additional ISO image
has to be downloaded. It’s *not* supported right out of the box.
Adding encrypted DVD support (libdvdcss) has always been a pain in the
ass, since it is illegal in Germany.
In Ubuntu, you’ll simply add the medibutnu repository and add the damn
thing.
OpenSUSE is a treat to Ubuntu’s GNU/Linux domination and pigs can fly,
no really
OpenSUSE simply seems to ignore they have an awful reputation within the
Free Software movement.
Kudos for their positive way of thinking, but I’m afraid it’s rather
unrealistic.
Over at Download Squad, a promotional OpenSUSE 11.0 box set was up for grabs.
Screenshots
Credit where credit’s due! OpenSUSE looks rather nice, out of the box even.
Here are some views of OpenSUSE. Mostly screenshots are included therein.
The Coding Studio has published screenshots as well.
Reviews
Reviews varied slightly becuase of the different possibilities and the choice of a desktop environment. For one’s reading pleasure, here are some of the more interesting reviews that stood out.
Ars Technica: First look: OpenSUSE 11 out, offers best KDE 4 experience
We tested both the GNOME and KDE flavors of OpenSUSE 11 by installing from the Live CD images. These work reasonably well and provide an installation experience comparable to that of Ubuntu and Fedora. The few minor issues that we encountered when we tested the beta 2 live installers back in May have all been resolved. There is also a full installer that is offered as a 4.3 GB DVD image. It provides a highly polished visual interface and an enormous package selection. For most users, who only require one desktop environment, the live installers are probably more practical than the full installer.
ZDNet UK Community: openSUSE 11.0 First Impressions
I was surprised that this fresh-from-the-server distribution still contained Firefox 3.0 beta 5, and OpenOffice 2.4.0 rather than 2.4.1. I assume that if I had gotten the online update working correctly, these might have been updated, but read on…
Linux Planet: First Look: openSUSE 11 with KDE4
I was offered the chance to have an initial look at Novell’s latest Linux offering openSUSE 11. It’s a distribution I’ve tried in previous versions but often had trouble settling on. It seems very popular on enterprise desktops along with Red Hat. I got a copy of the KDE4 LiveCD and gave it a spin.
[…]
A lot of work has gone into making this integrate with a typical enterprise Windows domain, which is no doubt helped by the controversial deal struck between Novell and Microsoft last year. This distro is not quite as straightforward for novice users to get to grips with as the likes of Linux Mint or Mandriva but in an office environment it’s a real contender and this is of course Novell’s intended market.
CRN: Review: Novell OpenSUSE 11 Is For Power Users
Ubuntu 8.04 and Fedora 9 have made some great strides in making desktop Linux more user-friendly and technologically advanced. With OpenSUSE 11, Novell can match them feature for feature and carve out a space for itself as well.
theunixgeek: openSUSE 11 Review
I know it’s a day early, but I was able to get my hands on a copy of the release version of openSUSE 11 and I must say it’s a really good distribution!
There are many more reviews, but their visibility is lower and brevity/focus a bit of an issue. We include a few of them below.
Informal/Overviews
Here is another noteworthy review and from Ben Kevan’s blog, which has been OpenSUSE-centric lately, now come some post-installation tips.
So you’ve downloaded and installed openSUSE 11.0. Are you now wondering what you may have to do post installation, here’s a quick run down…
Ben also calls OpenSUSE “the perfect Ubuntu replacement” as if Ubuntu is a yardstick to go by.
With the release of openSUSE 11.0 right around the corner, you will see plenty of reviews, how-to’s and other various things about openSUSE, but how does it stack up against other distributions mainly Ubuntu/(K)Ubuntu?
Here is a review from linuxfr.org (in French) and here is a sort of inaugural chat with the community manager. On the face of it, he has been exceptionally busy over the past week.
In OpenSUSE News you can find some more overviews like this one. Just before the GM release, Stephan Binner did a piece about the KDE side.
With openSUSE 11.0 just a few days away, it’s time to look at one of the stars of the show: KDE. In openSUSE 11.0, you get two KDEs for the price of one. Here we’ll take a look at what’s coming in KDE, and talk to one of openSUSE’s KDE contributors, Stephan Binner.
Have a lot of fun! █
Permalink
Send this to a friend View as PDF
Posted in Microsoft, GNU/Linux, Novell, Ubuntu, SUN, Oracle, IBM, Database at 7:20 am by Roy Schestowitz
This two-part post is worth reading carefully yet cautiously. We’ve received a lot of information from a credible source, but a lot of it needed to be omitted or at least watered down. What we have left below will be useful knowledge to return to in the future.
Let us begin with some timely news about corporate politics. A short while ago, after this short and mystifying post, Matt Asay wrote the following clarification about Red Hat and Oracle:
“I’ve since heard a bit more about this. There’s not an acquisition in the works, but Oracle is apparently pushing for some sort of partnership that would bring down the price of RHEL. Oracle doesn’t have much of a salesforce pushing “Unbreakable” and it shows. It wants to ride RHEL’s coattails but also wants RHEL to be even cheaper…so that no one will notice that it keeps raising its prices.
“So, there’s substance to the rumors. But will Oracle have the humility to give some value to Red Hat? The jury is still out….”
Oracle’s role has been interesting to us for quite some time because the company had announced that it would undercut Red Hat just about a month before the Novell/Microsoft agreement was revealed to the public (it had been negotiated for about 5 months before that). Oracle and IBM were probably among those who knew about it well in advance (IBM at the very least) and later we saw Oracle making some moves which can be characterised as strong-arming [1, 2, 3].
Remember that, going a few years back, Red Hat too considered buying S.u.S.E. Sun was mentioned in a similar context, but it appears to be sticking with OpenSolaris. It also maintains a healthy relationship with Canonical.
But… here are some other key facts of interest. It’s about IBM:
- IBM funded, at least in part, Novell’s acquisition of S.u.S.E
- IBM approved the Novell/Microsoft deal on the day of the press conference
- IBM has an extensive and ever-growing software patents portfolio
- IBM may be trying tame Free software, just like Nokia intended to do not so long ago (lingering questions remain about the new DRM ’solution’ for Linux)
- With Symphony and some other supposedly ‘open’ (as in standards) projects, it’s clear that IBM is not the biggest fan of Free software
- Some months ago it was revealed that IBM had been working on that dreaded thing called ‘Trusted’ Computing for GNU/Linux
- IBM is doing business with both Red Hat and Novell, on both the desktop- and the server-side.
The rest this story is reserved for the second part, which will be posted shortly. █
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
06.16.08
Posted in Microsoft, Ubuntu, FOSS at 8:10 am by Roy Schestowitz
Towards Redefining Free Open Source Software in the Darnest of Ways
Here we go again. SourceForge is one recent example of Microsoft’s strategy that involves capturing “open source”, which it maliciously compared to communism in the past, and thus becoming one of its leaders. There are many other examples like unsuccessful attempts around the OSA and even OLPC. It becomes quite an abomination when Microsoft then redefines open source.
The latest news is about yet another Microsoft sponsorship of a project that so far seems to revolve around champions like Firefox, Ubuntu and other direct competitors of Microsoft.
Microsoft has become a sponsor of The Open Source Census, a project started earlier this year that aims to track and catalog the use of open-source software in enterprises worldwide, the group announced Monday.
[…]
It is important to balance open-mindedness with skepticism when thinking about Microsoft’s open-source strategy, according to one observer.
Here is what Glyn Moody had to say about this.
Call it the “loving to death” strategy: Microsoft entwines its tentacles around more and more of the open source world until it becomes almost - almost - an indispensable part of it. Result: the person on the Clapham omnibus is confused about what is and what isn’t open source….
What Moody calls “loving to death”, Linux Today’s Managing Editor recently called “killing with kindness”.
To exemplify this further, a trollish article that we alluded to the other day is now being dissected by MTG, who shows us how “open source” gets exploited and misused not just by Microsoft.
So apparently the Boy Scouts of America are all Gun Ho about open source. Computer World explains us that they have launch their BSA Open Source Initiative.
[…]
Since a recent experience with Microsoft got me worried about people using terms out of context, I thought I’d browse through the open source BSA site to find out more. Especially worth reading (and source from most of the quotes) are the pages named classroom and history.
Redefinition/spinning is an issue we’ll be seeing more of in the future. Why is Bruce Perens not up there in OSI policing and defending the integrity of this ever-mutating sibling of Free software? █
“There are fewer communists in the world today than there were. There are some new modern-day sort of communists who want to get rid of the incentive for musicians and moviemakers and software makers under various guises. They don’t think that those incentives should exist.”
–Bill Gates, 2005
Update: Some more analysis of this sponsorship is starting to appear now, including some key observations from Mary Jo.
And note the mention of license compliance here — a hot button for Microsoft, the company which has alleged that open-source software violates more than 200 of Microsoft’s patents. The Census discovery tool doesn’t search for open-source software on Linux boxes only; it also scans for open-source installed specifically on Windows machines.
Microsoft officials are emphasizing that Microsoft wants to know about open-source adoption levels and trends because the company is interested in helping its customers’ Windows systems better interoperate with open-source systems. I’m sure that Microsoft also wants a better understanding of where/how open-source software is gaining traction in enterprises in order to better fight it.
Permalink
Send this to a friend View as PDF
06.14.08
Posted in Microsoft, GNU/Linux, Novell, GPL, Asia, Ubuntu, xandros, Linspire, Turbolinux, Scalix at 5:42 am by Roy Schestowitz
Xandros from the east coast, Linspire from the west coast and Turbolinux from the far east, all of which sold out to the Beast
Xandros
The media has begun focusing a little less on the ASUS sub-notebooks as more and more Eee wannabes emerge and require reviewing.
In the past week, the appearance of Xandros in the press has actually been due to Scalix, which it had acquired last year.
Here is a new press release about Scalix.
Scalix, the award-winning Linux email, calendaring and messaging company, today announced the implementation of the first stage of a new, flexible, workgroup collaboration technology with a new ‘Proxy Folder’ feature in the latest 11.4 Scalix release.
Read the rest of this entry »
Permalink
Send this to a friend View as PDF
06.11.08
Posted in Microsoft, GNU/Linux, Novell, SLES/SLED, Patents, Ubuntu, IBM, Dell at 3:30 am by Roy Schestowitz
Choose GNU/Linux or Windows, but Microsoft gets your money either way
This situation has been discussed in the IRC channel for days and also mentioned in this Web site’s comments. For those who do not know, Lenovo ceased to deliver PCs with FreeDOS and specified no reason for this move. So essentially, no matter what PC you now buy from Lenovo, Microsoft will be paid. Microsoft is in some sense creating a Linux-Windows monopoly using Novell’s SUSE.
Here is one relevant post on this subject. It comes from an external source (the rest you can find in IRC logs).
yesterday, this was an option when choose an operating system when configuring a t61p. it took off almost $40 if you chose this over vista or xp. i was very happy because i was probably going to purchase one later this week with the dos license, but now there is no option for the thinkpad dos license anymore
i thought it might of been just the cpp site, but it’s the main site also. i’m about to cry.
In light of the recent developments that are discussed more heavily (Ubuntu paying Microsoft for codecs), this ought to serve as an in-advance warning. Regarding Netbook Remix, this one from Intel is worth staying away from in favour of similar Linux gadgets. And it’s not just because Intel is a convicted monopolist in several continents; it’s because it sets a dangerous precedence for Free software and has some memories from Dell return to haunt. █
Permalink
Send this to a friend View as PDF
06.10.08
Posted in GNU/Linux, Mono, Patents, Ubuntu, FOSS at 2:45 pm by Roy Schestowitz
It was only several hours ago that this mailing list thread came to our attention. Therein, Mark Shuttleworth addresses a post from Boycott Novell. An anonymous reader took it upon himself to respond to it. His response is quoted below in full. Context and background can be found here.
“FOSS distros shouldn’t be a vector for licensing problems…”If Mark Shuttleworth wants to be unambiguous about it, he needs to state “is not and shall not” make a deal for closed codecs. I know that comes close to splitting hairs, but his answer will help prevent unpleasant surprises.
If he’s dealing with proprietary codecs, or general Microsoft technology, he should be wise from the mistakes of others: there’s a trail of out of work CEOs that thought that their company should remain “willing to work with Microsoft, under reasonable and transparent conditions, to further goals that we share” e.g.
“I once preached peaceful coexistence with Windows. You may laugh at my expense — I deserve it.”
–Be’s CEO Jean-Louis Gassée
Mark’s not dumb. He shouldn’t try to act dumb. Just how would Canonical survive a deal with Microsoft when no other company to-date has?
However, that’s not as concrete as the mono infection which is listed on the project page:
Subnotebooks, especially those with small HDs or SSDs don’t have 100’s of GB to spare for mono-bloat for just a few packages. Subnotebooks, especially those with low power CPUs don’t have the gigacycles to deal with mono’s bloat spaghetti code. FOSS distros shouldn’t be a vector for licensing problems, like the ones still unresolved after (10?) years of mono.
Note F-Spot:
http://www.canonical.com/netbooks
Note mono infection:
$ apt-cache depends f-spot
f-spot
Depends: dbus
Depends: libart-2.0-2
Depends: libatk1.0-0
Depends: libc6
|Depends: libc6
|Depends: <libc6.1>
Depends: <libc0.1>
Depends: libcairo2
Depends: libexif12
Depends: libflickrnet2.1.5-cil
Depends: libgconf2.0-cil
|Depends: libgl1-mesa-glx
Depends: <libgl1>
libgl1-mesa-glx
libgl1-mesa-swx11
Depends: libglade2.0-cil
Depends: libglib2.0-0
Depends: libglib2.0-cil
Depends: libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
Depends: libgnome2.0-cil
Depends: libgnomeui-0
Depends: libgnomevfs2-0
Depends: libgphoto2-2
Depends: libgphoto2-port0
Depends: libgtk2.0-0
Depends: libgtk2.0-cil
Depends: libgtkhtml3.16-cil
Depends: libjpeg62
Depends: liblcms1
Depends: libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
Depends: libmono-addins0.2-cil
Depends: libmono-cairo2.0-cil
Depends: libmono-corlib2.0-cil
Depends: libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
Depends: libmono-sqlite2.0-cil
Depends: libmono-system-data2.0-cil
Depends: libmono-system-web2.0-cil
Depends: libmono-system2.0-cil
Depends: libmono2.0-cil
Depends: libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
Depends: libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
Depends: libx11-6
Depends: libxcomposite1
Depends: mono-runtime
Depends: sqlite
Depends: sqlite3
Recommends: dbus-x11
Recommends: dcraw
I fought to mention that subnotebooks are often being used in environments/situations where the instability caused by mono causes more harm than in more relaxed situations. █
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.