Exploring the reality behind exclusionary deals with Microsoft and their subtle (yet severe) implications
Watch this new interview with Kevin Carmony. We previously wrote about the end of Linspire in [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7] and a cash inflow that he seems to be speaking of begs for some more questions about Microsoft and that mysterious deal. Maybe it’s not related to this. Being a private company, Linspire did not have to say much at the time. Groklaw raised concerns because of this. █
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Related posts for background:
[Update (19/06/2008) : We have supplementary screenshots in this follow-up post.]
It is already known that Microsoft fought ODF like fire. It even ran a Get the Facts-type campaign against it. It’s easily provable because it is all well documented.
In the IRC conversation below (a fragment from Monday), you will find some of the latest examples.
<Eruaran> Currently if you attempt to open a .odt document for example in Microsoft Word, you get assailed by dialogues that say the document is corrupted, asks you if you want to ‘fix’ it, and it insinuates you shouldn’t trust it or the source it came from.
<schestowitz> Remember DR-DOS?
<Eruaran> I know there are many people who will think negatively about ODF because of this kind of flat out BS in Microsoft products.
<Eruaran> yes
<schestowitz> http://boycottnovell.com/2007/08/03/do-dos-odf-microsoft-sabotage/
<schestowitz> http://boycottnovell.com/comes-vs-microsoft/text/msg00083.html
<schestowitz> http://www.boycottnovell.com/comes-vs-microsoft/text/msg00194.html
<Eruaran> I love this one: “If Microsoft says you’ve got five fingers on each hand, many people will insist on an independent count.”
<schestowitz> Microsoft: “what the guy is supposed to do is feel uncomfortable, and when he has bugs, suspect that the problem is dr-dos and then go out and buy ms-dos, or decide not to take the risk for the other machines he has to buy for in the office.”
<Eruaran> Even if they tell the truth, nobody trusts them, such is their history and reputation.
<Eruaran> yes, they are up to the same old tricks
<schestowitz> “Concerns have been raised that DR-DOS incompatibilities and flaws are being overlooked by reviewers. […] We recommend that we *informally* plant the bug of FUD in their ears. “Have you heard about problems with DR DOS?”
<Eruaran> I decided to try and open an open document in Word one day just to see what happened… what I saw simply disgusted me.
* PetoKraus (n=Peter@host-77-247-224-25.isper.sk) has joined #boycottnovell
<Eruaran> Have you seen the clip on YouTube where a guy attempts to use Vista’s voice regognition with OpenOffice ?
<PetoKraus> 
<Eruaran> He tries it out with MS Word, then word pad and it all works fine
<schestowitz> http://www.odfalliance.org/resources/BurtonGroupResponseFinal.pdf [PDF] (Microsoft’s Burton puppet: “ODF is simplistic” (bad word). Beat in mind that Pete O’Kelly later had contracts with Microsoft. Lots of money.
<Eruaran> Then he tries it with OpenOffice and Vista’s speech recognition suddenly develops selective deafness and an inability to comprehend basic speech patterns.
<PetoKraus> Eruaran: got vid?
<PetoKraus> *link
<schestowitz> Yes, please.
<Eruaran> yes, just a sec PetoKraus (and hello)
<PetoKraus> i’d even launch firefox to see that 
<schestowitz> That;s something to write about. Also your easrlier observation.,
<Eruaran> If you like I could take some screenshots tomorrow at work
<Eruaran> of the dialogues MS Word gives you when you try to use and ODF document
<schestowitz> Please do. The error message. I can make an Ogg from YouTube vids.
<schestowitz> Yes, a screenshot would be good.
<PetoKraus> schestowitz: how do you do that, anyway
<Eruaran> I was disgusted when I first saw them because I knew that Microsoft knows damn well what a .odt is
<schestowitz> akf told me about a service that allows you to download the flvs. I used to have PyTube working, but Google broke its functionality.
It ought to be pointed out at this stage that Microsoft claims to have become ‘buddies’ with ODF [1, 2, 3, 4]. Not quite, eh? Later on came the video, which we have produced an Ogg Theora version of.
As embedded Flash, for those who prefer it in this form:
This conversation then continued:
<Eruaran> Vista speech recognition refusing to work with OOo: http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=5sVQlphmqsU
<Eruaran> One commenter says: It is a demonstration of how Vista speech recognition is deliberately crippled with a non-Microsoft piece of software.
* mark_antony_ken1 (n=user@host86-152-103-82.range86-152.btcentralplus.com) has joined #boycottnovell
<PetoKraus> LMAO
<schestowitz> Wow.
<schestowitz> The “Wow” starts…. now.
<Eruaran> yes
* mark_antony_ken2 (n=user@ellandroad.demon.co.uk) has joined #boycottnovell
<schestowitz> So we can conclude from this that Notepad is better than OOo
<PetoKraus> sure!
<Eruaran> oh yeah 
<PetoKraus> it has more useful features
In conclusion, Microsoft hardly changed its way. The predatory nature of the Beast lives on to this date. █
Would you trust this company?
Just moments ago, the following video showed up in YouTube. Do have a quick look.
We’ve made a copy of it (Ogg Theora-encoded), just in case the video gets pulled. It could take some time and effort to check whether the crack is real, but whatever the truth is, there’s the possibility that we shall find out very soon. If it’s a serious problem, we’ll remove the video.
The only reason to be showing this is not encouragement of cracking. As the chap writes, Novell ignored him. It’s vanity. It’s a dangerous attitude. If you choose to be a client of Novell, then you ought to be warned about this behaviour. The last such warning (about Novell not being responsive) is just 3 days old. █
It just… almost… sort of… ‘works’
It has been quite a while since we last wrote about Novell’s mysterious relationship with Dell. Someone might not be telling us the whole story.
In any event, just for kicks (maybe a kick in Novell’s and Dell’s groin), here’s a video that showed up in YouTube just a few days ago. It’s titled very nicely: “Dell+Novell = Hell.”
Here is an Ogg Theora version that we’ve produce for readers who prefer it.
It has been a tough week for Dell, which faced serious charges.
In December of 2002, I started a page on my Computer Gripes site devoted to Dell.
Accumulating gripes about Dell was like taking candy from a baby; there was no sport in it. Eventually, I gave up maintaining the page, but despite a total lack of advertising or promotion, people kept finding the page and adding their own gripes.
Now these Dell gripes are official.
In the words of Jerry Seinfeld, “good luck with all that.” Dell’s financial misconduct goes a long way back, but we won’t list it here because it’s definitely off topic. That company is at least trying to escape Microsoft’s stranglehold. █
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New from Romania Hungary where this incident occurred.
Egg Vorbis [sic] (Theora) version below.
Novell’s GNU/Linux business may not be flourishing, but there are some deals and contracts which we ought to at least keep track of.
SAP, Novell, H-P and IBM found themselves sort of falling in love, with the exception of H-P and IBM that are competing fiercely (also against Sun Microsystems).
SAP, as part of its effort to lure more midsize business customers, will introduce appliance-like systems pre-loaded with its ERP software, a database, and a Linux operating system, running on hardware from Hewlett-Packard or IBM.
The press release about SUSE and H-P for SAP’s service is here.
Reliable and Affordable SAP(R) Business All-in-One Solution with SAP(R) MaxDB(TM) Database and SUSE Linux Enterprise from Novell to Be Preconfigured, Pretested and Preinstalled on HP Systems
This one is about SAP and Novell.
Six solutions highlight integration of Novell’s identity and security products with SAP solution-based environments, enabling customers to further maximize their investments
Another article about H-P, SAP and SUSE:
The new turnkey solution will also include SAP’s MaxDB database based on SUSE Linux Enterprise from Novell.
There is some more from H-P exclusively. While H-P continues to obey its masters at Microsoft, it is willing to also support Microsoft’s partner. It puts SLED 10 on some low-cost laptops, which were reviewed by CNET.
The good: Inexpensive; solid construction; stylish design belies its budget price; nearly full-size keyboard.
The bad: Weak performance; unimpressive battery life; tiny touch pad; misses out on new Intel Atom CPUs.
Also reaching CNN — a puzzling gesture to some:
HP’s bold entry into the mini notebook market comes in the form of the 2133 Mini-Note PC, a 9-inch laptop with a tailored look and magnesium alloy chassis that starts at $599 for Windows (or $499 for Linux) and tops out at $749 with extras including Bluetooth, a Webcam, a 7,200 rpm hard drive, and 2GB of RAM.
It is rather sad to find even the United States Government now relies on some Microsoft ‘Linux tax’, but what can you do?
NASA ditches Itanic for new Xeon-based SGI giant
[…]
The two organizations announced today that SGI will build a whopping 20,480-core system for NASA Ames in Mountain View, California. The giant will run on four-core versions of Intel’s Xeon chip and should reach peak performance of 245 Teraflops, which would make it one of the fastest computers in the world. The system, centered around SGI’s Altix ICE hardware, will also boast - gulp - 20,800 GB of memory and 450TB of storage.
The computer will also be water-cooled and run Suse Linux.
A couple of press releases from Voltaire shout about SUSE and Novell. Here is the first one:
First InfiniBand Provider to Offer Enterprise-Class Support for OFED on Multivendor Hardware
[…]
Novell is the first customer to take advantage of the new offering.
And here is the second one.
“As more customers select SUSE Linux Enterprise for their high-bandwidth and low-latency computing needs, we’re seeing increased adoption of InfiniBand - particularly in financial services and manufacturing,” said Moiz Kohari, vice president of engineering for Novell. “It was important for Novell to provide a complete support offering to these customers, and we selected Voltaire based on its leadership in delivering end-to-end InfiniBand support.”
Remember Novell’s ‘own’ version of OpenOffice.org? We criticised this whole idea of Novell Edition in the past, even just a few days ago. Nevertheless, here comes a video demo of it.
The Oggs took a while to produce for our readers’ convenience (and more importantly their freedom). Convenient it is not to us (very time-consuming), but freedom comes at a cost.
Here are a couple more Novell videos that have just been added to YouTube.
Novell SUSE caso de sucesso Casas Bahia
This last one seems to speak about a migration to SUSE, but it’s not truly interesting in any way. █
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This new talk is warmly recommended to all. As one who attended it, I can say that it was memorable and inspiring. Stallman touched on a lot of points, not just technology. A friend whom I brought, who has no prior experience with Free software, found it to be a very valuable lesson too. █
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Highlight: Novell was the first to acknowledge that Microsoft FUD tactics had substance. Novell then used anti-Linux FUD to market itself. Learn more
Highlight: Xandros let Microsoft make patent claims and brag about (paid-for) OOXML support. Learn more
Highlight: Linspire's CEO not only fell into Microsoft arms, but he also assisted the company's attack on GNU/Linux. Learn more
Highlight: Microsoft craves pseudo (proprietary) standards and gets its way using proxies and influence which it buys. Learn more
Highlight: The invasion into the open source world is intended to leave Linux companies neglected, due to financial incentives from Microsoft. Learn more
Analysis: Xen, an open source hypervisor, possibly fell victim to Microsoft's aggressive (and stealthy) acquisition-by-proxy strategy. Learn more
