06.27.09
Novell News Summary - Part III: Novell Videos, Marketing at Twitter, and Few Minor Things
Summary: Novell’s non-SUSE news from the past week
THERE is nothing particularly important to see here this week, but here is a report anyway.
06.21.09
Novell News Summary - Part III: Novell’s Proprietary Business
Summary: The remainder of the news about Novell
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06.19.09
Do Citrix and Black Duck Help Microsoft Embrace (and Extend) “Open Source”
Summary: Microsoft-tied entities brushing shoulders amongst people in the Free(dom) software world
“Microsoft” is not a company, it is an ecosystem. It is a network of connected businesses that share the same goals and thus help one another. The role of Citrix is clear to see based on the XenSource story. The short story is that Citrix took Xen away from GNU/Linux, which is gradually gravitating towards KVM, probably as a direct result. Unsurprisingly, one of the only remaining supporters of Xen in the enterprise-oriented space is Novell, which is part of Microsoft's linked interests.
As we pointed out several days ago, an investment from Citrix in Vyatta may be cause for concern [1, 2]. On the surface, it sure seems rather innocent and virtualisation guru Dan Kusnetzky opines that this may be a strategic move against Cisco (Cisco and Microsoft don't get along so well anymore).
Dell, HP, IBM are you watching? I believe you would gain some important ground in your emerging competition with Cisco by also becoming buddies with Vyatta.
Dana Blankenhorn believes that “It’s a delicate dance, especially at times like this when growth capital is so scarce. Time will tell whether Vyatta tilts toward, say, Xen in helping craft customer solutions. Or whether it starts pushing Novell’s Suse Linux over, say, Red Hat.”
Considering the fact that Microsoft promotes SUSE and vilifies Red Hat, how likely is it that some gentle pressure might come from Citrix so that Vyatta leans towards Microsoft’s patent ploy? This hopefully will never happen.
Moving on a little, last month we noted that Black Duck (created by a Microsoft employee, who is still on the Board of Directors along with Roger Heinen from Microsoft) had invited Microsoft to FOSS ‘on our behalf’ [1, 2]. It is almost as though they act as a gateway. Gavin Clarke, a Microsoft spinner/PR person for the most part, passes on Black Duck’s latest praise of Microsoft:
A home-cooked Microsoft license has carved out a small but growing following among the open-source community in less than two years.
[...]
That’s according to license and code watcher Black Duck Software, who attributed the rise in MS-PL to Microsoft’s efforts to increase the appeal of its CodePlex project-hosting site. MS-PL is one of 1,577 software licenses from 200,000 projects analyzed by Black Duck.
It is important to be reminded that these are licences whose goal is to attack Free software and give Microsoft greater control over a much more confused and diluted 'community' (of Windows developers who give their code away for free).
“It is very dangerous to allow Black Duck to become (or be perceived as) a sort of spokesman for “open source”.”It is also important to remember that Black Duck is a proprietary software company (and marketing puppet at times, for press exposure that leads to shameless self-promotion). Black Duck talks a lot about “open source ” while selling proprietary software and nothing which is Free (libre) software at all, not to mention Black Duck’s ripoff of Palamida’s good *GPLv3 database (but that’s old news).
It is disappointing to see Matt Asay parroting a message of this company which ushers Microsoft into embrace & extend of “open source”. There is more in SD Times, following another Black Duck press release about open source in healthcare last week.
It is very dangerous to allow Black Duck to become (or be perceived as) a sort of spokesman for “open source”. But some people allow this to happen, not just Microsoft proponents with prominent positions in the press. █
06.06.09
Novell News Summary - Part III: Offshoring, More Financial Analysis, and SCO
Summary: A grouping of Novell news from the past 7 days
AS we showed last week, Novell is offshoring some workforce in a move whose value exceeds $100 million.
05.18.09
Microsoft Insiders Watch: Bruckheimer, Digiting, DoMedia
Summary: Senior Microsoft employees who come to other companies are named
ACCORDING to the following report, Bruce Jaffe, who quit Microsoft not so long ago, brings Microsoft roots to the veins of this startup.
Take a moment to learn about Bruce Jaffe's role in the hijack of OLPC.
A new company called Digiting has done just that. The Seattle-based startup claims from Microsoft acquisitions chief Bruce Jaffe and former Twitter vice president Lee Mighdoll among its new employees.
Microsoft influence can now be found in Bruckheimer as well. From the news:
Jim Veevaert, formerly an executive producer at Microsoft, and Jay Cohen, previously senior vice president of publishing at Ubisoft, will lead Bruckheimer Games as president of production and president of development, respectively.
Most important, however, is the following appointment, which puts a former Microsoft executive in a chairman’s position. That company is DoMedia.
Little more than two months after bringing on a new CEO, online advertising database DoMedia has a new face in the chairman’s seat.
Here is the the corresponding press release.
In order to understand what impact former Microsoft employees can have, taking a look at Ignition and Xen might help. Citrix grabbed XenSource and thus essentially took it from GNU/Linux. Now it’s mostly about Microsoft, Windows, and Hyper-V. Here is a new press release which shows this and also an article. It was a good lesson in Microsoft’s ability to grab competitive threats using its ecosystem that absorbs the threat.
Speaking of ecosystem, here is something to watch out for: Intel, Microsoft, Dell band together for WiGig
Computer and home entertainment industry leaders, including Intel Corp., Microsoft Corp., Dell Inc. and Panasonic Corp., said Wednesday that they’re forming a new association to create an even faster wireless technology for zipping large files around the home.
What about Linux? No word about it. This is a triangle (and sometimes collusion) that we wrote about before [1, 2]. Intel pays Dell billions of dollars in kickbacks to avoid them stocking AMD, Dell and Microsoft share a bed, Intel and Microsoft conspire against consumers and so on and so forth. █
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Novell News Summary - Part III: Very Quiet Week for Novell
Summary: The remainder of Novell’s news (from the past week), most of which minor
Finance
STARTING with the financial news today, Novell was mentioned as just one among many stocks in the news, but nothing particularly special. Via Jupitermedia:
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05.08.09
Microsoft + “Open” Attack GNU/Linux and “Free” (as in Free Speech)
“Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches.”
–Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO
Summary: Citrix-controlled Xen keeps bending towards Microsoft, which misuses “open source”
THAT Microsoft manipulates the virtualisation market is something that we last summarised a couple of months ago and now there is more supportive evidence.
Citrix dazzles market — and Microsoft — with new Xen products
[...]
But the lack of Linux desktop support is disappointing from the pen source virtualization vendor.
This is part of the trend we’ve been seeing ever since Citrix, one of the closest allies of Microsoft, bought (and overpaid for) XenSource. It was partly about causing harm to GNU/Linux.
Microsoft dips its fingers in many wells which are “open source”, but in the case of Xen there was the GPL, so Microsoft could not acquire it directly (antitrust was another important issue). And speaking of which, Microsoft’s sponsorship of SourceForge.net 2008 Community Choice Awards turned it rather hostile towards open source [1, 2, 3], but there are no anti-FOSS prizes from this year’s contest, unlike last year’s. Microsoft does, however, still misuse the word “open” and thus dilutes it:
It’s Open, Gov, Honest
Interesting to see Microsoft jumping on the openness bandwagon again - specifically, on the open government bandwagon…..
If only more people knew what Microsoft means by “open”. █
“More Open Than Open [...] I am constantly amazed at the flexibility of this single word.”
–Microsoft’s Jason Matusow, integral part of the ‘Open’ XML corruptions (further background in [1, 2, 3])
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05.02.09
Novell News Summary - Part III: SCO-Novell, DMTF, Security, and Partners
Summary: Last roundup of Novell news for this week, excluding SUSE
Shreepriya Gopalan claims to be the owner of Novell, but that’s just a bizarre little story which is not worth discussing. Let’s start with UNIX ownership (SCO trial).
