05.10.08
Posted in Microsoft, Windows, GNU/Linux, Deception, Australia, xandros, Linspire at 12:54 am by Roy Schestowitz
What’s with eWeek’s infatuation with the Windows-esque, Microsoft-tied distributions?
A certain pattern has become a bit difficult to ignore. It would be easy to just let it pass or make a quick observation (as we did several times before), but this has gone on for too long and it cannot be a coincidence.
Linspire
Let’s be a little more specific here and go by the past week’s examples alone. Here is a non-event announcement that CNR supports a simple derivative of Ubuntu, which contains some more binaries.
Linspire announced the support for the Linux Mint operating system. To gain access to the free CNR Service, Linux Mint 4.0 users simply install the free CNR Client that is available at CNR.com.
Additionally, here you have yet another incognito application that is included in CNR. There is a huge number of them already, so it’s hardly worth crowing about.
Linspire, Inc. developer of CNR.com, an easy-to-use, one-click digital software delivery service for desktop Linux software, and WeatherBug(R), the leading provider of live, local weather information and severe weather alerts, today announced the immediate availability of WeatherBug for Freespire 2.0, Linspire 6.0, Linux Mint 4.0, Ubuntu 7.04, 7.10 and 8.04 (32 bit) users and will soon expand to additional popular desktop Linux distributions.
As usual, the only Web site that pays attention to these non-announcements (press releases) from Linspire is DesktopLinux (eWeek), which makes one wonder about the relationships there. Is eWeek paid to publish these? Are the editors in good touch with some executives in Linux companies/distributors? The same goes for Xandros, but we’ll come to that in a moment. It’s only eWeek that always pays attention, this time with the following article.
Linspire has upgraded its CNR.com (Click’N'Run) download site for Linux software to support the Ubuntu-based, consumer-friendly Linux Mint distribution. CNR.com will also add a Linux version of Weatherbug’s weather service, which offers live, local weather information and severe weather alerts.
Another noteworthy bit: Matt Hartley (of MadPanguin, OSWeekly, and Datamation) flirts for a bit with Carmony. It was the same with Xandros at one time. It’s just something to bear in mind.
While Carmony is out and about after ruining Linspire, the boss of the company, Michael Robertson, is giving public talks.
10:20 - 10:50 Keynote - Michael Robertson, Founder, Linspire, MP3tunes, SIPphone, and REEF What does it take to transform a vision into a business?
Xandros
Linspire is one case of a company that gets eWeek’s love while getting virtually ignored by the rest. Linspire is not alone, however, for Xandros is pretty much the same. Once again, DesktopLinux does some legwork for Xandros:
Packt Publishing has published a book about administrating Scalix, an open source email and calendaring software package.
Needless to say, this is a very promotional item. It’s hardly even news. Also about Scalix (now under the wing of Xandros), consider this new article
She founded Scalix Corp., a maker of open source corporate e-mail software, in Palo Alto, Calif., in June 2002. Open source software is available to everyone for use free of charge for modifying.
“One of the areas where open source has thrived and grown the most is in academic environments and research. It’s a way for researchers to share knowledge and collaborate with others,” she said.
For UAB researchers, she said, open source generates that potential - a way of connecting with people doing that same research in other parts of the world.
Yesterday we wrote about the Eee PC kerkuffle in Australia. Based on the latest investigative reporting by iTWire it doesn’t look too encouraging. People begin to point fingers at Xandros and Microsoft whilst Asustek fails to deliver a convincing explanation for price anomalies. Have a look:
$50 more for Linux Eee PC 900 – what gives Asus?
[…]
Well what can one say except that this is simply outrageous behavior on the part of Asustek Australia. Treating Australian consumers like dummies in a global marketplace is no way to win friends. In fact as some of our posters have pointed out it’s a good way to lose customers. No one likes to feel as though they’re getting ripped off. Bad form Asustek, and just when everyone here were at the height of singing your praises.
Is this the future? Is so, then the following new push will hopefully fail before it starts.
Xandros expands mobile device push
[…]
The move is an indication of the growing popularity of Linux on portable devices, the two companies said.
More on this announcement here.
Viyya Technologies, Inc. (PINKSHEETS: VYON), the developer and marketer of the world’s most advanced, web-based internet content management application, announced planning for the delivery phase of its agreement with Xandros, in the EeePC NetBook market.
[…]
The EeePC designed and marketed by ASUS, is a 7″, .92kg miniaturized wireless notebook computer (NetBook) that appears to have revolutionized the “laptop” world. The EeePC was voted the “Product of the Year” in February at CeBIT in Germany and has won over 616 awards in 2008. The first 10,000 shipped to the U.S. were sold out immediately and independent analysts predict over 50 million units to be in circulation by 2011.
Viyya ought to run away from Xandros as soon as possible. It’s not a GNU/Linux distribution. It’s Xandros. It’s Ballnux. It’s neither free nor Free (gratis or libre) and it’s controlled by Microsoft, by proxy. █
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05.09.08
Posted in Microsoft, GNU/Linux, Novell, SLES/SLED, HP, Dell, xandros at 5:34 am by Roy Schestowitz
Non-Microsoft-taxable GNU/Linux works better
When Hewlett-Packard first announced that it had made SLED 10 its choice for a low-cost laptops, we were not very surprised because of the solidarity there is between Microsoft and H-P (Dell raises some doubts too). Perhaps it’s just that H-P wants to ensure Microsoft gets paid even if a GNU/Linux Ballnux distribution is sold, without alternative choices being offered (not even a blank hard drive).
Reports from Australia, where software patents are seen as valid, indicate that the Asus Eee with Xandros (or a derivatives thereof) is more expensive than that which has Windows XP. Coincidence? Maybe. Kickbacks/incentives? Maybe. Memory costs? Sounds like an excuse. Maybe the retailers just want to pocket the difference. Nobody knows for sure. Such deals have always been back room deals, until antitrust action that exposed anti-competitive agreements.
Let’s get back to the H-P laptop. Some might try to say that only SLED would work for consumers, but that is simply not true. In fact, SLED is not quite as popular or as widely-known as Ubuntu for example. Not only that, in fact, but Ubuntu also works much better on the laptop based on the following new review.
I got a mini-note 2133. It came with SUSE. I tried, repeatedly to do the most simple operations (using the software updater to update packages that had critical patches, install JDK 1.5, install Skype, etc.) and it just sucked. ZMD (the package manger) would crash, corrupt its database requiring a complete re-install to fix. It was simply aweful. I don’t know what the folks at SUSE are thinking, but coming out with software that’s more fragile than WIndows 3.1 and the registry is plain stupid.
So, I found some pointers for installing Ubuntu 8.04 on the mini-note. I installed Ubuntu and the Mini-Note turned into a great machine. I’m totally loving it. I’ve got everything except the wireless drivers working (but I’m using an EVDO modem and that works just fine…
The reviewer is happy with Ubuntu on this laptop, but sadly enough, this reviewer has already paid the Microsoft tax when a SUSE-loaded laptop got purchased. Is this the future? It needn’t be. Just boycott Novell and its products. If you don’t, Microsoft will continue to be paid for every PC shipped, no matter what operating system it runs. █
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05.07.08
Posted in Microsoft, GNU/Linux, Novell, Office Suites, Fork, OpenOffice, xandros, Linspire, Turbolinux at 11:03 pm by Roy Schestowitz
Stuck in 2007?
As stressed many times before, IANAL, but based on the consensus of opinions in Groklaw, the GPLv3 is bound to bite companies that sold out to Microsoft in the rear. Several of these companies knew very well what they were getting into, or maybe they just weren’t concerned. Here is a lovely old quote from the CEO of Xandros: (highlighted in red)
Under the third version of the General Public License, expected to be published in final form this month by the Free Software Foundation, all such deals that were not inked by March 28 are forbidden. As a result, it would appear that Xandros will not be allowed to distribute open source code licensed under GPLv3 because of its relationship with Microsoft. Typaldos said he’s not concerned. “If you are a businessperson, you can’t worry about every eventuality.“
Priceless. To quote another old article which was discussing Microsoft’s scam at the time:
Then Microsoft offers the carrot of legal absolution. “Come with us” they say “We will protect you and your customers from our lawsharks” they promise. The poor scared sods believe them and sign a piece of paper that they think will protect themselves from the “Big Brother”. This of course makes Microsoft very happy and fits right in with their divide and conqueror plans.
Sam Varghese was a little more blunt when he advised Andy Typaldos to start selling potatoes rather than selling out. In any event, what does the licence upgrade of OpenOffice.org mean to he likes of Xandros?
It is a good time to raise this question because OpenOffice 3.0, which adopted the third version of the GNU GPL, has just been released as public beta. You can find some more details here.
The OpenOffice.org Community is pleased to announce that the public beta release of OpenOffice.org 3.0 is now available. This beta release is made available to allow a broad user base to test and evaluate the next major version of OpenOffice.org, but is not recommended for production use at this stage.
The LGPLv3, especially in the context of Novell’s OpenOffice.org controversial ‘fork’ for SUSE Ballnux, was discussed before in [1, 2, 3]. Can Novell carry on doing what it does? If so, at what cost? █
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05.03.08
Posted in GNU/Linux, Apple, xandros, Linspire at 9:07 am by Roy Schestowitz
Here are just a handful of picks from the past week, starting with Linspire. It’s worth emphasising that Turbolinux has very little written about it in the English-speaking world, except some occasional security advisories that are quite universal.
Linspire
Kevin Carmoney turned from a Microsoft FUD salesman to a snake oil peddler on the face of it. Maybe it’s rude to say this, so judgment is left for the readers to make.
Here is a new press release where he uses “iPod Touch” hype in order to draw more attention to his dating service (which ought to work with… well, browsers). He obviously got his way because there is already a copy pasted in MacDailyNews (increased publicity).
Online Dating Comes to Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch
[…]
Kevin Carmony, recently-resigned CEO for desktop Linux vendor Linspire, started the free Dating DNA service in August of last year. Dating DNA provides free and open Web Services which bring 1-click compatibility scoring and other sophisticated dating features to Social Networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook, and Craigslist, as well as to Internet devices such as Apple’s iPhone and the Chumby web appliance (www.chumby.com).
Carmony believes that just like everyone’s genetic DNA is different, so too is everyone’s “dating DNA.” A person’s “dating DNA” is represented by a unique 9-digit number, exclusive to that individual. Users can get their free Dating DNA Number by visiting www.datingdna.com and answering a series of questions about themselves and their dating preferences.
For what it’s worth, Greenpeace too recently admitted picking on (or at least mentioning) Apple products for their hype, in order to attract more attention to their messages. It’s a dishonest practice though.
Xandros
Other than some Eee PC news, Xandros was mentioned for the following new press release.
Viyya Technologies and Xandros Sign LO
Viyya Technologies, Inc. (PINKSHEETS: VYON), the developer and marketer of the world’s most advanced, web-based information management application and Xandros, Inc., a leading provider of mixed-environment management tools, intuitive Linux solutions, and Scalix e-mail services, are pleased to announce the signing of a Letter of Intent. The companies plan to jointly market an integrated, Linux-based software solution specifically designed for the new Netbook and Mobile Internet Device (MID) markets.
For self-promotion-free information consider this article from Desktop Linux.
Linux desktop distribution vendor Xandros and Web content management firm Viyya Technologies have announced they will jointly market integrated, Linux-based software for “netbook” and Mobile Internet Device (MID) devices. Meanwhile, Xandros has strengthened its collaboration with Microsoft on its mixed-environment BridgeWays management tools.
When it comes to press releases from Linspire and Xandros, Linux Desktop is most typically the news site to pay attention first (or be the only one to bother).
A Scalix configuration book is being advertised by LinuxPR. Scalix is now owned by Xandros.
Packt is pleased to announce a new book on Scalix, the open source e-mail and groupware server that runs on Linux. Written by a renowned Linux author Markus Feilner, this book teaches users to install, configure and administer the Scalix Collaboration Platform.
That’s about all for this weekend, at least as far as playing nice with sellouts is concerned. That’s just what the “do-no-evil” in headlines represents, in case you are new to this site.
We began those weekly postings after OpenSUSE voices complained that we only share negative news about Novell while ignoring the rest. It’s really a case of addressing their needs, or what some politely asked for. █
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04.30.08
Posted in Microsoft, Windows, GNU/Linux, Novell, Opensuse, Servers, Interoperability, Virtualization, xandros at 6:31 am by Roy Schestowitz
We probably ought to post this as an update to a previous post which claimed that Microsoft excludes everyone but its software patent partners, at least this time around. Although the claim was made based on some shallow fast-checking and Matt Asay’s rather hasty conclusions-jumping, an early comment posted in Matt Asay’s blog begs to correct him and say that the beta from Microsoft supports Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 too. Mary Jo Foley’s post seems to concur.
For what it’s worth, here is the story Xandros tells (press release appended below) and the story Microsoft tells (also appended. It’s mainly Microsoft’s software patent partners that speak up in the press, which may prove deceiving.
In other more-or-less interesting news, mind this post about contributing to an agenda of ‘control freaks’ that foster a so-called community of developers.
I agree - letting go of control is hard. And I’ve seen many companies struggle with it - Xara, Wengo, Sun, to name a few, and other companies skirt the issue by unashamedly keeping control - Trolltech, MySQL, Alfresco, JBoss, SugarCRM come to mind. It’s a question of expectations. When a company says “sure, we’re happy to work with you, on our terms”, you know where you stand.
But starting a project on Sourceforge, putting 4 years worth of code on there, telling your team of (proprietary) software developers “now you commit there”, and then expecting that Poof! like magic little Code Gnomes start appearing from out of nowhere to make your project better is unrealistic. It really is the difference between “organic” (grown from scratch, by developers for developers) and “non-organic” (code is liberated en masse) projects. If you have absolutely no governance guidelines whatsoever, who’s the maintainer? The manager who manage[ds] the development team in your lab? How well does that work?
We mentioned in the past — on several occasions in fact — just why OpenSUSE volunteers are simply being used, exploited (more details in Groklaw, which calls it “Brains for Sale”).
It now turns out that that Novell’s principal booster (and community manager of OpenSUSE) was in Seattle, just like some other people who changed significantly after their journey [1, 2, 3, 4]. Here is just the gist of it.
Sitting in the Seattle-Tacoma airport now waiting for a flight, I’m wishing the weekend hadn’t flown by quite so quickly. I look forward to being here again next year.
Shortly afterwards came the longer post:
The announcement went out today that Novell and Microsoft are collaborating around the OpenPegasus project and other system management tools.
Thanks to Novell, Microsoft is going to be contributing to several open source projects — and making Linux easier to manage. Yes, you read that right. It will also make Windows easier to manage using Linux tools — which is going to be a breath of fresh air for Linux admins tasked with managing Windows boxen as well.
[…]
Microsoft will also be submitting some code under one of its OSI-approved licenses.
It’s not the GPL of course and NetworkWorld’s Microsoft Subnet is already poking some fun at what it calls “open source advocates” (link omitted intentionally). It will be interesting to watch how close the leadership of OpenSUSE is bound to grow to Microsoft. █
Xandros Debuts Heterogeneous Systems Center Capabilities at Microsoft Management Summit
Xandros, Inc., a leading provider of mixed-environment management tools, intuitive Linux solutions, and Scalix e-mail services, today announced the beta presentation of Xandros BridgeWays Management Packs at the Microsoft Management Summit. This release is the first in a series of BridgeWays Management Packs designed to help extend the capabilities of the Microsoft System Center to heterogeneous environments. The new management packs will enable system administrators to monitor and manage Apache and MySQL on Windows, Linux, and Solaris from within the Microsoft Systems Center Operations Manager 2007. Developed under the broad collaboration agreement between Microsoft and Xandros announced in June 2007, the management packs released today will be followed by others for such key data center applications as Oracle Database, Oracle Application Server, IBM WebSphere, and VMware.
“Xandros’ expertise in open source and its delivery of management packs, which utilize the Operations Manager 2007 Cross Platform Extensions for the management of Apache and MySQL on Windows, Linux and Solaris, provides key functionality for extending the benefits of System Center across the heterogeneous enterprise,” said Robert Reynolds, director of System Center product management at Microsoft Corp. “The rapid pace at which Xandros was able to deliver these offerings and its road map for future solutions will provide our mutual customers with a wide variety of options for managing applications across their environments through a single management experience, and we look forward to our continued work together.”
“The System Center Operations Manager 2007 Cross Platform Extensions have already delivered exciting results for Xandros. They enabled us to cut our expected development time in half as we created our management packs for Apache and MySQL running on Linux and Solaris, resulting in quicker time to market and delivery of betas to our customers today,” said Andreas Typaldos, CEO of Xandros. “This new foundation from Microsoft enabled us to focus on the development of high-level management functions for applications, with the knowledge that the Cross Platform Extensions were providing the necessary underlying interfaces to System Center Operations Manager, enabling heterogeneous management from a single location across customer environments.”
Showcased at Microsoft Management Summit
Previews of the Xandros BridgeWays Management Packs for Apache and MySQL are showcased at the Xandros booth at the Microsoft Management Summit at Las Vegas, Nevada, April 28-May 2, 2008. The beta software is also available as a free download for testing and review from the Xandros web site at www.xandros.com.
About Xandros
Xandros, Inc. is a leading provider of mixed-environment BridgeWays management tools and intuitive Linux solutions including SMB and enterprise servers, consumer and business desktops, OEM products, and mission-critical applications. Xandros subsidiary Scalix provides the premier e-mail, calendaring and messaging solutions based on open standards and open source. Xandros and Scalix foster Linux adoption with graphical products that leverage existing skill sets while providing seamless Windows-Linux interoperability. Xandros server and management tools feature workflow automation and centralized remote deployment and administration. The company is headquartered in New York with research and development facilities in Ottawa, Europe, and Mumbai, and sales and support offices worldwide. For more information, please visit www.xandros.com.
Xandros® is a registered trademark of Xandros, Inc. All other trademarks and/or registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Xandros Contact:
Xenia von Wedel
Terpin Communications Group
1-415-595-2030
Email Contact
Xandros sales and other inquiries:
1-613-842-3494
Microsoft Expands Datacenter Management Offerings With Advanced Heterogeneous and Virtualization Capabilities
New Microsoft System Center solutions for management of multivendor virtualization, operating systems and applications available for customer evaluation.
LAS VEGAS, April 29 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Today, before an audience of more than 4,000 IT professionals and partners at the Microsoft Management Summit (MMS) 2008, Bob Muglia, senior vice president of the Server and Tools Business at Microsoft Corp., outlined the next phase in the company’s strategy to enable dynamic IT organizations. As part of this strategy, Muglia announced technology innovations that are designed to expand Microsoft’s virtualization capabilities and introduced its use of open source technologies and industry standards to broaden its ability to deliver automated management of heterogeneous IT environments.
“At Microsoft we are helping redefine what it means to do IT management in the enterprise with the new capabilities we are announcing today,” Muglia said. “By taking our knowledge of the Windows environment and expanding it to address heterogeneous management needs across platforms, applications, hardware and virtualization, we are opening up a new level of opportunity for companies to drive greater efficiency, responsiveness and value for their business.”
As IT environments grow more diverse and complex across desktops, datacenters, physical and virtual deployments, and heterogeneous infrastructures spanning Windows and non-Windows environments, Microsoft has worked closely with customers to deliver a comprehensive enterprise strategy for an integrated management solution. The announcements today build on the strong, existing Microsoft System Center presence in the datacenter with key additions in the areas of cross-platform, expanded interoperability and multivendor virtualization management solutions, which are further extended by the contributions of a strong and growing partner ecosystem.
Extending Cross-Platform Management for the Datacenter
Microsoft today announced the availability of a public beta for System Center Operations Manager 2007 Cross Platform Extensions, which build on the existing Operations Manager 2007 technology and capabilities and are designed to help customers extend the value of their Microsoft System Center investments. Providing customers with a comprehensive management solution, this new end-to-end IT systems monitoring capability incorporates industry standards and proven open source technologies, including Web Services for Management (WS-Management) and OpenPegasus, extending the capabilities across both physical and virtualized Windows and non-Windows operating systems and applications. Microsoft delivers the core foundational cross-platform support out of the box for HP-UX, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Sun Solaris and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server operating systems so that partners can focus on adding their deep domain expertise in the form of management packs. Companies such as Novell Inc., Quest Software Inc. and Xandros Inc. have demonstrated their support by working to deliver monitoring abilities for applications made by organizations such as The Apache Software Foundation, MySQL AB and Oracle.
Further demonstrating support for its commitment to OpenPegasus, Microsoft also announced today that it will be joining the OpenPegasus Steering Committee and contribute code back to the open source community under the Microsoft Public License, an Open Source Initiative (OSI)-approved license.
“The System Center Operations Manager 2007 Cross Platform Extensions have already delivered exciting results for Xandros,” said Andreas Typaldos, CEO of Xandros. “They enabled us to cut our expected development time in half as we created our management packs for Apache and MySQL running on Linux and Solaris, resulting in quicker time to market and delivery of betas to our customers today. This new foundation from Microsoft enabled us to focus on the development of high-level management functions for applications, with the knowledge that the Cross Platform Extensions were providing the necessary underlying interfaces to System Center Operations Manager, enabling heterogeneous management from a single location across customer environments.”
Microsoft also delivered a beta of the updated System Center Operations Manager 2007 Connectors, based on many of the same extensible open source technology and industry standards as the Cross Platform Extensions, which provide an integrated administrative experience and the ability to interoperate and exchange System Center monitoring data with third-party management offerings such as HP OpenView and IBM Tivoli Enterprise Console.
Single Pane of Glass for Managing Virtualized and Physical IT Assets
Also delivered today was the public beta of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 (formerly code-named “Virtual Machine Manager vNext”), which enables customers to configure and deploy new virtual machines and to centrally manage their virtualized infrastructure, whether running on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 or VMware ESX Server.
System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 tightly integrates with Operations Manager 2007 to deliver a new feature called Performance and Resource Optimization (PRO). Using deep knowledge of the IT environment including operating systems, applications and hardware, Operations Manager identifies opportunities for more efficient physical and virtual resource allocation and generates “PRO tips” within the Virtual Machine Manager console. Administrators can implement these PRO tips and dynamically optimize their datacenter based upon pre-defined policies and the real-time, changing demands of users. When used in conjunction with the broad System Center management suite, System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 enables customers effectively to manage both their virtualized and physical servers and applications across their desktops and datacenters with a single set of consistent, compatible tools.
“Deploying, monitoring and managing applications across a heterogeneous IT infrastructure can present many challenges and complexities, all of which are compounded when consolidating servers, optimizing desktops and applications, or creating business continuity solutions using multiple virtualization solutions,” said Jerry Phillips, senior director of Systems Operations at Clear Channel Communications Inc. “Our experience with System Center solutions has demonstrated that Microsoft not only recognizes our need to manage our Windows datacenter infrastructure, but also non-Windows and virtual servers from other vendors. Being able to do so through a single administrative console will provide improvements in productivity and reductions in our cost of IT operations, enabling us to improve overall organizational contributions.”
A number of partners, including Brocade, Dell, EMC Corp., Emulex Corp., HP, NetQOS, QLogic Corp. and Quest, announced they will deliver management packs enabled for PRO. These management packs enable partners and customers to integrate their domain-specific knowledge directly into Virtual Machine Manager and further integrate physical and virtual management.
“Dell’s focus is to simplify IT for our customers and drive complexity out of the datacenter, and virtualization is a key technology driving this effort,” said Laurie Tolson, vice president of systems management at Dell Product Group. “By working with industry leaders like Microsoft on advances in systems management between Dell OpenManage and Microsoft Hyper-V, System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 and Windows Server 2008, we’re able to bridge the gap between the physical and virtual management spaces, providing an optimized solution that helps our customers get the most out of their hardware and virtualization investments.”
“New ways to lower energy costs, reduce server sprawl and optimize datacenters are provided by the collaboration between HP and Microsoft as virtualization goes mainstream,” said Scott Farrand, vice president of Industry Standard Server Software at HP. “Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager used alongside HP Insight software on HP ProLiant servers, and HP Server Automation software, allow customers to seamlessly manage physical and virtual environments. The combined solutions also allow customers to maximize availability, performance and flexibility of physical host servers, virtualized guest operating systems and workloads.”
Beta software of System Center Operation Manager 2007 Cross Platform Extensions, Connectors and Virtual Machine Manager 2008 were made available to attendees at the conference and can be downloaded at http://connect.microsoft.com. Customers interested in finding more information on the System Center offerings or in evaluating them through trial offerings can visit http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter and the System Center blog at http://blogs.technet.com/systemcenter.
Founded in 1975, Microsoft NASDAQ: MSFT is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.
Website: http://www.microsoft.com//
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Posted in Windows, GNU/Linux, Apple, Office Suites, KDE, Patents, GPL, Open XML, OpenOffice, FOSS, xandros at 12:03 am by Roy Schestowitz
“Hey, Steve [Jobs], just because you broke into Xerox’s store before I did and took the TV doesn’t mean I can’t go in later and steal the stereo.”
–Bill Gates, Microsoft
For a company that possibly shelters software patents and also accumulates them at a high pace, the following report seems like a begged-for punishment. Apple should really know better.
During the first four months of 2008, Apple was named as a defendant in eight patent infringement lawsuits, up from five during the same period in 2007. Only one such lawsuit was filed during the first four months of 2006, on behalf of Burst.com. Apple settled that lawsuit for $10 million last November. The first four months of 2005 also brought just one patent lawsuit against Apple. In 2004, three patent lawsuits were filed against Apple from January through the end of April.
Microsoft, by the way, finds itself in a similar situation. They all ought to just join ESP and put an end to software patents once and for all, but that’s a Utopian suggestion. In reality, on balance, Apple and Microsoft have a lot to earn in this status quo of intellectual monopolies because they are both monopolies in separate areas of technology.
“Among those that suffer from Apple’s stance on software patents you also have GNU/Linux.”Has it not been proven yet that, other than exclusion of Free software, patents on algorithms are not economically or practically viable? Bear in mind that Apple is no friend of open source (relevant articles are appended at the bottom), so it has little incentive for demanding and actually bringing change. DRM, which is a wonderful tool and excuse for platform lock-in, is an excellent analogous case.
In a public relations stunt last year, Apple publicly protested against DRM (keeping up appearances, shifting blame to music labels). It probably ought to do the same to address software patents and the troll epidemic, or else it will carry on suffering [1, 2, 3].
Among those that suffer from Apple’s stance on software patents you also have GNU/Linux. Take for example this rant from KDE, or even Compiz-Fusion. Apple patents prevent them from implementing or at least ’safely’ incorporate features into GNU/Linux desktops.
To make matters worse, there is also Apple’s stance on standards. It would be frank enough to state that, as far as standards are concerned, Apple has never truly been better than Microsoft and not much as changed.
Apple’s incompatible filesystem
[…]
What I don’t get is why didn’t they just stick with a standard UNIX-like file system? Wouldn’t this have: (a) made less work and (b) ensured UNIX compatibility?
Or is that my answer? Did Apple not want UNIX compatibility? On a number of occasions (and with a number of devices), I have had to deal with incompatibilities on the part of Apple. And the more I deal with it, the more I start feeling like Apple is like Windows back in the 90s — when I was struggling to get any given version of Windows to talk with Linux. Ultimately, I won that battle. But the OS X battle seems to be one that might be more of a challenge, and that is disturbing.
Only days ago we mentioned Steve Jobs’ snub of Linux. At the bottom of this post you’ll find evidence suggesting that Wozniak wouldn’t have been more receptive than Jobs. In addition, Apple supports OOXML and Microsoft used this as a marketing tool to change people’s minds and discriminate against ODF. To give another recent example which involves BT and/or Asustek, this bundle of an OOXML Trojan horse isn’t helping.
BT bundles MS Office with Linux laptop
[…]
This week’s award for the Most Astutely Selected Software Bundle goes to BT after the teleco tried to hook potential purchasers of Asus’ Linux-running Eee PC 900 by offering to ship it with a copy of Microsoft Office.
BT is offering the 20GB 900 for £335.99, but if anyone out there is willing to buy it for £422.34, the telco will include a copy of Office Home and Student in the box.
So now you can have Linux along with some anti-Linux poison. What a bundle. Lovely! Curious minds might speculate that the Linux-powered Eee, which uses OpenOffice.org, has urged Microsoft to offer BT some discounts so that an OpenOffice.org-incompatible/hostile product (Office 2007) should be seen as enticing.
Incidentally, the following old article came up the other day and it’s centered around the misconception that Microsoft cared for standards in the past.
Serendipity No. 4: Desperately Seeking Standards
Corporate user’s reluctance to deviate from a hardware path once it is established carved a deep trench through which flows Microsoft’s seemingly endless supply of revenue. Despite the fact that DOS, and its follow-ups, Windows 1.0 and 2.0, were genuinely inept and insulting products, even by the standards of the day, Microsoft was always granted another chance to get it right.
No matter how awful, DOS running on a PC clone was the anointed “standard,” regarded as so sacrosanct that it hardly mattered what sort of grief people were forced to put up with to use it, how long a product was delivered after it was promised, or whether it even worked as advertised when it arrived on the market. Microsoft may wish to take credit for instituting an OS standard, but history suggests that this occurred despite their best efforts, not because of them.
[…]
As Paul Saffo of the Institute of the Future suggests, this explains why Microsoft is “a company that is desperately resisting change.” According to Saffo, Microsoft is attempting to “hang onto what it’s got: making the operating system important even though we’re moving into a world where the OS becomes steadily less important…. [e]verything it’s doing is going into that. It is a classic case of a change-hating company; it is desperately trying to retard change.”
It’s all quite interesting in retrospect. █
Older articles of relevance:
There is a cost for not being a good Open Source citizen and that cost is loss of goodwill in the community. That loss is more expensive in the long run than Apple realizes.
In the speech predicting how Apple would expand its market share, Jobs showed a slide with Safari dominating almost a quarter of the market–a market shared only with a single other browser, Internet Explorer.
Lilly says he doesn’t believe that this was an omission or simplification, but instead an indication that Jobs is hoping to steal people who use Firefox and other smaller browsers in order to run a “duopoly” with Redmond.
In an interview with eWeek, Woz said that there are always people who want things to be free and the open-source movement starts with those sort of people.
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04.29.08
Posted in Red Hat, Microsoft, GNU/Linux, Novell, Deception, Patents, Ubuntu, Virtualization, Xen, xandros at 11:06 pm by Roy Schestowitz
Microsoft supports Ballnux (Ballmer-taxed GNU/Linux), but calls it Linux support
The pattern continues. What at first sight might seem like innocent news about Windows playing nice with GNU/Linux is actually more than that (or rather — less than that). As Matt Asay puts it, “Microsoft opens up to Linux for System Center, but on a very short leash.”
…one would expect Microsoft to support not only SUSE Enterprise Linux but also Ubuntu Linux and Red Hat Enterprise Linux as part of this. After all, if it’s customers you want to benefit, then go for the two Linux distributions with the biggest community appeal (Ubuntu) and corporate appeal (Red Hat). Supporting only the Linux vendor with whom you have a measure of control through a patent agreement is, well, not so open.
Only Xandros and SUSE are mentioned in the blog post that he cites. Think along the lines of:
“We’ll play nice with you, as long as you share your revenue with us.”
This was seen before. Microsoft tries to also exclude non-Ballnux Linuxes from virtualisation and a fresh reminder of this came only yesterday from the CTO of XenSource, who is now a CTO inside a Microsoft partner. He said:
At the same time, Microsoft with Hyper-V in the OS, and the Linux vendors with Xen have the opportunity to leverage the same code base through a different delivery model, where the OS virtualizes more instances of that OS, or other guests. This model is still in its early stages – the Linux vendors don’t virtualize Windows well, and Microsoft Hyper-V doesn’t support Linux particularly well.
Mind the ever-increasing intersections between Xen and Hyper-V, which favour SUSE and Windows. It’s a case of Microsoft, Novell and Citrix against VMWare and other companies that empower GNU/Linux. Is Microsoft truly that allergic to GNU/Linux or is it just being self-serving to the point of becoming anti-competitive and breaking the rules? As mentioned the other day, Microsoft will facilitate some more GNU/Linux inside its own business, so is this not hypocrisy? Here is another new report about that.
FAST: Bring on The Microsoft Linux/Unix Ties
Did someone pull a FAST one on Microsoft?
[…]
You could almost hear a collective “gulp” coming from Redmond. After all, the purchase of a company that supports Linux/Unit would seem to go against the company’s DNA, wouldn’t it?
It has truly become a little embarrassing for the company which does not eat its own dogfood, so to speak. Microsoft has deployments of GNU/Linux that are not tied to its extortions (for now) while at the same time Microsoft is ignoring these deployments and excluding them from support. Which way would it be, Microsoft? You can’t snub your #1 competitor forever. The European Commission is growing impatient. █
Related items (external):
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04.26.08
Posted in GNU/Linux, Opensuse, Google, Samsung, xandros, Linspire, Turbolinux at 1:40 am by Roy Schestowitz
The past week has been a pleasant one because there were many positive announcements for GNU/Linux, despite the Intel- and Microsoft-imposed OLPC disaster, which was rather predictable anyway (to those tracking the inhumane and systematic abuses).
Looking at OpenSUSE over the past week, here is what we have. From the company which planned to install Ubuntu, then dropped it for Foresight on KPC, now comes OpenSUSE.
PERSONAL computers with Linux pre-installed have been springing up all over the place in recent months. Now Shuttle, the Taiwanese company famous for making small but perfectly formed PCs, have gotten in on the act. I’ve been spending some time in the company of their LinuXPC SD3002Q, which is sold with openSUSE 10.3 Linux pre-installed.
Moving on to the development builds, here comes the announcement of beta 1 of OpenSUSE. The announcement is about a week old by now, but we post these roundups periodically.
KDE 4 and KDE 3.5: The openSUSE 11.0 beta 1 includes KDE 4.0.3, which includes a number of new features, fixes, and optimizations. See the KDE4 page for more info on the KDE4 branch. To help test, see the wiki for info on reporting bugs in KDE. Not quite ready to move to KDE4? No worries, the beta includes an installation option for KDE 3.5 in addition to KDE4.
There is a very nice new post from Zonker, who discusses ways of giving equal and fair chances to GNOME and the two KDEs (KDE4 might not satisfy everyone’s needs at this early stage).
Of course, it really matters very little what order the desktop choices are ordered in — the majority of users are going to pick the desktop that they’re familiar with, and it won’t matter if that choice is placed first, second, or third. The users who have no idea which desktop is which are probably going to pick the desktop that has the most appealing (for them) description — not the desktop that happens to be placed first.
Screenshots extracted from the latest beta can be found at GNUMAN.COM. Beineri is the one posting a summary of the news this week
In this week’s issue:
* OpenOffice_org 2.4 available
* 11.0 feature by feature: All you ever wanted to know!
[…]
That’s about all from OpenSUSE this week, other than the breakdown of projects sponsored by Google’s Summer of Code (SoC).
Linspire
‘CNR factory’, sometimes known as Debian derivative Ubuntu derivative Linspire, has had another CNR press release published. This time it’s Google Earth, which is free (gratis) and typically very trivial to install.
Linspire, Inc., developer of CNR.com, the free and easy to use one-click digital software delivery service for desktop Linux software, today announced the immediate availability of Google Earth for Freespire 2.0, Linspire 6.0, Ubuntu 7.04 & 7.10 (32 bit) desktop Linux users.
Just like last week, the only ones to pay attention are at DesktopLinux.com (eWeek).
Ubuntu, Linspire, and Freespire users can now install “Google Earth” with a single click, says Linspire. The desktop Linux distributor has added support for the free mapping application to its CNR (”click-n-run”) installer, a user-friendly tool currently beta-testing for a wide variety of desktop Linux distributions.
Nothing from Xandros recently, other than some articles about Asustek’s derivative of Xandros. Turbolinux got mentioned a few times in articles about Novell in China. Samsung has meanwhile posted good results despite the corruptions and the departure of the CEO. █
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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.