Q&A: Microsoft's Linux strategist Martin Taylor
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With a year under his belt as Microsoft Corp.'s chief Linux strategist, Martin Taylor has a lot to say about where he sees Linux going and how Microsoft plans to compete with the open-source operating system.
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Out Googling Google on bespoke scale Comment Should Microsoft's bid for Yahoo! go through, the combined company would face one very major infrastructure question - how far is it willing to go in the war against Google?â¦Learn &amp; Contribute, Live &amp; Online - The Register Debates Green Computing
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Home PC users will never choose Linux over Windows until it is adopted in the workplace. Whether Windows is a generic term and can be subject to copyright is all very interesting, as are some of the other
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IBM VP Scott Handy describes strategy and priority for Linux and open-source initiatives.
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InformationWeek: A Desktop Pipeline reviewer invites readers to step into the SP2 waters, and offers some suggestions on how to do it as safely as possible.
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In the spirit of being at the university, the Microsoft chairman also talked about when open-source licenses make sense. By Aaron Ricadela.
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(InfoWorld) - Itâs not easy being Ben Fathi. As corporate vice president of Microsoftâs Security Technology Unit, Fathi took the place of longtime STU leader Mike Nash in March amid a larger management shake-up just days after Microsoft announced that the shipment date for Vista was slipping yet again. After Nashâs high-profile tenure, Fathiâs charge is more subtle: building what he calls a âtrust ecosystemâ around Vista and its new security features and promoting the companyâs secure development practices. But first he must help get Vista out the door. Fathi sat down to talk with InfoWorld Senior Editor Paul Roberts at the recent Security Standard Conference in Boston about Vistaâs progress, and the world after Vista. InfoWorld: Recently thereâs been some back and forth with Symantec about issues such as Vistaâs Kernel Patch Protection feature for 64-bit systems, as well as some public criticism of Vista code for having security holes. What should enterprise folks make of that? Ben Fathi: First, on the paper Symantec published: We thank them for their input. I think itâs unusual for a partner to go public with a paper like this on a beta product, but they did identify a few issues. To the best of my knowledge, all those were already fixed in more recent beta releases. We love to hear feedback on beta products. Thatâs why weâre in beta. Itâs a test. Weâll fix them as long as they report them to us. As for the kernel patching, we fundamentally believe that the current model of kernel patching is broken and not sustainable. We never recommended it or supported it on any version of our operating systems. As weâve been telling our vendor partners, this is the only chance we have, as 64-bit computing becomes available, to start with a clean architecture and build on top of that. We want to work with you to find ways to extend the kernel functionality by having a clean architecture, APIs, and filters. â¦ instead of patching instructions and data structures in the kernel. In the long term, what we want to do is move a lot of these functionalities to a hypervisor that sits under the kernel to make the kernel even smaller and the trusted computing base even more secure. We still have a window of opportunity here. â¦ and weâre working with two or three vendors in the space to come up with that kind of architecture. One of the other comments thatâs been made is that [Kernel Patch Protection] is anti-trust. That weâll go back in with our own products and get around it. Thatâs absolutely not true. Weâd never do that. IW: You recently patched a beta version of Vista. Is it a bad sign that youâre patching beta Vista? BF: I believe that Vista is significantly more secure than any version of XP or anything else weâve shipped in the past. Just SDL (secure development lifecycle) in general and the process of penetration testing and hardening kernel services. These all created a stronger, defense in depth strategy. What I would say is, Yeah, there will be patches and vulnerabilities as we move forward. What weâre hoping is that by creating these layers of defense, weâre giving customers, especially enterprise customers, a longer time to test and make sure things are not broken. IW: Do you see your job description and responsibilities changing after Vista? BF: There are six different areas that we call âBig Betsâ that have been identified in my division. I will mention two. The first, Application ID, is a way to identify an application that includes an executable, the library it uses, configuration files, registry settings, any patches that are applied to it. So youâll have a cryptographically signed version of the application, and youâll be able to identify that and whitelist or blacklist that. When we talk about a trust ecosystem today, the ability to trust people based on an ID and trust machines based on an ID, we canât do that with applications. If itâs called powerpoint.exe, we go and run it. So having strong IDs based on the application and [making] sure they havenât been tampered with after download is an important investment for us. The second area is isolation. Creating guest operating systems that sit on top of hypervisors allow us to create better isolation mechanisms so that even if malware comes in, it only affects one subset of the machine and not everything else. Weâve done some great work on server hypervisors and server virtualization. We need to extend that to the client. Weâre seeing partners do that already, and so weâre going to invest in that space.
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Linux kernel maintainer Andrew Morton last week revealed some of his plans for the next kernel version, a few days after the final release of Linux 2.6.20.
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BOSTON -- MicrosoftÂ Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer addressed a gathering of software industry leaders here on Wednesday, touting his company's vision for a bright future, while casting doubt on alternatives to his company's Windows operating system, in particular Linux.
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Ziff Davis - The number of enterprises migrating from Windows to Linux is a growing concern for Microsoft. But it's not a one-way street. Some companies&#151;unhappy with their open-source experience&#151;are making the switch back to Windows.
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Blog: Instead of grand plans, Microsoft talks nuts and bolts strategy at the Tech Ed conference in Orlando.
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I can't urge you strongly enough to read the article entitled How Vista Lets Microsoft Lock Users In. It details how Microsoft has built into Vista the "trusted computing" ability to lock down Office files via DRM such that no unauthorized document reader will be able to decrypt and read them. This is perhaps one of the biggest hidden weapons Microsoft has in its arsenal that could sabotage Linux and OpenOffice.org if Microsoft succeeds in its attempt to plug SUSE and all Novell's "interoperability" bonuses.   Think of this, if you will, as the Tivoization of Office files, only with malicious intent.  Microsoft could, indeed, open up the document format completely and swear before God that it will never sue anyone for patent infringement.  However, this does not prevent Microsoft from locking Office files in such a way that only Vista users can read them.  No one else will be able to do so without the proper authorization, thus rendering the open format and Microsoft compatibility entirely meaningless.
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Welcome to a new blog here at LinuxJournal.com, "Linux Products Insider".  I'm James Gray, Products Editor at Linux Journal.  After the spam has been deencrusted and hucksters repelled, I'll use this space to update you on the latest and greatest products and services that I find using my secret channels.  This week, I had the chance to take part in a press conference with Mark Shuttleworth, Founder of Ubuntu.  Read on to learn why Shuttleworth's is so fired up about the new Ubuntu 7.10 "Gutsy Gibbon" (available this week), as well as why he thinks Ubuntu is so darned successful.
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This week we have seen numerous reports (a href=&quot;http://www.tectonic.co.za/view.php?id=352&quot;&gt;see here) in the trade press referring to Gartner UK analyst Annette Jump claiming that pre-installing Linux on PCs encourages piracy of Windows.
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BetaNews has an interview with Microsoft&#39;s Gary Schare, which includes some discussion about Mozilla Firefox. The Director of Windows Product Management says that Microsoft is looking towards its browser add
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But middleware will make it chatty Analysis The debate over who in the Linux camp will next get into bed with Microsoft is back on, after Red Hat's chief executive admitted to holding patent talks.â¦
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Blog: A developer writes that virtualization represents a threat to Microsoft's control of the desktop and licensing restrictions are one way to try to maintain its grip.