Opinion: Microsoft &amp; Novell vs. Linux
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Yeah, you can say that Microsoft has their flaws, and commission companies produce white papers trying to prove that point, but at what point will consumers (in this issue, mainly IT professionals) begin understanding that the cost of employing a Unix
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Microsoft and Novell officials this week defended their controversial business agreement to collaborate and promote integration between Windows and SUSE Linux. But many of those at The Open Source Business Conference remained skeptical.
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Opinion: By embracing Linux and not forsaking NetWare with its Open Enterprise Server, Novell may have made its best move in years.
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Yesterday, Novell shipped its Linux Desktop 9 product, the software maker&#39;s attempt to unseat Windows on business PCs. Developed with SUSE underpinnings and based on Kernel 2.6, Novell liberally sprinkled
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The Linux vendor partners with Microsoft in one respect and takes it head-on in another. This time, the results are mixed as Novell suffers a small quarterly loss.
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(InfoWorld) - The Linux faithful might be staring down the barrel of another round of Microsoft's legal taunts, but at last week's Linux Foundation Summit, the reaction was more ho-hum than oh-no. "The reality is that they are not going to sue a single customer," says Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation. "It would not be in their business interest. Microsoft is not going to sue their customers." Zemlin says one fact alone â that most corporate Linux users have a mixed environment with Microsoft software â will protect users from the software giant going after them based on patent infringement. The patent issue has risen to near the top of the Linux Foundation's list with the signing last year of a cross-licensing patent deal between Novell and Microsoft, in which Microsoft promised not to sue Novell Suse Linux users for patent infringement. Several similar deals have followed since with Linux vendors Xandros and Linspire. As part of its charter, the Linux Foundation offers legal-protection services for developers to safeguard the future of Linux. Microsoft claims that Linux violates 235 of its patents, although it has yet to detail what those patents are. Critics contend the issue is meant to create uncertainty among potential corporate Linux adopters. But Zemlin says the contracts are hurting Linux "only in the fact that Microsoft uses them to create a perception of risk that in reality is not there." Many others at the foundation's first-ever summit -- a collection of some of the most influential Linux kernel designers, software developers, and user companies -- took that same position. "Open source is safe for us to use: That is the message that I want to get out there," said Chris DiBona, Google's open source program manager. "I would be shocked if Microsoft didn't have patents that read on Linux," said Mark Radcliffe, a partner at law firm DLA Piper US who advises companies on intellectual property issues. "Will they enforce them is the question. Companies using Linux don't have to fear patent suits." Radcliffe thinks Microsoft is in a difficult position because it probably couldn't avoid spearing its own customers with any legal action. "I think the Microsoft [Novell] deal was a misfire," he says. "I think what Microsoft's actions recognize is that Linux is here to stay. And any competitor will use tools to try and slow it down." Others say that patents have become a real problem for the computer industry. "They are sold to the public as being about supporting innovation, but their impact on industry is a nightmare," says Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of Ubuntu Linux. "They don't help IBM, they don't help Sun, and they don't help Microsoft. But the free software guys are worried about this." So worried, that the Free Software Foundation added to its near-final GNU General Public License (GPL) 3.0 specific language that addresses patent deals that could erode the unique open source qualities of the Linux operating system. The hype has reached such proportions that Dan Frye, vice president of Linux and open technology at IBM and head of its Linux Technology Center, said during a panel session at last week's summit, "everybody, just chill when v3 comes out." GNU GPL 3.0 is slated for final release on June 29. Linux creator Linus Torvalds, who is employed by the Linux Foundation, wrote on the Linux kernel mailing list last week that the Linux kernel may stay under Version 2, which he said is a better license, but that Sun's choice of licensing for open-sourcing Solaris could influence the decision. The Linux kernel is made up of a number of components, developed by various individuals under a number of different open source licenses, which means all those stakeholders would have to agree to switch to Version 3. "People are looking to Linus for that kind of leadership," says Google's DiBona. "I think v3 will be evolutionary, which is what it is supposed to be." Others say the issue of GPL 3.0 license adoption goes much deeper than just patent concerns. "Even if v3 is better than v2, it has to be significantly better to undertake all the pain to change the kernel code [licensing]," said James Bottomley, a kernel developer and CTO of SteelEye Technology, which makes high-availability software for Linux systems. "We are not going to waste six months to change the kernel. This is a pragmatic argument, not a legal one."ADVERTISEMENTIBM Information On Demand 2006Industrial Industry Leaders, please join us at IBM's premier information management global event, IBM Information On Demand 2006, October 15-20, Anaheim, CA. More IBM business and technical solutions content in one place than ever before! Select from  over 800 sessions. Register today!
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With Novell concentrating on Linux more and more, many NetWare consumers might be facing dilemmas on where to move on for future needs.
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Back in February, Ralph Green asked me to speak at the North Texas Linux Users' Group. I discussed Linux administration and then took questions. Some one in the audience asked me about Mono. I gave a cavalier answer having a bias against it. Then someone else in the audience said that I needed to get my facts straight.
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Meanwhile, in the big leagues... Fresh from Steve Ballmer's claim Linux infringes on Microsoft IP, Microsoft has itself succumbed to another accusation it is illegally using someone else's technology.â¦
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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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Does Ubuntu point the way to the real future for desktop Linux?
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Novell has issued a response to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer&#39;s latest attack on Linux. The Linux software maker accuses Microsoft of using biased reports to back up its claims, and has launched a website to debunk the myths.
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Supporters of the free PC operating  system Linux are preparing to counter a recent Microsoft Corp.   deal which established for the first time the  principle of paying the software giant to use Linux.
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Or Celebrity Deathmatch? Comment Microsoft and Novell have recently announced a set of agreements to build, market, and support a series of new solutions to make their products work better together.â¦
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sl0wp0is0n writes &quot;Computerworld has published an interview with Microsoft&#39;s chief Linux strategist, Martin Taylor. It&#39;s interesting to find out that Microsoft thinks and predicts Novell (SuSE) will be the
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Vista relief is here With speculation building that Microsoft will bring Windows 7 forward by a year, ostensibly to staunch the loss of the Vista weary and Vistaphobes to alternative operating systems, now is a good time to look at the state of development tools for Linux.â¦
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One of the minor ironies of the Linux world is the slight disconnect between the mantra of &quot;choice&quot; the most ardent advocates use to make the case for a multitude of graphical interfaces and the state of the North American enterprise Linux market, where a