Microsoft interoperability team: Bring on Red Hat
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InfoWorld - Leaders of Microsoft&#39;s strategy to make its products more interoperable with competitive technologies said the company still hopes to strike a Linux pact with Red Hat similar to the partnerships it&#39;s forged with Linux vendors Novell, Xandros, and Linspire.
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(InfoWorld) - Cross-platform virtualization is top of the list of projects that a new joint development lab operated by Microsoft and Novell will work on, executives said. The companies expect to announce the opening of the lab on Wednesday. They firstÂ announcedÂ plans for the joint labÂ back in November 2006, when they formed a controversialÂ patent-licensing and interoperability agreement. The companies have already begun to work together on several interoperability projects, including one that will ensure that Microsoft's Windows Server 2008 will run well on Suse Linux Enterprise Server and that Suse Linux will run on Server 2008 in virtualized environments. The capability, however, won't be available until after Microsoft ships the server next year and then releases its virtualization capability within 180 days after that. The new lab is located in Cambridge, Mass., and is currently is staffed by two directors and five test engineers. The companies hope to hire three more by the end of the year. Engineers from both companies can remotely access resources in the lab and contribute to the work there, said Suzanne Forsberg, the lab's co-director for Novell. She shares director duties with Tom Hanrahan, director of Linux interoperability at Microsoft. In addition to the virtualization project, the engineers will also work on document format translator capabilities that will allow sharing between various document standards such as open XML and OpenOffice. The goal of the original agreement between Microsoft and Novell was to ensure that operating systems from the companies work better in environments where they co-exist. The lab will have 80 servers so that engineers can test how their developments will operate in an environment similar to an enterprise data center, Hanrahan said. XandrosÂ andÂ LinspireÂ have also struck partnerships with Microsoft, similar to the deal with Novell. Red Hat, however, and others Linux vendors, have said theyÂ aren't interested in partnering with Microsoft.
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As Red Hat Inc. prepares to launch the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 operating system on Wednesday, the question is again being asked whether a robust and feature-laden operating system is really needed for some computing situations.
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This is release 0.3.0 of ReactOS, an open source effort to develop a quality operating system that is compatible with applications and drivers written for the Microsoft Windows NT family of operating systems (NT4, 2000, XP, 2003).   This release holds a few records - it is the most long-awaited release of ReactOS, it is the release which was preceded by 3 Release Candidates instead of usual 2, and at last ReactOS release never had so much changes since the last one.  This release's main feature is the networking ability - it's the first release where it is possible to download and install FireFox and browse the web, get mIRC (or some other irc client) and get to #reactos to chat a bit with developers. Or install command-line Samba-TNG client via the built-in package manager and use it to share files with Windows, Linux and MacOS X (all of them support SMB protocol)  But there are a bunch of changes beneath the "networking" feature: The kernel, drivers, applications, control panel applets, Win32 subsystem, boot loader, etc, etc was changed, improved, bugfixed and hackremoved. For the detailed overview it's advised to read the Changelog.  The compatibility with applications and drivers is also improved. In order to keep track of progress, the reactos.org website now features a ReactOS Compatibility Database. It allows to quickly look up the driver's version or some software which has been tested on various ReactOS releases and see how good it performs.  Thanks a lot to our core developers who are doing a fantastic job and to those people who submit patches for various small and big things - it really helps a lot, even if it is a formatting change!  Aleksey Bragin, ReactOS Project Coordinator http://www.reactos.org/xhtml/en/
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Semantic interoperability remains a utopian vision without many practical implementations.
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InfoWorld - Open source data integration vendor Talend has been working with Microsoft to build better interoperability between Talend's Open Studio product and Microsoft's business software, Talend said Tuesday.
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Proprietary chums meets open sourcers Red Hat added a peculiar name to its Exchange software store by picking up OS morphing code from Transitive.â¦
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Red Hat has announced a partnership with Unisys and the availability of security updates to their Enterprise Linux offering today.
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Unisys, the maker of high-end servers, has joined the Red Hat Partner Community, strengthening its ties to the Linux vendor. Unisys, formerly a Windows-only shop, began offering its ES7000 servers
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What happens to open source in a cloud-based computing world?  Or when the enterprise runs dry?
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New virtual-machine technology can be used to test software patches and migrate aging Windows NT applications. By John Foley, Paula Rooney, CRN.
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New management, new credo, same old enemy Interop The virtualization hypervisor belongs in server hardware - not in the operating system. So says Xensource, friend and partner of the operating system giants Microsoft, Red Hat and Novell.â¦
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InfoWorld - The release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 in March should strengthen Red Hat&#39;s lead in the open-source software market and fend off challenges from Oracle, Microsoft, and Novell, an industry analyst said.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft says it will focus on four key areas to improve interoperability between its own software and other vendors' products. Senior Microsoft representatives met with InfoWorld on Thursday to highlight identity management; Web services and related development; collaboration between information workers and system management comprise the new interoperability focus. "We are really working on new protocols in the WS-* [spoken as Web services star] space that enable interoperability across identity systems," said Jean Paoli, Microsoftâs general manager of interoperability and XML architecture. Lat week, Microsoft vowed to integrate its CardSpace identity management system with the OpenID Web authentication standard. Paoli emphasized the move as evidence of the commitment. WS-* represents a series of Web services-related specifications for standardization in areas such as security and messaging. A lot of the issues Microsoft has in interoperability tend to fall into these four categories, said Tom Robertson, the companyâs general manager of interoperability and standards. "Those are the four areas that we're hearing about now," as needing attention, Paoli said. "It doesn't mean the list is closed." Microsoft's identity management push, however, apparently will not be centered on its previous Passport initiative for Internet security.Â  "I've not been hearing about Passport in so long," Paoli said. Microsoft plans to be creative in addressing interoperability, using a host of tools at its disposal. "It's going to mean making IP available in a range of ways," Robertson said. The company already has dabbled in open source as a way to boost interoperability, offering a bridge between the OpenDocument Format (ODF) and Microsoft's Open XML electronic document formats, said Robertson. Paoli and Robertson listed multiple Microsoft interoperability projects in the past several years, such as its work with Novell on interoperability between Windows and Novell's Suse Linux. The company's interoperability effort with Sun Microsystems also was noted. But they remained upset with IBM for what Microsoft perceives are IBM efforts to block Open XML from becoming approved as a standard by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). The two co-authored an open letter this week entitled "Interoperability, Choice and Open XML," that pointed fingers of blame at IBM. "The open letter is an effort to clearly articulate what Microsoft is trying to do," Robertson said. It is important to shine a light on what IBM is doing to block Open XML and block choice, he added. In response, an IBM representative pointed to the ConsortiumInfo.org Standards Blog, which states there is "significant commercial opposition" to Microsoft's electronic document proposal. Microsoft made a "bad bet " that ODF would fail in the marketplace, the blog stated.
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With Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.0 lined up for release next year, the open source solutions vendor has released a power pack to ensure that customers using the existing version 3.0 have access to the latest enhancements in Linux.
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What may have been one of the least inspiring demonstrations at TechEd earlier this month may actually pertain to one of the most critical issues Microsoft faces among enterprise customers:  If it truly means to achieve interoperability, it needs to be able to recognize what it can be interoperable with.
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Higgins-project developers are creating a tool equivalent to Windows CardSpace but need Microsoft's go-ahead for certain features.