NT's Retirement Opens Windows For Linux, Dec 29, 2004

Friday's demise of general support for Microsoft's Windows NT 4.0 may give alternate operating systems, such as Linux, a temporary opportunity.

Unless the European court that upheld European sanctions against Microsoft demands different remedies than U.S. courts did, it won't do much to level the playing field for open-source products, one open-source advocate says.

RealNetworks, Novell, Samba and others applauded a European court's ruling this week against Microsoft but agreed it's still unclear how the terms and conditions will impact their interests.

Fending off open source software. This is about server software but now increasingly also about the desktop, in the form of the Linux OS, the Firefox browser and OpenOffice.org and its commercial variants.

A European court on Wednesday dealt a blow to Microsoft, ordering the company to start offering a version of Windows without a bundled-in media player.

The following is a partial transcript of the resulting exchange between BS&T's Ivan Schneider and Microsoft's Martin Taylor, general manager, platform strategy, on the topics of TCO, indemnification, and flexibility in IT deployments.

A decision on whether to suspend the European Commission's anticompetition sanctions against Microsoft pending appeal is expected to come in the first half of next week, according to a source close to the company.

Microsoft is banking on the power of peer reviews by parading a string of customers who dumped Linux for Windows but there's something amiss

Under pressure from local suppliers and central government, Beijing municipal government has instead opted to replace Microsoft Office with Kingsoft WPS and Windows with Red Flag Linux

Webmaster's note: Not Linux news per se, but, well, you know ...

Some 80,000 computers at the Department for Work and Pensions went down during 'a routine software upgrade' of its Microsoft machines this week

The alternative desktop movement is gathering momentum, so much so that 2004 could prove to be one of the most challenging years in Microsoft's history.

Microsoft and the man who epitomises its culture and values, Bill Gates, are easy targets. The company's stumblings and mistakes are leapt on with glee and picked over ad nauseam by a vast army of critics ranging from those who dislike its products to those who regard it as the epitome of capitalism at its most rapacious.

Microsoft Jamaica has challenged an assertion by a Jamaican government agency that the use of software offered by its competitors - open systems - could possibly be more economical, with Microsoft claiming that in most instances, the buyer of utility alternatives ends up paying more.

Analysts believe Steve Ballmer's claim that governments who use Linux face the threat of patent lawsuits could rebound on Microsoft, while open-source vendors accuse it of spreading more fear, uncertainty and doubt

Microsoft Corp. Chief Operating Officer Steve Ballmer on Thursday warned Asian governments that they could face intellectual rights-infringement lawsuits for using rival open-source operating platforms such as Linux.

Gamers who modify Xboxes usually do so either to be able to cheat on games or use pirated copies, although some also have made changes so they can use the Xbox for other functions, from running Linux to playing music.

Microsoft Corp. developed policies stressing the systematic destruction of internal e-mails and other documents crucial to lawsuits it has faced in recent years, a California software company alleges.

Microsoft made a minority investment Monday in Unix/Linux management vendor Vintela.

Microsoft is hoping NetWare users will want to switch to its software now that Novell is moving toward Linux.

Microsoft's approach also represents a calculated response to Linux. The open-source operating system has done well in focused server roles, in part because IT professionals can disassemble the kernel and recombine the pieces required to create a purpose-built version of Linux. In so doing, it gives administrators a lot more flexibility than Windows allows today.

The software giant has been accused of claiming IP rights over many of the Internet's basic protocols, but Microsoft claims it's a case of 'honest confusion'

According to a Novell press release, today's settlement is "related to Novell's NetWare operating system". It's actually around a specific product, NDS for Windows NT, which Novell introduced several years ago, and which Microsoft effectively killed.

As Microsoft preps another version of its Office productivity suite, a small group of software vendors waits for an opening in the competitive landscape. However, analysts suggest that the greatest competition to Microsoft's updated software remains older versions of Office.

Microsoft says its IP indemnification provides better protection than that offered by rivals Red Hat and Novell - but not all lawyers agree

Steve Ballmer's letter to customers said nothing about the widespread reality of tens of thousands of Microsoft customers who are eager to deploy BOTH Windows and Linux.

Microsoft's CEO argues that Windows is cheaper and more secure than its open-source rival. Do the facts support him?

Now that Steve Ballmer and company have given you all the facts you need to compare Windows and Linux, allow me to add just one little tidbit.

Software market watchers are now taking more serious assessments of the penguin versus butterfly competition, as Microsoft matures and Linux continues to put large growth numbers on the board.

What kind of E-mail is landing in Martin Taylor’s in-box right about now? It’s probably not unlike some of the messages I’ve been getting in response to a story I wrote about Steve Ballmer’s Oct. 27 treatise comparing Windows to Linux

Microsoft has renewed its attack on Linux, its primary rival in the business software market, with Chief Executive Steve Ballmer telling customers in a letter sent the freely available rival operating system is less secure and more costly to maintain.

At Gartner Symposium/ITxpo, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer tried to disabuse the thousands of IT executives attending the conference of two notions: Windows software is hopelessly insecure and Linux offers a better TCO (total cost of ownership) than Windows

Microsoft's Steve Ballmer argued that the true amount of shifting from Microsoft to Linux in places like Europe and Asia has been overstated in the media.

``Linux is clearly a worry,'' said Robert Mattson, an analyst in West Conshohocken, Pennsylvania, at Gartmore Group, which manages $77 billion including Microsoft shares. ``I can't understand anyone who says it isn't. Microsoft's growth rate would have been faster had Linux not been there.''

This week's release of a new media-focused version of Windows shows that, despite five years of antitrust battles, Microsoft plans to use its near-monopoly power to crush its rivals.

Management guru Clayton Christensen has a paradoxical answer for Microsoft to the challenge posed by open source: Invest in Linux applications for handheld devices

Momentum or coincidence? You decide. The pressure on Redmond seems to be intensifying, following a week-long string of "Is-there-life-after-Microsoft?" headlines: Gartner declaring Windows' permanent beta status, Ballmer acknowledging StarOffice challenges in Europe, IE-only developers lamenting their futures, plus a lot of pro-Firefox coverage.

There's a new rivalry brewing between Seattle and Portland, and it makes the Sonics and Trail Blazers look like kissing cousins.

Portland has quietly become the world hub for Linux, computer software that's now the biggest threat to Microsoft.

Momentum or coincidence? You decide. The pressure on Redmond seems to be intensifying, following a week-long string of "Is-there-life-after-Microsoft?" headlines: Gartner declaring Windows' permanent beta status, Ballmer acknowledging StarOffice challenges in Europe, IE-only developers lamenting their futures, plus a lot of pro-Firefox coverage.

With the release of Windows XP Starter Edition, Linux on the desktop will have a fight on its hands, industry analysts have predicted.

According to analyst firm Gartner, Microsoft's release of a cut-down Windows XP to several countries in Asia Pacific, Russia and India is a sign that the company is planning to fight Linux for market share on new PCs in these emerging markets.

Microsoft is developing versions of Windows with only a subset of its code base, designed for specific server tasks. The intention is to reduce maintenance costs and create products that are less vulnerable to attack.

The new "role-based" products may appear in 2007, when the server version of Longhorn is scheduled for release. Offering a smaller code base would mark a significant technical shift for Microsoft and could help it to better address the competitive threat posed by Linux. But it also presents significant engineering challenges for the company, industry analysts said.

Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates, during an appearance here Friday at the Computer History Museum, expressed no fear of Linux usurping Windows in the software industry.

Speaking to technologists, Gates touched briefly on a number of topics ranging from Linux to Web services to grid computing and digital rights management. As far as Linux goes, Microsoft has seen other potential threats to its dominance come and go, Gates stressed.

As part of a re-examination, the U.S. Patent Office has issued a preliminary rejection for a patent previously granted to Microsoft for a Windows file format.

The agency ruled that, based on existing inventions at the time, the ideas behind the FAT (File Allocation Table) patent would have been obvious and are therefore not subject to patent. Microsoft now has 90 days to respond to the filing and make its case for why the patent should be upheld.

Microsoft does not need Longhorn to compete with the growing threat from Linux, according to one of the software giant's senior executives.

In an exclusive interview with vnunet.com Martin Taylor, Microsoft's general manager of platform strategy, said that, even without its next-generation Windows operating system, Microsoft can still fight off the penguin.

Microsoft is fighting to win over the minds and pocketbooks of IT decision makers inch by inch with its latest "Get the Facts" on Linux effort and an extension of its mainframe migration resource site.

The latest moves come after the company warned that software licensing revenue would be seasonal and would show only modest growth in the first quarter of 2005.

Microsoft will offer a low-cost, localised version of its Windows XP operating system in India to tap the large market potential offered by the country of 1 billion people, most of whom do not speak English.

The Windows XP Starter Edition, designed for first-time personal computer users in India's national language, Hindi, will be "significantly cheaper" than the Windows XP, said Rajeev Kaul, managing director of Microsoft India.

Microsoft is to dip a third toe into the open-source waters, adding a collaborative creation program to the list of Microsoft efforts that the company is freely sharing.

The company is making available the code for FlexWiki, software for creating "Wikis" web pages designed to cover a topic by allowing any number of users to create and edit content.

Microsoft has announced that Windows XP Starter Edition is to be made available in Russia, in an effort to combat piracy and the rise of Linux

Microsoft will release a low-price version of Windows in Russia by the end of the year, in an effort to wean Russian consumers off pirated software and Linux.

These two words were part of a recent NewsForge headline, and to me they were the two most important words in it. For many years Microsoft execs have taken an "our way or the highway" attitude toward almost everything. Now they seem to realize that, like it or not, Microsoft is not the only software company in the world, and Windows is not the world's only operating system.

There is still plenty of institutional hatred within Microsoft for Linux, free software, and open source. The GPL is still evil and will destroy the software business if it continues its viral spread. But the fact that Microsoft is willing to negotiate with people who produce that evil code at all represents an admission, however grudging, that open source is popular enough with major IT users and vendors that it must be accepted as a fact of life not only today but for the foreseeable future.

Which Linux loss bothered you the most?

It depends on how you define a loss. If it's a specific opportunity, I don't feel good about Munich mostly because it keeps coming up.

But a year or so into this, I still get asked. It's like Jason or Freddy of my childhood. You put him in the lake, and he keeps coming back.

Webmaster's note: Not Linux news per-se, but since it mentions a pilot having to take 'evasive action', definitely newsworthy

A three-hour system shutdown that affected South California's airports was reportedly caused by a technician who failed to reboot an MS-based system

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