Microsoft rolls out its first Linux customers, Dec 23, 2006

Microsoft attempted to put pay to any scepticism over its partnership with Novell with the revelation that Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse and AIG Technologies have become some of its first Linux customers.

I was tinkering with my Vista system the other day, when I found it wouldn't connect with a pair of NAS (Network Attached Storage) drives. I was not a happy camper.

IT managers have slammed Microsoft's claims that Linux source code infringes on its intellectual property, and have criticized Novell's deal with the company saying it grants validity to the claims.

Microsoft's push to get Windows customers to verify online that they're running a legal version of the operating system will backfire next year, driving some users to rival Linux, a market research firm says.

If you could ask Bill Gates one question, what would you ask? I spent an hour today with Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates on the company's Redmond campus. I chose to ask Bill about Microsoft's intellectual property stance against Linux and its open source developers, from the SCO Group's litigation against IBM to Steve Ballmer's recent claim Linux infringes on Microsoft patents after signing a patent indemnity with Novell.

Microsoft today claimed that there is "strong customer support" for its recent alliance with Novell.

LXer sent an Open Letter to the Waggener Edstrom Rapid Response team, and two weeks later, the answers are in (no pun intended). Check the full story for the answers a Microsoft Spokesperson gave us, which hopefully can answer some of our questions.

Microsoft has hit back at critics, including IBM, which voted against approving the software company's Office OpenXML format as an Ecma standard, claiming it is nothing more than a vendor-dictated specification that documents proprietary products via XML.

Microsoft has challenged an altruistic scheme to get pared-down computers into the laps of African school children by preparing its own software for sale on the machine.

Ecma, an international organization that helps develop standards, has approved Office Open XML (OOXML), and will submit the standard for adoption under the International Standards Organization (ISO) process.

A battle is being fought in the arcane world of international standards, with piles of money and long-term access to digital documents at stake.

This [Windows Presentation Foundation Everywhere] browser add-on enables rendering of WPF content, but "Everywhere" doesn't include Linux.

Microsoft wants to make its Windows operating system available on the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) notebook computers, OLPC chairman Nicholas Negroponte said at the NetEvents conference in Hong Kong on Saturday.

Pundits are starting to wonder if Microsoft will ever build another Vista.

... in Manhattan, among the Wall Street analysts who cover Microsoft, the shipping of Vista to corporate customers is being greeted with a collective yawn.

More so than ever before, the question for enterprises will be, to migrate to Vista or to give Linux a chance?

It is also the operating system that Microsoft is hoping will be good enough to stave off the growing threat to its business from the free and open source software world.

"If Microsoft does not back up its claims, then the company is guilty of anti-competitive practices inadmissible in Germany - and intolerable..."

Open source advocate Bruce Perens has warned Novell Inc that it risks being left behind by open source progress unless it turns its back on its recent patent covenant with Microsoft Corp.

The shape of this agreement suggests that Microsoft and Novell have learned from the best, the corporate strategic masterminds at The SCO Group.

[Steven D'Aprano, operations manager of longstanding open source services firm Cybersource], believes Microsoft may be getting ready to challenge a medium sized Linux user with a patent infringement suit.

Supporters of PC operating system Linux are preparing to counter a recent deal penned by Microsoft Corp which establishes for the first time the principle of paying the software giant for the operating system, whose licence requires it to be free.

Microsoft simply hung an anti-Linux label on a very carefully worded story about a pair of committed Microsoft partners, HP and Accenture, getting together with Microsoft to sell rather simple technology to a willing customer - whose employers, I think, should be seriously embarrassed.

What a surprise! What a shock! Ballmer thinks Linux rips off Microsoft intellectual property.

Gates: Well, let's distinguish: let's talk about free software. Free software has always been an important part of the software world, just like commercial software has been.

It's threatening to sue Linux users, which are in all likelihood its own customers as well.

Microsoft Corp., which has agreed with Novell Inc. to make Linux and Windows compatible, opened the door Thursday to a similar alliance with Red Hat Inc.

In comments confirming the open-source community's suspicions, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer Thursday declared his belief that the Linux operating system infringes on Microsoft's intellectual property.

The company, while trying to reach a patent agreement with Red Hat, has not ruled out going it alone and providing some sort of indemnification for its customers who use Red Hat Linux.

'I'm still going to tell you [to buy] Windows, Windows, Windows,' says Microsoft's CEO

The rest of the open source world will either react with hostility or try to do similar deals with Microsoft - or both.

Microsoft has once again suckered a company. It dangled pretty, shiny short-term gains in front of Novell/SUSE while, at worst, planning their long-term extinction, at best, planning to use the success of Novell/SUSE to bleed its customer base.

It didn't get as much attention as the Linux-related provisions of the Microsoft-Novell deal, but it's worth noting that the open-source Mono project is among the technologies protected under the patent agreements between the companies.

Microsoft Corp. is open to more deals like one it just agreed with Novell for open-source Linux software, but believes customers will continue to pay for software, its chief executive told an Indian newspaper.

Software maker Novell Corp. said on Tuesday Microsoft Corp. will make two separate up-front payments totaling $348 million to the company under an agreement to allow Novell's open-source Linux software to work with Windows.

Where were these guys three years ago when Bill Gates took me to task for asking whether Microsoft might do more in that area? "Tell me any area we're not doing enough," Microsoft's chairman huffed in November 2003 during a one-on-one interview in Las Vegas.

What could be brewing? Does it make any sense that Microsoft is going to embrace Linux in a big way? After all, Ballmer used to demean it.

This is stunning. This is like Red Sox fans announcing they're going to root for the Yankees.

Longtime software antagonists Microsoft Corp. and Novell Inc. have reached a technological truce that promises to smooth the way the still-dominant Windows operating system and the increasingly popular open-source Linux system work together.

"If Microsoft were doing this for altruistic reasons, it would be a first," [Free Software Foundation Europe president Georg] Greve said. "I think they are probably trying to get more machines on the Windows platform, and they may also be trying to improve relations in Brussels."

Microsoft's partners have been asking for the APIs for as long as two years, despite the software giant's contention that it was only recently asked for the code by its partners, said John Pescatore, analyst with Stamford, Conn.-based Gartner.

The EU antitrust office refused to back Microsoft's optimism that European concerns had been met. "The jury is out," said EU spokesman Jonathan Todd on Friday. "It is up to Microsoft to shoulder its own responsibility to ensure full compliance with competition rules."

Microsoft's head of platform strategy denies that open source is a credible threat to the software giant's empire, and rules out porting MS Office to Linux

I see no signs that Microsoft will be changing its way of doing business. I'm not sure they could, now, even if they wanted to. The end result will be that running Linux will be so much cheaper than running Windows that by 2011 Windows will be on its way out of the data-center.

Microsoft Windows will not suffer irreparable damage on the server side at the hands of the Linux operating system over the next five years, Gartner analyst George Weiss told attendees at the Gartner Open Source Summit here September 28.

In fact, in terms of worldwide server operating system revenue, Linux would come in below both Windows and Unix by 2011 in spite of its enormous growth, he told attendees in a session entitled "Enterprise Linux: Has it Arrived?"

The U.S. government sought to influence the European Commission over Microsoft's antitrust case, according to Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes.

Marking what could have been a summer-long hiatus in its "Get the Facts" campaign, Microsoft is re-igniting the flames on the argument over whether enterprises spend less to manage Windows systems than Linux systems.

Microsoft seemingly has backed off from trumpeting its “Get the Facts” studies, as of late. But that doesn’t mean the company has ceased commissioning research outfits to perform its anti-Linux dirty work.

Seriously, how many times must users and businesses be kicked in the face before they buy a clue? Before they realize that they don't have to stay in the abusive Microsoft relationship. The answer seems to be: an unlimited number of times.

I've been tracking the evolution of Microsoft FUD for nearly 10 years now, and wrote a short history of the subject a few months back. But even I was impressed when I came across Microsoft's latest effort in this department: it's truly a masterpiece of its kind.

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