Microsoft Acknowledges Linux Threat to Windows Client, Aug 04, 2009

Microsoft for the first time has named Linux distributors Red Hat and Canonical as competitors to its Windows client business in its annual filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The submission by Microsoft of twenty thousand lines of code to the Kernel has, predictably, caused many an eyebrow to arch. The phrase “beware Greeks bearing gifts” comes swiftly to mind. Perhaps what was more interesting was Linus Torvalds’ reaction. After all, this is not an inconsequential flame war about using Gnome or KDE.

Microsoft is releasing three Microsoft-developed Linux drivers to the Linux community for possible inclusion in the Linux source tree.

Want to see a company snatch defeat from the jaws of victory? Just watch Microsoft execute its netbook game plan against Linux.

Is Microsoft a friend or foe of open source? Going by the company's actions, Microsoft can't seem to decide whether to make love or war. But if it's war, Microsoft appears to lack the legal weaponry to defeat or even disturb its adversaries.

Microsoft is reportedly taking a version of its XP OS intended for entry-level PCs, and repurposing its post-Vista incarnation to run netbooks. Its name and functionality do little good for the company's brand.

Microsoft knew this day was coming. This was the reason it desperately wanted — no, needed — to take down Netscape in 1996. Netscape wasn’t just trying to build a program for reading text and photos across a network of connected computers. Netscape was trying to build a new platform - the ultimate platform - to run software and share information instantly and on a global scale. And no one understood that better than Bill Gates.

You have to wonder if Microsoft really knows what it’s doing. There’s a lot of hoo-hah around the Web about Windows 7, and how it’s going to fix Vista’s problems. Thing is, the signs are that it won’t -- and that Apple will be the biggest winner. Linux is a winner too.

One new survey of more than 1100 IT professionals from small, mid-sized, and large IT organisations worldwide has revealed that an astonishing 84 percent have absolutely no plans to upgrade to Windows 7 during the course of the next year - and that in the face of some pretty encouraging and enthusiastic reports from beta testers so far.

There is no doubt why Microsoft won this round of the Netbook wars. There are, at Fry’s, a number of Netbooks on offer. None ran Linux. All ran Windows. The salesman was a Linux enthusiast, however, and was able to explain just why you can’t get Ubuntu there.

Microsoft is a very big company, so perhaps it's not surprising that it hasn't been able to articulate a coherent message around open-source software.

As much as Microsoft loves to grinch about Linux, they've made significant changes over the years to compete with it--and will abandon it altogether to maintain their competitive edge. Windows 7 will be the last Windows product.

Samba project leader Jeremy Allison has accused Microsoft of trying to prevent people using and distributing software under the GNU General Public Licence, by forcing cross-patent licensing deals.

A couple of months back, at Australia's national Linux conference, a young Microsoft employee sat down discussed ways in which Microsoft has contributed to open source.

Melinda Gates recently had some rather interesting things to say about her husband and the technology in her home. According to Gates, both she and Bill have strict rules forbidding their children from having an iPod or iPhone.

Microsoft’s lawsuit against TomTom is aimed at Linux but it won’t deter the open source operating system’s success in the mobile device market, said Open Invention Network’s CEO.

Microsoft's patent-infringement suit against TomTom is a private dispute and doesn't appear aimed at Linux or open-source software.

Among the more interesting tidbits from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's speech to investors earlier this week was that Microsoft is preparing to release an inexpensive, low-end version of Windows Server with stripped-down functionality.

For years, Microsoft has waved around the FUD stick concerning the 200+ patents it claimed to hold that Linux implementations supposedly infringed upon. However, when confronted, the company never seemed willing to name a single such patent. However, it looks like the company is starting to swing that stick with a bit more force.

Microsoft has gone and done it, they've filed suit in U.S. District Court claiming Linux violates their patents.

Microsoft's CEO Steve Ballmer had some interesting things to say yesterday about which companies Microsoft sees as its competitors in the client operating system space. You'd think Apple was their number one competitor - and you'd be wrong. Microsoft sees two other competitors as their primary adversaries: piracy and Linux.

Microsoft has disposed of Seinfeld's toothbrush in the bathroom and replaced it with a shiny new one.

Like sands through the hourglass, so are the stories of Microsoft mergers. Once more, rumors are swirling that Microsoft might buy Citrix. By my count, this is the fifth time this particular rumor has emerged. In addition, though, this time around I'm hearing that some people think Microsoft might buy Novell.

Imagine a world without Linux. There'd be no cute Tux penguin or any notion of software freedom day. Netbooks would not have come about. But more strikingly, there wouldn't be the modern powerful tools that Windows systems administrators have come to love. That's right; Linux is keeping Microsoft honest and I'm going to expose the new Windows Small Business Server for what it is, along with those who resell it.

The New York Times published an article on Friday about Windows Vista that included this: "The main problem with Vista, Microsoft said, was that given the delays, uncertainty and significant changes in the software, the rest of the industry was not ready when Vista finally arrived."

Microsoft’s first commercial in a campaign intended to reinvigorate the public’s perception of its Windows operating system debuted Thursday night. In it comedian Jerry Seinfeld helps recently retired Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates pick out a pair of shoes at a discount shoe store in an ordinary mall.

BusinessWeek reports that HP, the world’s biggest PC company, is so troubled by Vista’s ‘tepid reception’ and Apple’s resurgence that it is developing its own operating system. Meanwhile a New York Times columnist writes on his blog that Windows is “already dying a death by a thousand cuts.”

If you needed any further testament to the colossal failure that is Microsoft Windows Vista, just read this Wall Street Journal article detailing PC manufacturers attempts to design around Vista's shortcomings, shortcomings that no amount of marketing are going to fix.

IE8 plays catch-up in other areas, too. The Address Bar replicates Firefox 3's Awesome Bar; no longer used just for typing in addresses, it searches your history and RSS feeds to provide alternative results.

Microsoft's hiring of Jerry Seinfeld as a Windows Vista pitchman had the Linux community in stitches last week. The prevailing wisdom seems to be that it's an indication Windows has jumped the shark. Dell's plans to ship a subnotebook with Ubuntu gave bloggers a further boost.

Microsoft and Novell today announced an expansion of their 2006 interoperability agreement, which included a controversial covenant not to sue over patent infringement.

Vista’s death march picked up some pace yesterday, after a metrics researcher revealed that nearly 35 per cent of PCs built to run the Windows operating system have been downgraded to XP.

Dell, Intel and their partners announced last week new technologies that represent major leaps forward for mobility. The companies seem to have discovered the secret to making such bold leaps: Cut Microsoft out of the deal.

Microsoft's campaign to show that Windows Vista has received an unfair rap continued Tuesday with the launch of its Mojave Experiment Website, which showcases videos from a focus group Microsoft held in San Francisco earlier this month.

If Microsoft has a beating heart then the senior director of Microsoft platform strategy Sam Ramji reckons he's found it.

'Momentum is good' for Mac OS X, but adoption rates low, research firm says

Pledging "open and honest" work with the community, the software giant throws in with Apache and other groups -- but not everyone is likely to be as welcoming.

Mike Gunderloy spent over a decade consulting for Microsoft, helping to build the Access and Excel versions of Microsoft Office 97 and 2000, as well as SQL Server, C#, and ASP.Net. A series of Microsoft moves, most particularly its "patent land-grab," has pushed Gunderloy away from Microsoft to the point that he's now "100 percent Microsoft-free" and has embraced a variety of open-source projects and programming languages.

At OSCON, Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Canonical, says he doubts Microsoft would file a claim against Linux developers.

Microsoft's recent announcement that it will allow low-cost PC makers to ship computers with XP make it far more likely that Microsoft will deliver a Lite version of Windows 7 --- most likely by June, 2010.

Congratulations Linux. Yesterday was the day you made Microsoft blink. Microsoft has changed its mind and has decided to keep XP Home around after all.

It was just over a year ago that Microsoft Corp. dropped a bombshell of a claim: users of Linux and open-source software were unwittingly violating as many as 235 Microsoft software patents.

Details of Microsoft’s recently announced plan to extend the life of Windows XP for ultra low-cost PCs are trickling out. IDG News got its hands on what it says are Microsoft documents outlining the program for PC manufacturers.

Microsoft on Thursday struck a deal to make its Windows operating system available on OLPC’s low-cost XO laptops, intended to bring technology to the world’s poor.

Details of Microsof's recently announced plan to extend the life of Windows XP for ultra low-cost PCs are trickling out. IDG News got its hands on what it says are Microsoft documents outlining the program for PC manufacturers.

Regular readers will know that I’ve rallied against Microsoft’s so-called “Get the facts” site for the last fortnight. Rather than give legitimate comparisons facing off Windows servers vs Linux options the site opts for bunkum and hogwash with sensational headlines that have no underlying substance. Here’s the state of play.

Bob Muglia, who handles servers and tools for Microsoft, has announced a further expansion of system management at Microsoft's Management Summit 2008. With the usual modesty we have come to expect of Microsoft, Muglia said in Las Vegas that IT management and enterprises would be re-defined – nothing more, nothing less.

Microsoft PR threw down the gauntlet; “see how Windows Server 2008 stacks up versus Linux,” they say. There’s a “Get the Facts” URL being promoted with claims of direct comparisons between the two operating systems. Anyone reading the headlines alone could be fooled into thinking there’s substance to be found.

Linux and Unix software from Microsoft? That will be one of the upshots of Microsoft's proposed buyout of Fast Search & Transfer, Microsoft officials said today. But that doesn't mean you'll see Microsoft software shifting platforms.

At the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle, Bill Gates gave his thoughts on where the pharmaceutical industry was going, and where it should be going. However, he also slipped up a bit and criticized the GNU General Public License (GPL).

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