Microsoft and Novell have made good on their 2006 interoperability pact. Microsoft and Novell jointly announced that Novell’s SUSE Linux Enterprise has been optimized to run as an “enlightened” guest on Microsoft’s Hyper-V hypervisor platform. Windows Server 2008 customers have been able to run as a virtualized guest on SUSE since last June, when SUSE became the first member of Microsoft’s Server Virtualization Validation Program, which Novell has helped to fine-tune. Now SUSE is optimized to run on Microsoft’s Hyper-V as well.
plain and simple, smart move. I am glad to see that Suse will play well with server 2008’s hyper V. a lot of people gave Novel a hard time for partnering up with MS in 06, but in reality the benefits are worth it, especialy in the corporate world. well done
I think the concerns are not around a technical partnership assuming it results in free and open source code unencumbered by patents that goes into various upstream project instead of a proprietary distribution specific deal.
The real concern is around the patent deal which creates a unhealthy imbalance as expressed by Eben Moglen from Software Freedom Law Center in
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YExl9ojclo
The only thing you hurt when one refuses to ‘play ball’ with the establishment is yourself. There are patents on technology; some of them legitimate, others just owned by patent trolling companies. Until Linux vendors work as official software companies and work with other vendors to sort this issue out – it helps no one doing what Red Hat is doing, namely, sitting on the side lines spitting and cursing at Microsoft/Novell.
Microsoft technology is here to stay whether Red Hat and the open source devotee’s on this website like it or not.If you want to compete with Microsoft – create a better and superior widget. When Microsoft create a product, stop spitting and cursing at the customers who purchase it or Microsoft – get a copy of the product yourself and analyse it. Find out why customers want it, and create a better version of it.
Take Microsoft Office/Sharepoint integration, why don’t we see an OpenOffice.org version of that? why don’t we see an end to end solution in the opensource world to the Office System? too much time spitting at Microsoft than doing something productive? too much complaining about patents than listening and addressing what customers needs are?
Edited 2008-09-20 11:03 UTC
Real interoperability has nothing to do with shady patent deals. Standards should be available in a open royalty free manner.
Red Hat recently did something that promotes that
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/04/red_hat_buys_qumranet/print…
In among all these press releases is the loss of real worth. Where is the source code and patches?
Microsoft makes working with sharepoint a big pain for anybody else other than Windows however it can be done. A few alternatives are
http://marketing20.blogspot.com/2006/11/o3spaces-open-source-sharep…
http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2008/07/alfresco_…
The notion that only way to interoperate is to suck up to patent deals and screw upstream projects is despicable.
Edited 2008-09-20 13:04 UTC
Replace Sharepoint on the server with Alfresco.
In fact, replace the whole server with a Linux server, and then put Alfresco and OpenXchange on that.
There is your no-lockout end-to-end collaboration and e-mail system.
Much cheaper too!
http://www.cmswire.com/cms/enterprise-20/red-hat-alfresco-sharepoin…
http://weblog.infoworld.com/stratdev/archives/2008/07/open_source_e…
http://www.open-xchange.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page
I’m sure there are a number of other open source solutions … but the essential smart move is to get rid of sharepoint itself.
“Replace Sharepoint on the server with Alfresco.”
Thanks for this. Never heard of Alfresco. Which brings us to about the biggest issue of Linux and OSS. The big tech magazines that the CIO’s and such read do not mention such things. Hell, I never heard of it and I am always looking for new things. Advertising is what it takes to get the word out, and RH needs to do more of that for everything they may support. Until it gets out there more, and there are print ads and the like, it will remain in the background and not heard of. RedHat loves to advertise the training and certs, which they make money off of, and RHEL, which they make money off of, but they never advertise things that are free and do not pay. Like Alfresco…which looks to be an awesome product.
But the problem is – you never addressed the issue which I said; there needs to be integrated between OpenOffice.org and the said sharepoint alternative – in your example Alfresco. Unless there is the same level of integration between Alfresco and OpenOffice.org as there is with Sharepoint and Office on the client, people aren’t going to use it.
I appreciate the link to Alfresco, but it doesn’t address the requirements of what I said in the previous post – for a drop in replacement replacement for Sharepoint/Office system that is feature for feature equal or superior to what Microsoft offers.
Ask and you shall receive.
https://oo-plugin-for-alfresco.dev.java.net/
Edited 2008-09-21 12:43 UTC
You are saying that in order to be part of the solution one must become part of the problem. That makes no sense. Thanks Lord Vader, but no thanks.
Welcome to the real world. You’ll find it quite different from the world you dreamed of in your youth or learned about in college.
Sometimes sitting down with your enemy is the right choice for moving things forward. Sometimes you have to get dirty and play the game rather than shout from the sidelines. Sometimes you have to take one step back before you can take two steps forwards.
It’s not easy, it’s not fun and it’s not got for your soul or karma and you certainly cannot keep you smug moral superiority, but often it’s the pragmatically correct thing to do. There are times when you simply have to chose between taking the moral high ground and getting things done.
Is that truth? Or is it a cop out? You know, “what everyone does”. In my 45 years, I’ve noticed that most people do end up choosing your fictitious “real world”. And many seem happy enough living in that illusion.
It doesn’t get much more “real world”, though, than pleasing your stockholders and customers. And Novell’s strategy hasn’t done too well on that metric, now, has it? Meanwhile Red Hat, presumably not living in your “real world”, and unwilling to compromise their principles, is still solidly in the #1 Linux vendor spot, and still holds an insanely high customer loyalty rating. Pretty impressive for a bunch of dreamers who don’t live in “the real world”.
Maybe there are good examples of how compromising ones principles can get one ahead. But this is clearly not one of them.
http://tinyurl.com/4gcmsv
http://tinyurl.com/3g2vef
Edited 2008-09-20 22:17 UTC
I would say that RH has such a high customer satisfaction rating due to the incredibly great level of support you get from them, rather then their refusal to ship non Free software.
Red Hat has said it many times in many ways. As far as they are concerned, their refusal to ship non-Free software is integral to their being able to provide that incredibly great level of support.
http://www.redhat.com/why_red_hat/
They have been more clear and explicit on the matter in other places. But the above link was handy.
So you don’t have to credit my opinion on the matter. You can credit the opinion of the company which is actually providing the stellar level of support.
Edited 2008-09-20 23:55 UTC
I think the point is bigger then just free software. It’s about being passionate about ideals and not being just another company.
Red Hat has a vision which they are passionate about. They are hardcore about not compromising their beliefs, and that rubs off on all aspects of their business. They accept nothing less then their standards.
Novell is trying to work an angle. Novell doesn’t really care; they just needed a life preserver. Seriously, if Novell had gone under before becoming born again FOSS company, what would they have been missed? (…minus the people who need a support contract for Netware.)
Apple and Steve Jobs are another great example of passion for the product driving high standards. The Apple RDF is an outgrowth of Appler’s passion for what they do.
Google and their “Don’t be evil” slogan is another example.
But,you do get to keep your smug pragmatist’s superiority, have no fun, take a moral dive and contribute to the status quo. So it’s win/win.
The same was probably once said about the Roman empire.
Bell-bottoms, too.
The biggest reason, and the primary reason people get so worked up about it, is because microsoft traditionally haven’t published the specs of their formats or the interfaces used by such programs to integrate…
Which means that those trying to create competing software have to expend significant effort reverse engineering microsoft code first… And it’s also often necessary to recreate the whole stack rather than creating individual components that can interoperate with the microsoft components.
OpenOffice developers are spending far too much time trying to reverse engineer microsoft’s binary formats, and trying to implement their poorly documented OOXML format, and reverse engineering the undocumented ooxml-based format msoffice 2007 uses, to work on new features…
I, too, have a real concern when I read this argument over and over. It goes like this:
Something must be really, really wrong with you people in that reading these comments gives me the fishy feeling you are blind to the fact that MS is only one of a million possible patent litigants – and in that, the so called patent deal buys you exactly nada. Well great, MS doesn’t sue the Novell end-user but a millions others may and probably will (SCO anyone?). You totally over-rate the whole thing in that light.
No-one but Microsoft can sue “Linux”, or any Linux distribution, or any Linux end users, over patents that Microsoft holds.
Hence, when the topic is Linux interoperability with Microsoft lock-in protocols, only Microsoft can attempt to sue over any alleged patent violation in that arena.
As soon as Microsoft try to sue Linux, then the Linux Foundation and the SFLC would counter-sue Microsoft:
http://www.openinventionnetwork.com/patents.php
http://www.patentcommons.org/
http://www.linuxfoundation.org/en/Protect
http://www.softwarefreedom.org/
If Microsoft tried an injunction to get people to stop using Linux, the the Linux legal defence would obtain an injunction to get people to stop using Microsoft Windows.
Imagine that for just one minute … an injunction to legally prevent everyone in the US to stop running Windows.
Microsoft won’t sue Linux over patent violation.
If Microsoft did sue, and the mutually-assured-destruction scenario did eventuate … the government would have to step in and arbitrate. You just can’t run a country like that, held to ransom by one monopoly supplier. That just isn’t going to fly.
Edited 2008-09-21 00:56 UTC
Err.. yes..? Did I not say it does not matter because MS is only one of many, many possible litigants?! In case you missed it, unlike MS, others already did sue the end-user, which goes to prove the point that having MS protection does not save you from being sued in general – and that was exactly the point I was making.. trying to, anyway: don’t focus on MS – MS is not the only patent troll out there. What the Novell deal does do is give you a technological edge and I think some people disguise their dislike for this fact in a some sort of patent-agenda when attacking Novell…
Microsoft is the only one with any agenda to get rid of FOSS.
Microsoft is the only one with an agenda and also with very deep pockets.
Other patent holders attacking FOSS does not help Microsoft get rid of competition in the arena which is the topic of this thread.
Other patent holders do not have such deep pockets, and not much to gain … FOSS clearly doesn’t profit, and FOSS can readily document prior art, and FOSS has a huge array of “amateur” researchers ready to find other prior art … and to charge no billable lawyers hours for the search. Damage would be difficult to prove. FOSS has significant ability to work around things.
Finally, and most importantly, if FOSS has to shed some function because it is attacked by a non-Microsoft entity, that functionality does not belong to Microsoft. Either Microsoft could be a co-defendant, or FOSS simply loses a small amount of functionality that Microsoft Windows does not have itself.
FOSS has a considerable array of defenses to deploy.
Microsoft is the only potential attacker using patents that FOSS has really to worry about … and an attack by Microsoft would lead to a mutually assured destruction scenario, and Microsoft knows this.
This is why Microsoft does not attack even now.
This is why Microsoft will not attack directly.
Microsoft-inspired indirect attacks to date have been ineffective.
There is not nearly as much for FOSS to worry about here as you like to imply.
MS are one of the least likely companies to sue directly using their patents… They have far too much to lose, no doubt their products infringe upon patents held by the likes of IBM or Sun, and the resulting countersuit would be very painful.
You have more to fear from small companies with nothing to lose. Not that MS wouldn’t pay such companies to try anyway.
Precisely so. It seems that you just can’t get this point across to some people though.
In one way this is true, and in another way it also misses the point.
If a small company has a patent on some technology that Microsoft is using, then that small company is far more likely to go after Microsoft than FOSS (even if FOSS is also using that technology).
If a small company has a patent on some technology that Microsoft is not using but FOSS is … then making trouble for FOSS in that arena is just not going to be of any particular advantage to Microsoft, is it? Why would Microsoft fund such? Why would FOSS not simply drop the functionality if it was causing some grief?
The only scenario for an attack on FOSS that makes sense from Microsoft’s point of view is to attack FOSS in an area of intercompatibility that threatens Microsoft monopoly lock-in position. For Microsoft to attack that, Microsoft themselves would have to hold the patents, and hence Microsoft themselves would have to sue.
The countersuit from interests who would protect FOSS would be too dangerous to Microsoft. Mutually assured destruction.
Therefore Microsoft will not sue. Microsoft’s only strategy here is to continue to threaten to sue.
“Full of Sound and Fury, Signifying Nothing”. From Lear, I think.
Edited 2008-09-23 01:27 UTC
What would impress me would be AD integration or windows workstation’s seamless integration with an openldap. I would like to see Evolution’s exchange plugin integrate with MS Exchange and have seamless workability with MS Exchange. I would like to see Novell’s Mail server or Collaboration server to be fully compatible with MS Exchange services, forms, etc. I owuld like Samba Servers to be able to be compatible with AD or to become an AD server itself with an openldap schema or homegrown directory service that is fully compatible.
I won’t be impressed until there is all that and a tar ball with source code. I’m lenient on license, as long as it gets into Red Hat and Debian and a FreeBSD port.
And a good going over by the SFLC.
Everybody run! The tarball’s got a gun!
Edited 2008-09-20 01:55 UTC
Well, all I can say is whoever modded me down obviously has absolutely *no* sense of humor. Or maybe they’re just too young to remember. Just replace Debbie with Ron Hovsepian. 😉
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8hxCpAdCJI
Edited 2008-09-20 18:59 UTC
Samba 4 will support AD and LDAP, read this:
http://wiki.samba.org/index.php/Samba4. Samba can already pretend to be a NT4 PDC. Now it should be able to be a 2000/2003 domain controller.
No deal with MS either! MS has been forced to release much documentation over the last few years.
So… does it support SMP with SUSE guests? That’s a big show stopper for us right now with Red Hat guests, as is the abysmal harddrive performance and, oh yeah, the packet dropping emulated network interfaces. ESX is still the better option at this point in time.
This is a way for Microsoft to stay in the linux area…
…Linux solutions are growing everyday, beginning to be a threat to microsoft…
… this is a bad new for the linux world…soon we will read those information in an other way…
quote : ” is windows able to run my linux apps ? it’s good to read that this small os finally run my best linux apps”
++
Microsoft is doing what he can to stay alive :
http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/09/19/2023252&from=rss
What about Windows running under Novell’s virtualisation platform>
The likely code improvements from this project were probably made to the Windows side of the equation. So that it runs Novell Linux better, not so that all Linux’s run better. Then they don’t have to open source it. Microsoft wants everyone running Windows. If you have to run Linux, then let it be Novell and let it happen on top of Windows. That way you still need the Windows license. Why do you think they are being so charitable all of a sudden? Because Linux is growing must have apps just like Windows did back in the day. These must have apps are the weights which could tip the scales of balance. MS already dumped money into Apache. They also offered it to Blender. Both are free apps without (to my knowledge) Windows equivalents. (well apache runs on windows, but they are paying to make it run better)
Blender for Windows:
http://www.blender.org/download/get-blender/
Microsoft may want Blender to run better on Windows, but that isn’t going to happen unless Microsoft deliver good performance for OpenGL on Windows. Currently AFAIK OpenGL on Windows is forced to go via DirectX. That crippled design (on Microsoft’s part) is always going to make Blender on Windows a dog.
PS: It would seem that there are also issues with Blenders “export to directX” functionality:
http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&q=blender+directx&meta=
OTOH, here are two reasonable approaches for getting Windows stuff running under Linux:
Windows VM under Linux:
http://www.virtualbox.org/
(just one easy-to-use solution).
Windows API emulation on Linux:
http://www.winehq.org/
Wine is getting pretty good these days. Wine can run just about any Windows application that doesn’t go out of its way to determine if it is running under Wine and then deliberately quit if it finds that it is.
As I said, there are considerably greater obstacles to overcome in order to achieve the reverse … some categories of Linux applications running under Windows is a horror story … sometimes because of shortcomings of the Windows platform itself. Anything that requires more than one user account active at the same time, for example, or anything that requires filesystem support for Linux-style permissions.
IMO there isn’t much joy here in Microsoft’s attempts to make its dearest wish “Microsoft wants everyone running Windows” come true.
Edited 2008-09-22 04:24 UTC