The chief executives of Microsoft and Red Hat held a private meeting in New York, CNET News.com has learned, an indication that relations between the rivals might be warming.
A Microsoft-Red Hat warming trend?
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Eugenia Loli
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“Anything Novell can do, we can do better!”
MS Linux anyone? 😉
Groove to someone who might know, and the person said “yeah, it was getting good enough to be a competitor for SharePoint, so we found the priciple, and we bought him.”
Do with that what you will.
Won’t it be hard for MS to use Linux, after all the negative things they’ve said about it?
“Well, the TCO of Linux is really high when it’s free… but if you pay $500 for our version, it won’t have a high TCO!”
Buy then close down would be more like it.
Keep all the staff on salaries five times larger than they could get elsewhere, and close down redhat linux. Also once the redhat staff became MS staff and have been exposed to MS source,they couldn’t work on any GPL stuff again because MS could quite easily shut down the project in the courts.
One less competitor in the market place.
At this point MS could spend billions and limp Longhorn that will be without all the hyped features 2 years ago.
Or
They could quietly begin to port everything Office/DirectX/and their own internal Window manager to run on top of a base redhat install and make it big with that.
Windows ran on Dos no reason it cant someday just jump to Linux. And if they licensed their driver structure and compatiblity layer ported to Linux and spliced it into a redhat kernel both companies would stand to benefit.
Now to all people rolling theyre eyes at this point.
Apple already did it with moving their windowing system over to Darwin. It could of easily of been Linux and there’s no reason Microsoft may not someday follow.
… or it could be like that infamous Netscape meeting, where MS is essentially accused of saying “step aside from the desktop, or we’ll crush you” (i’ve paraphrased there, obviously!)
“They could quietly begin to port everything Office/DirectX/and their own internal Window manager to run on top of a base redhat install and make it big with that.”
Haha, good one.
http://www.mslinux.org/
Maybe they want to get a version of .NET and possibly Avalon running on Red Had. This way they still make out on the development tools, and still have some control over the dominant development platform.
It would be nice to buy applications and games that can run on any hardware and any OS.
“And if they licensed their driver structure and compatiblity layer ported to Linux and spliced it into a redhat kernel both companies would stand to benefit. ”
And then when Novell, IBM, HP, Sun Microsystems, The FSF (who in fact do have some copyrights in the kernel, although not many) and many others sue the pants off of Microsoft and Red Hat for Copyright Infringement…
Windows ran on Dos no reason it cant someday just jump to Linux. And if they licensed their driver structure and compatiblity layer ported to Linux and spliced it into a redhat kernel both companies would stand to benefit
Why would Microsoft want to get back into the GUI only business? The only people they would put out of business would be the Gnome’s and KDE’s of the world.
Either way Microsfot would gain an advantage in the market place if it interoperated better with Linux systems. I see this meeting as a positive thing but i am sure the conspiracy Micro$oft zealots will see it otherwise.
Does anybody know how much was Microsoft’s offer to acquire redhat?
Does anybody know how much was Microsoft’s offer to acquire redhat
Nothing…Linux is free!
And what basis would they sue? MS can take the Kernel source and fork it and add what they want to it and sell MS Linux Kernel and nobody could do a damn thing.
Cisco/Linksys does it
Transgaming does it
Hell Redhat and Suse do these things. They are not legally bound to share their changes with anyone. Notice that both companies employ their own prebuilt Kernels. Sure they’re built off 2.6.11 or whatever latest version is out there but their changes exist in it and they have no reason to port those changes upstream.
corey, you dont have a clue do you..
There’s a solution for Longhorn. For 2008, that is. Remember Rhapsody, then Darwin?
MS is preparing some plan that they hope will distract the competition. They recently intensified their campaign by having journalist write overblown articles about open source projects and Linux security worries. They hope to put doubt into anyone wanting to migrate to other projects besides MS.
It’s funny too, as most these articles have MS advertising.
And what basis would they sue? MS can take the Kernel source and fork it and add what they want to it and sell MS Linux Kernel and nobody could do a damn thing.
They could fork it, but anything derived from the GPL would have to be re-leased as GPL.
Cisco/Linksys does it
As the below link shows, it Linksys/Cisco does NOT.
http://www.linksys.com/support/gpl.asp
In fact many open source replacement firmwares have been born because of this. Google for Sveasoft, Openwrt.
Transgaming does it
Wine was not always LGPL, originally it had a license very similar to the BSD. Transgaming forked really early on. They are a contributor to the current wine and do have a cvs repo that you can download from. In addition this has nothing to do with kernels.
Hell Redhat and Suse do these things. They are not legally bound to share their changes with anyone. Notice that both companies employ their own prebuilt Kernels. Sure they’re built off 2.6.11 or whatever latest version is out there but their changes exist in it and they have no reason to port those changes upstream.
They are all legally bound to release their sources if they are building from GPL’d code.
ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/linux/enterprise/4/en/os/i386/SRPM…
In fact you can get a free binary compile of this (sans trademarks) from http://www.centos.org/.
Whatever they got instore is not good, like releasing a crook into a bank vault
With Intel and others building hardware based virtualizaton on the CPUs, customers will soon be able to run both RHEL and Windows 2003 on the same CPU.
“conspiracy Micro$oft zealots”
This term is meant to be offensive. Lets start with a little education shall we?
Zealous definition (http://www.cogsci.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/webwn2.0?stage=1&word=zealo…):
1. avid, great, eager, zealous — (marked by active interest and enthusiasm; “an avid sports fan”; “a great walker”; “an eager beaver”)
No doubt about Linux fans being enthusiatic for their operating system. So why was the religious connotation thrown in? Is that to make the fan appear to be fanatical or unbalanced in some way?
conspiracy definition (http://www.cogsci.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/webwn2.0?stage=1&word=consp…):
1. conspiracy, confederacy — (a secret agreement between two or more people to perform an unlawful act)
2. conspiracy, cabal — (a plot to carry out some harmful or illegal act (especially a political plot))
3. conspiracy, confederacy — (a group of conspirators banded together to achieve some harmful or illegal purpose)
Well, that does describe the behaviour of a monopolist, and Microsoft having being convicted of such an offense, certainly fits the bill. But again, the term is used as though this conviction in court never happened and we should group all such people who know about these offenses with those claiming to be abducted by aliens.
I have no doubt that a large population of Linux users are aware of Microsoft’s continuing illegal activities, but that is nothing to ridicule. Quite frankly, it is just the opposite – these are people who don’t want to support criminal activities by purchasing the offender’s product and are bright enough to appreciate an alternative – that is a very balanced and rational approach.
I think MS is just going to drop the whole OS business, although certainly not overnight. They’ve realized that it’s just a PITA to deal with device drivers and whatnot. They’ll focus on XBOX, mobile, etc., but will basically dump the underlying OS. Linux represents a set of beautifully written device drivers to which MS can port all of its productivity tools, and they can work with RedHat and other Linux companies to get the admin experience up to the requisite level.
They would be perfectly content to sell Exchange, Office, and all sorts of other glue between different devices and leave the lower level stuff to the professionals. Linux has won on that level. There is absolutely no way MS can compete. It runs on every architecture at a level of performance that is killing the old Unix guys that MS wanted someday to aspire to, but never could come close. So why bother? They’ll just become to Linux what OSX is to BSD. If you think about .NET and “Office System”, and XBOX on PPC and all that crap, they’ve been moving in that direction anyway.
This is certainly a sign that Longhorn is dead in the water. They don’t have the motivation to pull it off given what they’ve gone through this round with all the security problems knowing that new code and any advancement in the architecture is bound to make the problem that much worse. Then, when you combine that with what’s going on with the web and web architectures and how Apache has basically killed them, Java has eaten their lunch, they will definitely have to move up the stack and provide some scope to what they want to do other than absolutely everything at every level of the computing experience.
“I think MS is just going to drop the whole OS business, although certainly not overnight.”
You might be right, but would MS be willing to set aside using internal private APIs for their own benefit? Standardizing on the OS levels the playing field between them, the Linux industry, and Sun.
“They would be perfectly content to sell Exchange, Office, and all sorts of other glue between different devices and leave the lower level stuff to the professionals.”
Even at this level they will have to compete with OpenOffice.org, Evolution, Firefox, and potentially an open source Java Enterprise System. Possible but not easy, even for Microsoft, if they have already conceded the OS to Linux. It’s an easy extension to expect them to concede to the other OSS apps and dev platforms.
“It runs on every architecture at a level of performance that is killing the old Unix guys…”
Just a nitpick: Solaris 10 and Linux 2.6 are basically on par with eachother performance wise, but with a few things favoring Solaris (NFSv4, for example).
I would be willing to bet that Microsoft could offer a version of Office for Linux in the future if more and more companies started switching to Linux. Or offer some limited form of SQL server for Linux. It may not be as good as MYSQL but many IT groups don’t necessarily buy the best, they also for the relationship with their preferred vendor because of comfort, volume price discounts, or whatever. They do this with the Mac already, selling Office and giving away Windows Media Player and MSN Messenger downloads. From a business perspective, it makes sense for Microsoft to start trying to play nice. They haven’t been able to kill Linux so now they want to capitalize off of it as much as they can. The way I see it, they want to begin being friends now so that in another couple of years they won’t have as much animosity to overcome.
For Microsoft to be able to ship apps like Office and SQLServer on Linux, I’d bet that would require a skunk-works type project to create a super-duper WINE program. So many millions of lines of code would require some sort of abstraction layer to make it work.
Definitely possible, though. It would be extremely interesting if they went this route.
I was just wondering if this has something to do with Mono / .NET.
Just a thought…
Just a nitpick: Solaris 10 and Linux 2.6 are basically on par with eachother performance wise, but with a few things favoring Solaris (NFSv4, for example).
No they’re not. All benchmarks I’ve seen shows Linux scales at least as well as Solaris, and single threaded performance on Linux is better. Not to mention raw network performance, in spite of Solaris’ lame “fire engine” crap.
Show me the benchmarks. And nothing from .sun.com thanks, unless they’re testing exactly the same hardware with exactly the same workload. Considering how Solaris 10 *allegedly* beats Linux by huge margins, I find the lack of real benchmarks coming out of Sun as all but indisputable proof that they’re incorrect.
just like all data….benchmarks can be misleading, and not paint an accurate portrait.
But, I prefere linux over solaris.
I suppose that a port of .NET (from Microsoft, not Mono) or maybe Office to Linux is one of the alternatives that Microsoft is pondering, and they realize it’s not too early to start building bridges. Remember that MS already has the Rotor CLR running on FreeBSD.
Also, Microsoft and Red Hat probably have more interests in common than people think. Red Hat is now at the high end of the distro market. If Microsoft decided to either port to Linux or announce product interop with Linux, they’d probably want to say that their stuff was tested only with Red Hat, so the TCO difference with a pure free software stack won’t be so dramatic. Red Hat is also reliable and consistent, a company Microsoft might even enjoy dealing with. And MS doesn’t want them getting any closer to IBM.
Red Hat, for its part, doesn’t want to compete against the free (as in beer) distros and “good samaritan” support. They have lots of employees and stockholders to feed.
so what is RH stock trading at now? time to buy? or sell….. hmmmm
“I see this meeting as a positive thing but i am sure the conspiracy Micro$oft zealots will see it otherwise.”
I think they would have reason to see it otherwise by the past actions of Microsoft.
I am going to go out on a limb here, Maybe, JUST MAYBE the meeting could be about them improving their relations. Look at it, When most “Outsiders” look to linux, it is RedHat. So if Microsoft wants to improve its relations (or look like it is improving relations), they would go to the #1 Linux seller in the world. And to all you people out there who thinks that Microsoft is trying to buy out RedHat, here is some proof to counter those thoughts. Michal Dell (of Dell computers) just sunk 100 millon dollars into RedHat linux, so if RedHat was going to sell out, they would ‘prolly look to Dell first(http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=12038&hed=Tech+Spin%3a…).
Another thing, this one is just as crazy as the one above, maybe they are tring to learn from each other, Microsoft wants to know more about open source, and RedHat might want to know more about why Microsofts products work well on Business desktops.
~Alan
Oh yeah, worring about the important stuff the corporates stock. Microsoft meeting with redhat might sky rocket redhat’s stock,since microsoft being a bigger player in the stock market has shown interest in a possible buyout of redhat.
”
And what basis would they sue? MS can take the Kernel source and fork it and add what they want to it and sell MS Linux Kernel and nobody could do a damn thing.
Cisco/Linksys does it
Transgaming does it
Hell Redhat and Suse do these things. They are not legally bound to share their changes with anyone. Notice that both companies employ their own prebuilt Kernels. Sure they’re built off 2.6.11 or whatever latest version is out there but their changes exist in it and they have no reason to port those changes upstream.
”
ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/linux/enterprise/4/en/os/i386/SRPM…
That is the exact copy of the Linux kernel I am running on CentOS, legally. In-fact, I am essentially running RHEL4, as the source code between it and Red Hat are identical. If Red Hat forked Linux and didn’t share changes, how could I be doing this?
The Source RPM includes FULL SOURCE CODE by the way.
Here is Novell’s
ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/9.3/suse/src/kernel-source-2.6.11…
Microsoft would not have to submit their changes directly to Linus, but they would still have to distribute the source code on their servers or offer it to customers. So, if they spliced their driver layer into RedHat’s kernel, they would have to supply the source code for their driver layer, or they could face lawsuits for copyright infringement, and they could not use the GPL as a defence as they would be in clear violation of it. So, once the GPL terminated because they violated it, they would be liable for copyright infringement for EVERY SINGLE LINE OF CODE IN THE KERNEL, as they would have no license from the copyright holders to use the code. Plus, completely rewriting the driver layer for the Linux Kernel would be harder than simply getting vendors to write Linux Drivers.
”
Oh yeah, worring about the important stuff the corporates stock. Microsoft meeting with redhat might sky rocket redhat’s stock,since microsoft being a bigger player in the stock market has shown interest in a possible buyout of redhat.
”
Except not everyone are conspiracy theorists who think every meeting is a buyout or partnership. Yes it is possible, but for all we know, the meeting was in regards to a patent cross-license. That’s the thing, we don’t know.
“In-fact, I am essentially running RHEL4, as the source code between it and Red Hat are identical.”
nitpicking here. but RHEL 4 is a software subscription with support. what you can clone is the software bits..
Now Rehat then Novell
LOL…………
Maybe they’ll buy Red Hat or create there own distro, well, Microsoft surly har it’s motives but what they are i do not know. Or maybe they’ll make some layer on top of Windows that makes it possible to run Linux apps on windows and hoping the noone will use Linux because you can run the same Apps on windows. (Some Wine like feature)
—
http://bitsofnews.com Giving you the latest bits
Eben Moglen’s linux.conf.au keynote
http://lwn.net/Articles/133146/
Patent attacks are a different matter, and “we are going to face serious challenges” in that area. There will probably not be much in the way of patent infringement suits against individual developers; those developers simply do not have the deep pockets which might attract such a suit. Instead, the attacks will come in the form of threats to users.
This is happening now: corporate officers will get a visit from “the monopoly” or others and be told about the sort of trouble waiting for it as a result of its use of patent-infringing free software. That trouble can be avoided by quietly paying royalties to the patent holder. This is happening “more than we would believe” currently – companies are paying royalties for their use of free software. It remains quiet because it is in nobody’s interest to make this sort of shakedown public. The victims will not come forward; they will not even tell their suppliers.
At any rate, I’ll bet the talks were nothing to excite a gossip gollumnist.
“Maybe they’ll buy Red Hat or create there own distro, well, Microsoft surly har it’s motives but what they are i do not know. Or maybe they’ll make some layer on top of Windows that makes it possible to run Linux apps on windows and hoping the noone will use Linux because you can run the same Apps on windows. (Some Wine like feature)”
It’s worth nothing to mention that cygwin, which does just that, is owned by redhat.
http://jmony.com
buh bye Redhat, you will be assimilated…
” I was just wondering if this has something to do with Mono / .NET.
Just a thought..”
red hat is pro java, novell is pro mono
the market seem to be pro java
I think MS is just going to drop the whole OS business,
I think statements like this show just how far from reality a lot of people are living.
This is a company that took on multiple OS vendors in the past and won. The OS is critical to what MS is and what MS does.
They would be perfectly content to sell Exchange, Office, and all sorts of other glue between different devices and leave the lower level stuff to the professionals. Linux has won on that level. There is absolutely no way MS can compete.
When Linux is running on 90% of the worlds desktops I’ll buy that argument.
Fact of the matter is that Windows is cemented and its not going to be an overnight change.
Look outside of the people who post on these forums and you’ll see that most of the world has no real desire to switch platforms and the Linux distros out there don’t offer the average computer user anything they do not already have.
Sad but true.
Something smells. Why did dell’s vc group pump $100 million into redhat? Maybe dell knows something.
What dell might know is that he can make a quick profit on redhat stock after rumors of an ms purchase drive the price up.
If MS purchased redhat it would likely be to kill redhat.
There is the small chance that ms has decided to play nice with linux to reduce R&D. It makes sense. The best way to kill an opponent is to assimilate that opponent or his key features.
What i can assure you is that MS support for linux, if it happened, would be bad for linux.
Will the future be “Micro Hat”/”Microhat” or “Red Soft”/”Redsoft”?
…Redhorn
JK.
slowhorn
built on linux technology
“All benchmarks I’ve seen shows Linux scales at least as well as Solaris, and single threaded performance on Linux is better. Not to mention raw network performance, in spite of Solaris’ lame “fire engine” crap.”
You people get so defensive. I said “on par with”. I said Solaris 10 is better at “a few things”, like NFS. Sheesh. Also, there are some older reviews using beta versions of Solaris 10 that were not as optimized as the final version, so it’ll take another round of updated reviews to be certain about details. Even on the older beta benchmarks, Solaris was only a few percent behind the latest 2.6 Linux kernels, so more optimization could tilt the whole universe for the benchmark percentage-point fansluts out there.
“And then when Novell, IBM, HP, Sun Microsystems, The FSF (who in fact do have some copyrights in the kernel, although not many) and many others sue the pants off of Microsoft and Red Hat for Copyright Infringement…”
What are you talking about? None of the cie you cite have any copyright of whatsoever in the Linux kernel since it’s GPL. And if they do have code in it, it’s GPL too.
MS could sell it afterward, as long as it gives the source, there’s no problem there.
If Microsoft and Redhat merge, I think the combination would sound more like a pRon movie!
Longhorn/Redhat – obvious euphemisms for phallic objects, or is it just me?
..or microsoft – flacid objects!
Apple already did it with moving their windowing system over to Darwin.
I think it would be more accurate to say that they heavily modified NeXTStep to make it more Mac-like.
It could of easily of been Linux and there’s no reason Microsoft may not someday follow.
It “could of (sic)” been Linux, but it wouldn’t have been easier than more-or-less modifying NeXTStep to use updated versions of the same software components it already used.
honestly if say microsoft was to make there own distribution would any use it just a question?would you?
After reading the article here:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=1369
and reading all of the links that give alittle history I don’t believe this had anything to do with working together. Patent infrigment with OpenOffice may be it, which would be bad for more than just Red Hat.