05.29.07
Posted in Deception, Intellectual Monopoly, Microsoft, Novell, Patent Covenant, Patents at 9:25 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Matt Aslett dives into Novell’s ‘document *** dump ***’ and gives his opinion on the findings.
While there is a short section on licensing of intellectual property rights for Microsoft technologies to be used internally in Section 4, that’s about it in the technical collaboration agreement.
One section of the business collaboration agreement also worth a look is Section 9, Indemnification/Infringement Claims, because this is where you would usually expect to find details of patent-related issues. Anything potentially interesting there is redacted, however, so one can only guess what it actually does cover.
As expected, the document does not say enough to be truly useful. Meanwhile, Gartner analysts, who are notorious due to close ties with Microsoft, add their usual bias.
Asheesh Raina, principal research analyst for Gartner’s Software Group said, “We believe that Microsoft is strengthening its patent portfolio to rectify the exploitation of its Intellectual Property (IP) by technology providers that generate substantial revenue from OSS including Linux.”
“Exploitation”? Does the analyst care to be specific? Well, the apple does not fall far from the tree.
If the paper would prefer not to quote an analyst who has experience with a client, it did a poor job. Silver is Gartner’s vice president in charge of client computing. Microsoft happens to do lots of business with Gartner and also happens to have a client-software monopoly. We’re guessing that Silver knows Microsoft’s products well and has direct involvement with the company.
And, sure enough, he appears a number of times on Microsoft’s own site and thousands of times in stories about Microsoft.
Jim Murphy – wait for it – covers Microsoft too and is even more prolific than Silver.
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Part of the problem stems from the reticence of companies such as IDC and Gartner to reveal their clients. That should make everyone nervous, but it doesn’t. So called objective technology publications keep publishing material bought by vendors without telling you this. They’re also too lazy or scared to ignore the likes of Gartner and IDC until the firms change their disclosure rules.
It is worth repeating: when it comes to the Novell/Microsoft deal, do not trust anything that you see in the biased and financially-motivated mainstream media.
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Posted in Finance, Marketing, NetWare, Novell at 9:08 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
HSBC, which picked SUSE Linux a few months ago, has just reported great growth (in terms of online activity at least), but the same cannot be said about Novell. Someone has wrestled with the numbers and came to the conclusion that “Novell’s First Quarter Goes into the Red”.
In the first quarter of fiscal 2007 ended January 31, Novell said that software license sales amounted to $38.5 million, down 9 percent, while sales of maintenance contracts, software subscriptions (which are really for support, not for the open source software itself), and other services came to $191.2 million, down 4 percent. Total sales for the quarter came in at $229.6 million, down 5 percent. While Novell has kept a tight rein on costs relating to the products themselves, the company has increased spending on sales, marketing, development, and general costs; it has also booked a $7.4 million restructuring charge in the quarter and written off $10.8 million in assets. These factors pushed Novell to a $31.3 million operating loss. Because Novell has over $1 billion in cash in the bank and $790 million in short-term investments, it was able to post a $20.7 million gain in investments and it also sold some venture capital funds for another $3.6 million. When all the math was done and the taxes paid, that worked out to a $19.9 million net loss, or about 6 cents per share, compared to a net profit of $1.9 million in the year ago quarter, or 1 cent a share.
Update: The Inquirer has more to say about the figures (slight corrections to INQ banter language).
The thousands of pins stuck into the effigy of Novell by Open Sorcerers seems to have had a dire effect on the company’s bottom line.
The Open Source movement threw up its collective hands in disgust when Novell signed a pact with Microsoft promising not to sue each other over software patents.
Now it seems that Novell’s software license sales have dropped by nine per cent and the company has started to lose cash. Sales of maintenance contracts, software subscriptions are down by four per cent and total sales are down five per cent.
Boycotts seem to have become effective owing to the voices of the Internet.
Motley Fool (fool.com), which has always seemed like a strong pro-Microsoft financial Web site, has its facts skewed.
Novell has shown some real commitment to the ideals of the open-source community lately.
Who are they kidding?
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Posted in Boycott Novell, Deals, Deception, Free/Libre Software, GNU/Linux, GPL, Intellectual Monopoly, Microsoft, Novell, Patent Covenant, SCO at 1:26 pm by Shane Coyle
Groklaw has a fascinating (to me, anyhow) piece regarding Chris Sontag’s deposition in SCO v. Novell, in which he apparently talks about SCO’s "Linux License" – a "right to use" Linux, as part of the SCOsource program.
6 Q. Which is the right-to-use license, again?
7 A. The license — the right-to-use license
8 for Linux.
9 Q. The IP license?
10 A. Well, no. The right-to-use license for
11 Linux that provided the covenant not to sue.
12 Q. Is that the Microsoft Sun type
13 arrangement?
14 A. No. That was the license for Linux users.
Now, think about the Microvell deal and the patent covenant – the "covenant not to sue", the one that we now know is definitely not applicable to OpenOffice.org*, StarOffice, Wine or OpenXchange. So, Novell is paying Microsoft per-unit royalties for a right-to-use license for what, exactly?
Given the total lack of specificity in the released agreements, as was expected by all of us cynics, we are still left with mere speculation, something that just doesn’t jibe with an open development community.
Novell, please, all I want to do is "Get the Facts".
* UPDATE: Bruce Lowry has indicated in an update to the Novell PR blog entry that OpenOffice.org is covered for Novell customers as part of the patent covenant, as was initially believed when they announced the deal.
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Posted in GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Novell, Office Suites, Servers at 9:52 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
There is an interesting batch of revelations in the news today. The first one stems from an analysis of Novell’s filings, which were ‘dumped’ just before the long weekend and revealed some nasty things. On the face of it, Novell’s deal tells a thing or two about Microsoft’s future plans.
Revelations made by Novell could add more fuel to the already well-established rumor that Microsoft is working on a hosted version of its popular Office software suite.
Google might therefore wish to take a closer look at these documents.
Amid Microsoft’s attack on the legitimacy (or cost) of Free software, ComputerWorld comes up with the folowing article:
Top secret: Microsoft’s $6 billion open source play
This month’s announcement by Microsoft to acquire digital marketing services firm aQuantive has revealed little on how the companies will integrate their IT, but inside information indicates the deal may be Redmond’s largest commitment to free software.
[...]
Whether the businesses are complementary or not, Microsoft’s integration work will no doubt involve a lot of open source software used by aQuantive.
Information available from Atlas’ Web site indicates the Internet software company employs extensive use of open source software including Linux, Apache, MySQL, and Solaris.
Software engineers at Atlas’ Raleigh office do client/server development in C and C++, software maintenance and “scripting”, and developing and maintaining custom reporting capabilities.
Interestingly, this is not the first time that Microsoft finds a lot of Linux in its hand. Other than its dependence on Akamai clusters for its Web sites, Microsoft also uses Linux ‘in house’. It even likes it.
What the press statement didn’t mention is that Aruba mobility controllers run the Linux operating system which Microsoft has aggressively targeted as being inferior to Windows as part of its “Get the Facts” marketing campaign.
[...]
Pandey’s appraisal of Aruba’s technology is in stark contrast to Microsoft’s “Get the Facts” rhetoric which places Windows as a more secure, and higher-performing choice over Linux.
It all comes to show us that Microsoft essentially attacks technology which is very much depends on. This is something to bear in mind whenever Microsoft questions the right of Free software to exist peacefully (i.e. without baseless threats of lawsuit).
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Posted in Antitrust, Free/Libre Software, GNU/Linux, GPL, Interoperability, Microsoft, Novell, Patent Covenant, Patents, Samba, Servers at 6:24 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Here is a short summary of the most recent developments, accompanied by selective quotes.
More spin comes from Microsoft under the disguise of pursuing interoperability (which is based on ‘tax’).
Microsoft denies saber-rattling vs. open source
Microsoft Corp. has denied that it is out to resurrect its patent offensive against the open source software community, saying it was actually going for interoperability.
If that is the case, why have Europe’s requests been ignored for seveal years? Microsoft inflated its market share by making its servers incompatible with those of competitors. According to a Samba developer, this was deliberate, too.
‘In the section of the interview from around 33m30s to 39m00 Jeremy Allison reports how he was told that the Microsoft team implementing SMB2 were ordered to “f**k with Samba”.’
In any event, moving on to the next item, Novell refuses to comment further. It believes it has escaped obligation to clarify, at least for the time being.
Novell executives declined to be interviewed about the filings. “We’ve already provided the high-level comments when we announced the deal in November – around making Linux and Windows work better together, the areas of tech cooperation, the covenants not to sue. All the customer-focus stuff that drove the deal,” said Novell spokesman Bruce Lowry. “The agreements provide more meat on the bones in support of those objectives.”
Have a look at this article if time permits it. Justin Steinman’s response seems to imply that it’s fine to let Microsoft eat Linux alive as long as Novell makes a bit of cash. It is unsurprising that a Novell executive has already admitted the deal with Microsoft was a selfish one. To add some balance, here’s a typical response from an apologist for Novell. The business sense there completely neglects to understand that businesses cannot just exploit and punish their supplier — the programmer. That is precisely what Novell has done through its exclusionary and discriminatory deal.
Finally, here is another explanation and another interesting angle on the tactics used by Microsoft.
One of these days, I hope to gain some insight into the mind of Steve Ballmer, the CEO of Microsoft. For years I’ve been trying to understand why these guys continue to pursue their goal of virtual global domination instead of just becoming a valued and trusted member of the greater wired community.
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Their accusation could be what my old pal Ross Perot used to call “gorilla dust.” This refers to the way a great ape will throw dirt and debris into the air during a fight to try and distract his opponent.
It appears as though, while Linux deals with the dust, Novell counts the cash. It accepted an enticing invitation to a room filled with smoke and mirrors. It was blinded by money and in the long term it will pay the price. Although Eben Moglen insists that GPLv3 is not just about Novell, he very recently confirmed that the Novell issue shall be resolved, too.
Professor Moglen explains briefly about GPLv3′s work on globalization of the software license, preventing harm to others by members of the community, and the most contentious in earlier drafts, DRM.
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