When two become one

Summary: Familiar buddies become closer, as evidenced by technical and marketing collaborations

SEVERAL MONTHS AGO we exposed a leak that revealed how Microsoft and Novell had been marketing SUSE deals together. As time passes by, this pair of companies becomes indistinguishable, almost as though Novell is already a subsidiary of Microsoft. The large SUSE layoffs concur [1, 2]. Now watch this new article from the South African press. The country intends to move to Free software and here we find Microsoft and Novell jointly marketing their alliance to make clients who are dependent on software patents, never mind if South Africa bans those.

Microsoft and Novell have landed their first major interoperability client.

In addition to this item from the news, here is another about Silverlight vapourware.

One development that had been anticipated but will not happen at the event is release of a binary preview of Moonlight 2.0, for running Silverlight 2.0 on Linux systems. Builders still are working on the software's security system that "sand-boxes" applications to keep them within the browser, said Miguel de Icaza, vice president of the developer platform at Novell and the developer in charge of Moonlight.

"We don't feel that we should release this to the public until the system is secured," de Icaza said on Monday. A formal beta program for Moonlight 2.0 is expected this summer, with the general release eyed for September or October.

Why is Novell helping Microsoft fight the Web? Silverlight is headed nowhere. A decent explanation probably comes from another short news post. Here is a new comment on an article that we mentioned the other day.

Micro-soft needs Novell for the FUD value like in this video in which Ballmer continues the claim that Linux infringes on Redmond' IP (never mentioning which of course) and that Red Hat users owe Microsoft money because Red Hat did not sign their extortion deal. He mentions that Novell has paid the extortion fee to be able to use Linux (and all those patents Linux stole from Microsoft) and are therefore the "legit" and "safer" Linux while Red Hat users, Debian, Fedora, Mandriva, Ubuntu and all those that havent paid are criminals as are their users. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5B0GTYfPoMo

We now know that many companies have paid for these unknown patents that Microsoft claims Linux infringes on. Its one heck of a racket.

Microsoft needs Novell to be their 'legit' Linux, the shining example that associating yourself with Microsoft isnt the kiss of death if you pay Microsoft a tax to use your favorite free (as in freedom and beer) software .

They also need Novell so they can continue influencing the Gnome desktop directions. The potential dangers of Mono would be bad enough if it was just for assorted plugins but Gnome has many programs now like Evolution which are totally dependent on a technology which brings nothing new to the FLOSS table but poses enormous risks as a trojan horse.

Novell employees are also in charge in both OpenSuse (read their charter before anyone claims theiy are an independant community. Novell employess must be on the board.) and Gnome, although with the latest cuts affecting hugely the Suse developers cant be a good thing.

The worst part for Novell is that Red Hat showed with their interop deal with Microsoft recently that you can make a pact that is beneficial for youre company but does NOT feed the Microsoft FUD machine. Red Hat specifically stated that their deal in no way, shape or form has anything to do with the Microsoft patent claims. And you know what? The Linux community totally believes Red Hat and totally distrusts Novell.

As this ongoing discussion suggests, Red Hat too is facing distrust now. Its clarification attempts regarding patents did not satisfy everyone, so we shall return to it later. ⬆

"[The partnership with Microsoft is] going very well insofar as we originally agreed to co-operate on three distinct projects and now we’re working on nine projects and there’s a good list of 19 other projects that we plan to co-operate on."

--Ron Hovsepian, Novell CEO, 2008