11.23.09

Novell’s Vice President Could be Tweeting for Microsoft Dollars

Posted in Free/Libre Software, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Mono, Novell at 8:36 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Novell loves the monopoly

Summary: Miguel de Icaza shows excitement over proprietary Silverlight, proceeds to promotion of closed-source software paradigms for developers; Microsoft’s strategy with F/OSS is explained

ONE of our Indian readers has shown us some new tweets from Novell’s vice president — tweets that I was unable to view because they are “protected” (maybe he blocked me). Tony Manco quotes them as follows:

“RT @spouliot: “Chrome OS Success May Be Dampened By Silverlight” http://tinyurl.com/yezgk8v -I have a suggestion if anyone #google care” [Source]

“OMG OMG OMG OMG #silverligh4 has everything I wanted on it: full desktop apps with full system access” [Source]

We wrote about Microsoft’s Twitter AstroTurf in, e.g.:

Yes, Microsoft also offers small bribes to people who tweet about Microsoft products and our reader Goblin tweeted yesterday (based on evidence): “wow..the Microsoft marketing machine seems to be flooding twitter with schemes to win a free piece of MS tech.”

He later added: “For those interested yet another MS themed Twitter account has popped up: slashsoft !”

Well, Miguel de Icaza does not need those prizes as incentives. He works for Microsoft's CodePlex Foundation.

Our reader Brandon refers to Miguel de Icaza’s gentle attack on Free software (mentioned last week when he attended Microsoft’s event). As Brandon puts it:

“Keep it proprietary” is something you could say that would label you a traitor to the FSF. Such attitude doesn’t appear over night.

Young developers without a lot of obligations can more easily consider doing open source projects, de Icaza said. But someone with a family and tuition to pay has to tread carefully when taking a technology to the open source route.

This statement is a little misleading because there have been people who brought new technology to open source, and ended up getting hired to keep working on it. (Pulseaudio[1], and Linux Kernel contributions are at the top of my mind). Greg Kroah-Hartman mentioned at this linux plumbers conference for example that Intel wanted to get recruiters into the talks. Recruiters? Oh yeah cause its easy to get a job with Open Source.

A couple of days ago we showed how Microsoft was proprietarising Free software by "embracing" it. The warning came from Matt Asay, who in turn cited IBM’s Savio. In response to this, Pamela Jones from Groklaw wrote: “Now think about Oracle and the EU Commission complaints. Then think about Microsoft supporting Apache. Embrace is followed by what, again?”

Separately, about Microsoft pretending to have embraced “open source”, Jones wrote: “Ballmer has already told us that Microsoft wants all Open Source apps to run on Windows instead of the Linux kernel. So I take this as an indication of their progress toward that goal, not as indicating any new openness on Microsoft’s part. Windows isn’t any more open. I doubt it ever will be. This is Brand X openness, then, almost openness, open apps but running on a proprietary system. And like the song says, Ain’t nothing like the Real Thing, Baby.”

Novell’s Mono/Moonlight team is helping Windows at the moment [1, 2, 3]. It’s not surprising at all. There is more of that coming soon. █

“Our partnership with Microsoft continues to expand.”

–Ron Hovsepian, Novell CEO

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2 Comments

Agent_Smith said,

November 26, 2009 at 10:33 am

U know what bothers me the most ??? Novell. And guess what: I think they’ve already sold Novell to M$. They only did not let anyone know. But, by my book, Novell is a subsidiary of M$. And the most frightening scenario: M$ conquers the server side with Suse Enterprise Edition and the low end (desktop) with window$… Well, how about this for a nightmare…???

Roy Schestowitz Reply:
November 26th, 2009 at 10:51 am
That will not happen.

Microsoft essentially recruited Novell to sell fear (“peace of mind” for Microsoft-taxed SUSE only), but companies like Red Hat and Canonical still dominate.

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