Bonum Certa Men Certa

Moonlight and Hyper-V Still Novell-Only and SUSE-Only in Some Ways

Peace of mind



Summary: Microsoft projects are still upselling a distribution from which Microsoft extracts money for imaginary software patents

THE LATEST bit of news about Moonlight was expected to have untold information which is crucial. This very self-explanatory picture reminds us that Moonlight is essentially a Microsoft project and Microsoft is not allowed to help its #1 competitor, by definition (unless it somehow helps Microsoft in another way).



After a little bit of research it turned out that Novell customers are still in a privileged position when it comes to Moonlight. Sam Varghese writes:

There is one simple reason - the version of Moonlight that other distributions can offer will be able to play only media which are in free or open source formats.

To play any other format means one has to buy licences for proprietary media codecs from the owners.

Users who obtain Moonlight from Novell will have access to these codecs.

But you wouldn't know about this if you read the Novell press release. (Microsoft hasn't deemed this announcement, which apparently is another earth-shaking one for the Moonlight project head, Miguel de Icaza, important enough to issue a media release).

Here's how Novell puts it: "The covenant is no longer limited to users that obtain Moonlight from Novell or its channel, but now covers users who obtain Moonlight from any third party, including other Linux distributors. Media Codecs for MP3 and VC1, and in the future H.264 and AAC, are supported through the Microsoft Media Pack, a Microsoft-delivered set of media codes that offer optimized and licensed decodecs to every Linux user who obtains Moonlight from Novell."


For completeness, here is Novell's announcement and a variety of articles about it:



Varghese has also attempted to find out what led to hostility towards GNU recently, after complaints about posts in Planet GNOME [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. He writes:

A member of the GNOME Foundation board has denied that a post by GNOME co-founder Miguel de Icaza led to a discussion on the Foundation mailing list which resulted in a call for the project to cut its ties with the GNU Project.

Behdad Esfahbod made reference to a story in these columns, wherein it was claimed that a Planet GNOME post by De Icaza, about Microsoft's Silverlight technology, served as the catalyst for another Foundation member, Lucas Rocha, to start a discussion on members' complaints about the type of content appearing on the Planet.


It is commonly argued that posts endorsing VMware were the cause for this whole incident. VMware is not much of a friend and we wrote about it in:



Speaking of which, watch how Microsoft still discriminates against GNU/Linux distributions that don't pay Microsoft.

9 Reasons Enterprises Shouldn’t Switch To Hyper-V



[...]

1. Breadth of OS support Before we get into the nitty gritty, let’s start with the most basic of features and simplest of tasks. Say you are an IT shop that supports more than just Windows servers; you have a mixed environment with different flavors of Linux and Unix. Hyper-V, however, supports only Windows and SuSE Linux. That’s it. If I am to recommend an enterprise virtualization infrastructure, it would need to support a bit more than one flavor of Linux.


After Xen was brought closer to Microsoft, its partner of the year Citrix is helping Hyper-V using Xen, as expected. From The Register:

You heard that right. Citrix is getting its virtual machine failover technology to Microsoft's Hyper-V and integrating it with Systems Center management tools ahead of its own XenServer/Essentials combo.


Microsoft is just trying to distort this entire market. Almost all the large virtualisation companies (except Qumranet/KVM, which Red Hat bought, as well as Virtual Iron, which oracle bought to bury) are there to serve Microsoft/Windows in some way. Novell is the same and it is going downhill. Tom Harvey has just written about the two executives who flee Novell and he adds this factoid:

Williams is trimming his estimates of Novell revenues for the first quarter of the new fiscal year by 3 percent and for next year by 1 percent compared to this year, with earnings per share for the year at 31 cents, down 9.6 percent over the current year.

"The biggest risk that we see for Novell in the year ahead is that management will lose credibility with the Street and the stock will be dead money until proof of concept becomes visible to investors," the report said.


As we wrote earlier in the week, the ridiculously high bonuses that Ron Hovsepian receives may indicate that he would otherwise leave the company, leading to a huge loss of credibility.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Comparing U.E.F.I. to B.I.O.S. (Bloat and Insecurity to K.I.S.S.)
By Sami Tikkanen
New 'Slides' From Stallman Support (stallmansupport.org) Site
"In celebration of RMS's birthday, we've been playing a bit. We extracted some quotes from the various articles, comments, letters, writings, etc. and put them in the form of a slideshow in the home page."
Thailand: GNU/Linux Up to 6% of Desktops/Laptops, According to statCounter
Desktop Operating System Market Share Thailand
António Campinos is Still 'The Fucking President' (in His Own Words) After a Fake 'Election' in 2022 (He Bribed All the Voters to Keep His Seat)
António Campinos and the Administrative Council, whose delegates he clearly bribed with EPO budget in exchange for votes
Adrian von Bidder, homeworking & Debian unexplained deaths
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
 
GNOME GUADEC 2022 & Debian Albanian women trafficked to Mexico?
Reprinted with permission from the Free Software Fellowship
Sainsbury's: It Takes Us Up to Two Days to Respond to Customers Upon Escalation (and Sometimes Even More Than Two Days)
It not only does groceries but also many other things, even banking
People Don't Just Kill Themselves (Same for Other Animals)
And recent reports about Boeing whistleblower John Barnett
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, March 18, 2024
IRC logs for Monday, March 18, 2024
Suicide Cluster Cover-up tactics & Debian exposed
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gemini Links 19/03/2024: A Society That Lost Focus and Abandoning Social Control Media
Links for the day
Matthias Kirschner, FSFE: Plagiarism & Child labour in YH4F
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Linux Foundation Boasting About Being Connected to Bill Gates
Examples of boasting about the association
Alexandre Oliva's Article on Monstering Cults
"I'm told an earlier draft version of this post got published elsewhere. Please consider this IMHO improved version instead."
[Meme] 'Russian' Elections in Munich (Bavaria, Germany)
fake elections
Sainsbury's to Techrights: Yes, Our Web Site Broke Down, But We Cannot Say Which Part or Why
Windows TCO?
Plagiarism: Axel Beckert (ETH Zurich) & Debian Developer list hacking
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 18/03/2024: Putin Cements Power
Links for the day
Flashback 2003: Debian has always had a toxic culture
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Sainsbury’s Epic Downtime Seems to be Microsoft's Fault and Might Even Constitute a Data Breach (Legal Liability)
one of Britain's largest groceries (and beyond) chains
[Meme] You Know You're Winning the Argument When...
EPO management starts cursing at everybody (which is what's happening)
Catspaw With Attitude
The posts "they" complain about merely point out the facts about this harassment and doxing
'Clown Computing' Businesses Are Waning and the Same Will Happen to 'G.A.I.' Businesses (the 'Hey Hi' Fame)
decrease in "HEY HI" (AI) hype
Free Software Needs Watchdogs, Too
Gentle lapdogs prevent self-regulation and transparency
Matthias Kirschner, FSFE analogous to identity fraud
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gemini Links 18/03/2024: LLM Inference and Can We Survive Technology?
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, March 17, 2024
IRC logs for Sunday, March 17, 2024
Links 17/03/2024: Microsoft Windows Shoves Ads Into Third-Party Software, More Countries Explore TikTok Ban
Links for the day
Molly Russell suicide & Debian Frans Pop, Lucy Wayland, social media deaths
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Our Plans for Spring
Later this year we turn 18 and a few months from now our IRC community turns 16
Open Invention Network (OIN) Fails to Explain If Linux is Safe From Microsoft's Software Patent Royalties (Charges)
Keith Bergelt has not replied to queries on this very important matter
RedHat.com, Brought to You by Microsoft Staff
This is totally normal, right?
USPTO Corruption: People Who Don't Use Microsoft Will Be Penalised ~$400 for Each Patent Filing
Not joking!
The Hobbyists of Mozilla, Where the CEO is a Bigger Liability Than All Liabilities Combined
the hobbyist in chief earns much more than colleagues, to say the least; the number quadrupled in a matter of years
Jim Zemlin Says Linux Foundation Should Combat Fraud Together With the Gates Foundation. Maybe They Should Start With Jim's Wife.
There's a class action lawsuit for securities fraud
Not About Linux at All!
nobody bothers with the site anymore; it's marketing, and now even Linux
Links 17/03/2024: Abuses Against Human Rights, Tesla Settlement (and Crash)
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, March 16, 2024
IRC logs for Saturday, March 16, 2024
Under Taliban, GNU/Linux Share Nearly Doubled in Afghanistan, Windows Sank From About 90% to 68.5%
Suffice to say, we're not meaning to imply Taliban is "good"
Debian aggression: woman asked about her profession
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gemini Links 17/03/2024: Winter Can't Hurt Us Anymore and Playstation Plus
Links for the day