05.08.10
Novell: Making IT Work As One Microsoft Way
Summary: Some of the latest of Microsoft’s dishonest encroachments and how Novell participates in this
OVER THE NEXT couple of days we will uncover more of Microsoft’s reputation laundering that uses Gates’ new business ventures and Microsoft’s charm offences against “Open Source” as the core PR strategy. It’s the usual storyline… you know, excusing criminals and pretending they have changed their ways. History has many examples. Those who pay attention understand that Microsoft is as aggressive as ever (if not more than before [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]).
“It is the logical compliment that Microsoft Apologists will never mention: if Microsoft should be accepted when they participate on Open Source terms, then they should be rejected when they do not.”
–Jason, The SourceThe other day we wrote about a disappointing perspective from 451 CAOS Theory (whom Microsoft might be paying, but the 451 Group refuses to disclose such information. Yes, it’s ironic for an open source-focused firm to resist transparency through disclosure). Anyway, The Source has responded to that same perspective by writing: “Yet another pro-Microsoft article from the “open source” people over at 451 CAOS Theory.
“Remove the ever-present Microsoft apologetics though and there is a nugget of truth there: So long as Microsoft participates 100% on Open Source’s terms, good on them. They don’t get any special appreciation for doing so – because a) it’s the right thing to do, and I never understood praising people simply for doing the right thing, and b) they have a Karma Deficit bigger than Greece to pay off.
“It is the logical compliment that Microsoft Apologists will never mention: if Microsoft should be accepted when they participate on Open Source terms, then they should be rejected when they do not. So stop apologizing for them when they take half-measures, what ever the reason. Thank you.
“If you want to heap praise on them for doing the right thing – go ahead. I think that just goes to reinforce low expectations, but YMMV.”
“Microsoft is already embracing to exploit GNU/Linux through projects like Mono and Moonlight.”We have become accustomed to this. More CodePlex boosting from Microsoft blogs continues to arrive (they promote proprietary software by tying “Open Source” applications to it). It’s all about advancing Microsoft’s interests, which are interests that are shared among its boosters (they receive small rewards for it).
The Microsoft booster David Worthington does something similar at the moment by giving publicity to Hadoop with .NET, IIS, and Windows (let’s remember that Microsoft hijacked Yahoo!, so it’s only natural to exploit Hadoop too).
Microsoft is already embracing to exploit GNU/Linux through projects like Mono and Moonlight. Jamie from ZDNet UK votes “No” to Mono.
Removing Mono from Ubuntu 10.04
One of the most controversial entities (for lack of a better word) in the Linux world today is Mono. I won’t go into a lot of detail here, because I would prefer to avoid yet another shouting match about it – there are plenty of those around, if you care to take part in one. What I will do here is simply present the command necessary to purge Mono and anything that depends on it from the Ubuntu Lucid Lynx distribution.
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If you are interested in why one might want to banish Mono, one place to look would be the Mono-Nono web site.
Jamie mentioned Banshee, which has a new release that’s announced somewhere among the “Planet”-syndicated posts of SUSE. Yes, there are C# blogs in there, not just Mono ones. Frankly, this should not be viewed as bizarre because it has gone on for quite a few years. Ross Chevalier, one of Novell’s executives, writes in his blog the post “Getting Ready for Microsoft Office 2010″ (using it to market Novell products, just like they do with Windows releases such as Vista 7). Microsoft MVP (and Novell VP) Miguel de Icaza writes about MonoDevelop (main post for this week) and his colleague from Microsoft (Nat Friedman temporarily worked there) is still involved with SUSE, even after leaving Novell.
On the SUSE Studio team, we had a “level playing field” rule for our weekly meetings.
Based on the latest update from Groklaw, Novell is still useful for something. It has some more work to do against SCO.
SCO has filed its monthly operating reports for March. This is the month they did the deal with Ralph Yarro, so we find out what they did first with that loan money. Pay themselves, of course, and their lawyers. And one of their experts.
Isn’t it funny that Novell is fighting in court against a company that was funded by Microsoft, which is supposed to be Novell’s partner? █
“…Microsoft wished to promote SCO and its pending lawsuit against IBM and the Linux operating system. But Microsoft did not want to be seen as attacking IBM or Linux.”
–Larry Goldfarb, BayStar, key investor in SCO approached by Microsoft
