Paying money to embrace and extend?

Summary: Microsoft's extension Ignition Partners is putting money and board members inside yet another company that spreads Free software

LAST week we mentioned how former Microsoft executives who became Juniper managers [1, 2, 3] could lead to more services being offered to Microsoft and now we find this press release. For several years we have also argued that XenSource being sold to Citrix would render it irrelevant to Linux and this did actually happen. RHEL 6 won't even have Xen anymore.

CBR says that "Citrix unveils new version of XenServer" and Microsoft is giving it "full endorsement" [1, 2].

XenClient, says Wasson, will be included in the "next major release" of XenDesktop and was developed not only in conjunction with Intel, but also PC makers Hewlett-Packard and Dell, which will be on hand to endorse XenClient at Synergy. Wasson said that Microsoft has given XenClient its "full endorsement" too.

It is important to remind ourselves how Xen ended up in the arms of Microsoft's partner of the year (2008). We previously showed the role played by former Microsoft executives from Ignition Partners and now we find that the same arm is going after a Ruby company, which might in turn be tilted in favour of Windows Server.

Ex-Microsoft power pair puff Ruby cloud

Ruby cloud behemoth Heroku has sucked in some heavyweight power courtesy of two influential ex-Microsofties.

On Monday, Heroku announced that it's been given $10m in VC funding, and the round is led by Ignition partners, home to Brad Silverberg - who established many of the Microsoft products you now take for granted - and Microsoft's former chief information officer and chief financial officer John Connors. As part of the cash deal, Connors has joined Heroku's board.

Heroku is home to 60,000 Ruby applications and it's used by developers of all sizes, including giants like US consumer electronics retailer Best Buy. The company claims 1,500 applications are being added to its cloud each week.

Microsoft already has IronRuby [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14] and we know extremely well Silverberg's participation in many of Microsoft's illegal activities because we have possession of evidence. Heroku now has Microsoft's former CFO inside the board. It's part of the deal. Why would former Microsoft thugs be interested in a company which is home to 60,000 Ruby applications? Judging by what they did to Xen, there is reason for distrust. See our previous analysis of Ignition Partners. It's just loads of Microsoft veterans and they can use money to promote Microsoft's agenda. ⬆