07.31.10
Novell Puts Microsoft Tax and Microsoft Code in Android and in GNU/Linux
“Now [Novell is] little better than a branch of Microsoft”
–LinuxToday Managing Editor
Summary: Novell is acting as though it is Microsoft’s committer in circles where Microsoft is rightly distrusted and OpenSUSE still ought to escape
THE controversial Mono framework is probably Novell’s main ‘contribution’ to GNU/Linux. It is now being developed with contributions from Microsoft employees, not just Novell employees. We already know the danger of Microsoft’s software patents. LG, for example, pays Microsoft for each device it ships which contains Linux. Apparently this will include Android tablets too. HTC has a similar problem and as a leading distributor of Android (car dock may be coming in September) the Microsoft tax matters, and not just because it feeds Microsoft but also because it makes Linux more expensive.
HTC appears to have put surprising effort into rendering a lifelike torch for its Flashlight app, while app sharing (seen after the break) is a neat addition — and don’t worry, devs, it only works on items that aren’t copy protected.
It would be nice if HTC also shipped phones without an operating system and then let customers download Android for them. This way Microsoft would not be paid for Android.
Anyway, making Android ‘tainted’ by default would be a more convenient thing for Microsoft, wouldn’t it? So Microsoft’s booster Gavin Clarke is now advertising MonoDroid [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14], which he says Novell is still pushing forward along with plugins for Microsoft’s Visual Studio.
he Novell-backed MonoTouch project is about to start beta tests of a version of its open-source implementation of Microsoft’s framework for use on Google’s Linux operating system for devices.
Final product for MonoDroid is expected in the fall, Novell Mono product manager Joseph Hill told The Reg – around the time of the next installment in Microsoft’s Windows phone story: Windows Phone 7, due in October.
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Novell, meanwhile, is today expected to announce availability of an updated version of its Mono Tools plug in to Microsoft’s Visual Studio IDE.
It’s becoming harder to know the difference between Microsoft and Novell. They might as well share offices.
Novell also helped Microsoft put its code inside Linux, despite the fact that it was for proprietary software, was discriminatory towards GNU/Linux, and was even a GPL violation. Microsoft MVPs and other Microsoft boosters like Marius Oiaga are the only ones we found promoting this thing in recent days.
Linux Integration Services v2.1 for Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V R2 is a set of drivers that enable synthetic device support in supported Linux virtual machines under Hyper-V.
Meanwhile, OpenSUSE is pushing Microsoft patent bait into GNU/Linux through OpenSUSE. I have been communicating with OpenSUSE managers (they contacted me, I didn’t contact them), but since they get a wage from Novell they always defend Novell’s side and refuse to see that Novell sold OpenSUSE down the river when it signed its 2006 patent deal with Microsoft. Novell offered no safety to OpenSUSE, especially if it is used commercially.
At any rate, OpenSUSE continues to be a technically solid distribution. The Linux Format people have always liked OpenSUSE and they still do. So does this person, whose new review says:
After eight months of development, the OpenSUSE 11.3 release in mid July was followed by an avalanche of excitement surrounding the new upgrades and enhancements. The OpenSUSE 11.3 DVD includes the best of the KDE 4.4.4, GNOME 2.30.1 and XFCE 4.6.2 desktop environments. Also included for the first time is an LXDE flavor which could be the first true lightweight version of OpenSUSE plus a preview of the radically different GNOME 3.0 desktop. Also take note of the great new features OpenSUSE has included. Stuff like the Btrfs filesystem available in the installer, improvements to zypper package manager, netbook support, smartphone syncing, and backup/file sharing capabilities in the cloud with Spideroak.
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After over a week of using OpenSUSE 11.3 in KDE, GNOME, and LXDE releases I got a pretty good feel for how the distro met my needs.
According to another person, “some of the changes are for the worse” in OpenSUSE 11.3.
The openSUSE guys decided to drop SCPM from 11.3.
“Instead” there is network manager.
Whoever made that decision has no idea at all about what scpm is, and what you can do with it…
With new community leadership OpenSUSE can hopefully distance itself from Novell. It probably needs to. Everyone needs to. █
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