Bonum Certa Men Certa

Novell's Role in a Microsoft Strategy to Sideline GNU/Linux (Updated)

In the "Town Of Mirrors", there is nobody more omnipresent than self. And that, you see, is the situation up there in Redmond, Washington, which is virtually a town of mirrors.

Submitted to LinuxToday by Jeff 'Microsoft' Gould (on the face of it), the following image shows how badly Microsoft treats competition. Microsoft puts itself at the centre of the world and tries to push GNU/Linux out of it. Here is how Mary Jo Foley puts it:

Microsoft is looking at open-source software (OSS) as just another flavor of independent software vendors (ISV) software. Microsoft’s goal is to convince OSS vendors to port their software to Windows. But Microsoft doesn’t want OSS software to just sit on top of Windows; the company wants this software to be tied into the Windows ecosystem by integrating with Active Directory, Microsoft Office, Expression designer tools, System Center systems-management wares and SQL Server database.

In cases where customers and software vendors want/need Linux to still be part of the picture for some reason, Microsoft will suggest they use Hyper-V, its forthcoming virtualization hypervisor, to run Linux and Linux-dependent applications.


Several points come to mind. Among them:

  1. With Hyper-V and the Novell deal, Microsoft hopes to make Linux a 'slave' (VM guest, not host). We covered this many times before and offered quotes confirming it, including ones from Ron Hovsepian.
  2. The aspiration to bring all open source software to Windows was mentioned explicitly by Steve Ballmer back in October. Recall the recent Apache story.


In the past 24 hours alone we showed at least two new examples where Microsoft uses Novell. These include:



“It's easier to crush a single company than an entity which is widely distributed.”It is truly appalling to find that some companies still adopt SLES and SLED, even in places software patents are not legal. Companies that adopt Novell's SUSE are rather foolish. They get absolutely nothing in return and they receive nothing extra apart from 'tax' for mythical patents and unsubstantiated patent claims. "Interoperability" is just a decoy. There is nothing missing in other offerings. It's like offering a buyer aura along with a plasma ball.

Disinformation and ignorance in this area is astounding. The Redmond/Waltham hypnosis machine has had some people believe they get something extra from Novell. Well, that is perhaps what one gets when Bill Gates and Microsoft literally own a lot of the media, so they send messages advocating SLED/S, for which Microsoft gets paid handsomely. They advocate it at the expense of other Linux offerings whose sales Microsoft is not paid for. Microsoft tries to suffocate everything but Novell et al. It's easier to crush a single company than an entity which is widely distributed.

One day people will realise and grasp the truth. We already know all about SCO.

Update: You may also wish to see Matt Asay's coverage of this and, in particular, his interpretation of the disturbing strategy chart.

Microsoft and open source: Welcome to the Borg?



[...]

As it turns out, it's very similar to Microsoft's general partner strategy: embrace and envelope. (Or embrace, extend, and extinguish, as used to be Microsoft's marching orders.)


This makes Novell just another Microsoft ISV, doesn't it?

Recent Techrights' Posts

KillerStartups.com is an LLM Spam Site That Sometimes Covers 'Linux' (Spams the Term)
It only serves to distract from real articles
 
Gemini Links 21/11/2024: Alphabetising 400 Books and Giving the Internet up
Links for the day
Links 21/11/2024: TikTok Fighting Bans, Bluesky Failing Users
Links for the day
Links 21/11/2024: SpaceX Repeatedly Failing (Taxpayers Fund Failure), Russian Disinformation Spreading
Links for the day
Richard Stallman Earned Two More Honorary Doctorates Last Month
Two more doctorate degrees
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, November 20, 2024
IRC logs for Wednesday, November 20, 2024
Gemini Links 20/11/2024: Game Recommendations, Schizo Language
Links for the day
Growing Older and Signs of the Site's Maturity
The EPO material remains our top priority
Did Microsoft 'Buy' Red Hat Without Paying for It? Does It Tell Canonical What to Do Now?
This is what Linus Torvalds once dubbed a "dick-sucking" competition or contest (alluding to Red Hat's promotion of UEFI 'secure boot')
Links 20/11/2024: Politics, Toolkits, and Gemini Journals
Links for the day
Links 20/11/2024: 'The Open Source Definition' and Further Escalations in Ukraine/Russia Battles
Links for the day
[Meme] Many Old Gemini Capsules Go Offline, But So Do Entire Web Sites
Problems cannot be addressed and resolved if merely talking about these problems isn't allowed
Links 20/11/2024: Standing Desks, Broken Cables, and Journalists Attacked Some More
Links for the day
Links 20/11/2024: Debt Issues and Fentanylware (TikTok) Ban
Links for the day
Jérémy Bobbio (Lunar), Magna Carta and Debian Freedoms: RIP
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Jérémy Bobbio (Lunar) & Debian: from Frans Pop to Euthanasia
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
This Article About "AI-Powered" is Itself LLM-Generated Junk
Trying to meet quotas by making fake 'articles' that are - in effect - based on plagiarism?
Recognizing invalid legal judgments: rogue Debianists sought to deceive one of Europe's most neglected regions, Midlands-North-West
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Google-funded group distributed invalid Swiss judgment to deceive Midlands-North-West
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gemini Links 20/11/2024: BeagleBone Black and Suicide Rates in Switzerland
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, November 19, 2024
IRC logs for Tuesday, November 19, 2024
Links 19/11/2024: War on Cables?
Links for the day
Gemini Links 19/11/2024: Private Journals Online and Spirituality
Links for the day
Drew's Development Mailing Lists and Patches to 'Refine' His Attack Pieces Against the FSF's Founder
Way to bury oneself in one's own grave...
The Free Software Foundation is Looking to Raise Nearly Half a Million Dollars by Year's End
And it really needs the money, unlike the EFF which sits on a humongous pile of oligarchs' and GAFAM cash
What IBMers Say About IBM Causing IBMers to Resign (by Making Life Hard/Impossible) and Why Red Hat Was a Waste of Money to Buy
partnering with GAFAM
In Some Countries, Desktop/Laptop Usage Has Fallen to the Point Where Microsoft and Windows (and Intel) Barely Matter Anymore
Microsoft is the next Intel basically
[Meme] The Web Wasn't Always Proprietary Computer Programs Disguised as 'Web Pages'
The Web is getting worse each year
Re-de-centralisation Should Be Our Goal
Put the users in charge, not governments and corporations in charge of users
Gemini Links 19/11/2024: Rain Music, ClockworkPi DevTerm, and More
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, November 18, 2024
IRC logs for Monday, November 18, 2024