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Microsoft Employees and Boosters Stick Nose in the Linux Tent

Camels out humping

"We come in peace, so now open up your wallet and pay us for that copy of your Linux."

Three weeks ago we wrote about Microsoft's presence in yet another Linux event. Microsoft, just as a reminder, views Linux as its number one competitor and at the same time it accuses Linux of "stealing" from Microsoft.

So, just behold the unsurprising news about Microsoft being unwelcome at this latest event. More disturbing, however, is Novell's role as Microsoft excuse for inviting itself. We saw this before and surely we'll be seeing more of it in the future.

Microsoft Faces Skeptics at Open Source Conference



[...]

Representatives of both companies provided a status report of their collaboration at the annual Linux/Open Source on Wall Street conference held in New York this week. Microsoft says it has sold more than 100,000 SuSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) licenses to about 60 large enterprise customers, among them Credit Suisse, HSBC, Synovus Financial Corp. and Wal-Mart.


Let us get something straight. When someone who takes (or "steals", to use Microsoft's own terminology) revenue from Linux, to which it contributed absolutely nothing (unless technical sabotage, FUD and intimidation count as "contributions"), can any of those so-called 'skeptics' be blamed at all? Just wait until anonymous folks come around to stick labels like "zealots" or "haters". It's easy to discredit using blacklists.

“Watch carefully how Novell's deal with Microsoft serves as a ticket for Microsoft to enter every Linux and open source conference.”Watch carefully how Novell's deal with Microsoft serves as a ticket for Microsoft to enter every Linux and open source conference. Novell is praising Microsoft and encouraging people to approach Microsoft with open arms.

Microsoft recently sponsored the SugarCRM conference as well. One can only imagine what they quietly say or whisper to those developers and corporate clients about Linux ("Server 2008 is a superset of Linux", "GPLv3 is scary", "Linux patent violation claims are not bogus", etc.) and how they channel people in Novell's direction in order for software patent 'tax' to be extracted from SLED/SLES.

In other news about betrayal or poor principles, Watch this take on SpikeSource.

Intel’s investment in SpikeSource goes beyond financial ties, however. It has also picked the company to provide its new software testing and validation service, announced alongside the new 2nd generation Classmate PC.


We wrote about SpikeSource the other day and it seems like we were right to assume that MixedSource (a bit like Novell) might be a better name for the company, which has gotten itself a little too cosy with both Microsoft and Intel. At this stage, it even helps Intel with its anti-OLPC project, essentially an anti-charity 'emergency response' [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8].

Shane has been covering Novell's mixed-source identity crisis and last wrote about it over a year ago. He was more recently arguing with Novell employees and/or OpenSUSE developers over at Slashdot where some Novell boosters reside.

To better exemplify Novell's broken mixed-source strategy, consider the following article from Friday's news:

Identity Management Based On Open Source Reference Code

The Novell-led Bandit project has announced a solution to help address one of the major business challenges faced by hotel and hospitality enterprises – how to cost effectively connect disparate systems to streamline administration and comply with regulatory requirements. Using open source, the Bandit project has written a reference implementation based on Hotel Technology Next Generation (HTNG) standards that will bridge various systems and platforms in an enterprise, including legacy systems, with commercially available identity management software.


Mind the dubious use of the term "Open Source Reference Code". Shades of Microsoft's own dilutions with OOXML.

Say No to Novell

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