Monopoly now, community later

As stressed many times before, Novell has placed its bets on relying on Microsoft. It hopes that by obeying the wishes of the company behind Windows, it might receive a reward. Without it, Novell would be experiencing financial difficulties.

A couple of weeks ago, Novell's CEO stated that the number of collaborations with Microsoft were expected to roughly triple. In other words, those who believe they have seen Microsoft and Novell getting closer have plenty left to witness. How long before Novell just becomes a part of Microsoft?

Earlier this morning (around midnight in Waltham), the following press release hit the wires.

Microsoft and Novell Deliver Joint Virtualization Solution Through Partners

[...]

Supported by Dell and other channel partners, solution includes SUSE Linux Enterprise Server running as optimized guest on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V.

[...]

The virtualization solution is the first to include technology developed by both companies at their joint Interoperability Lab, including virtual machine adapters built to optimize SUSE Linux Enterprise Server as an optimized, or often referred to as enlightened, guest operating system on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, providing optimized performance to SUSE Linux guests.

It is clear that Novell's plan has not changed, but practical progress is being made twards making GNU/Linux a guest machine under Windows hosts, using Microsoft's own virtualisation products that discriminate against Red Hat, for instance. It's a predatory joining of former rivals to just hurt other rivals and hand over power to one company: Microsoft.

Microsoft could play with all GNU/Linux distributions, but instead it chose to separate between those that pay Microsoft for the 'privilege' to function and those that do not. Stephen Withers, failing to realise the complexity of this situation, is quick to proactively dismiss critics as 'anti-Microsoft'.

inux and Windows working nicely together might not be the dream scenario for Linux purists committed to a Microsoft-free world. Indeed, there are some who will likely slam this development as little more that Microsoft hype and hoo-hah.

Sean Michael Kerner published this quick article as well.

It also comes at an opportune time for Novell, which is trying to differentiate itself from competitor Red Hat and its virtualization offerings.

Just a few days ago, Novell's Jaffe talked about the "depth of partnership with Microsoft." Has it ever occurred to Novell that it could partner with GNU/Linux counterparts rather than partner against them?

Depth of partnership with Microsoft

The depth of our partnership with Microsoft is the significant. Some of the key aspects of this partnership are:

• Technical collaboration as part of our original agreement. This was broad covering many areas: documents, directory, management, and virtualization
• A joint laboratory in Cambridge, MA to work on interoperability
• An expansion of this technical collaboration into new areas. This includes the Moonlight project for the Silverlight framework and accessibility.
• Bolstering the technical collaboration by building companion offers. A great example is our Advanced Management Pack for Linux.
  Regular meetings at working levels and executive levels to understand customer problems and explore where additional interoperability is required.

Overall, this comes to prove that proprietary software agenda comes before Free software at Novell. What a shame and what a waste. A reality check is needed for those inside Novell who are still fooled into thinking that the company is a friend of freedom rather than its paid suppressor. ⬆

"We will do some buying of companies that are built around open-source products."

--Steve Ballmer 2007