Bonum Certa Men Certa

How Microsoft 'Bought' Xen to Remove/Reduce Choice (Is Novell Next?)

A SUFFICIENTLY LARGE HEAP of developments may have come at the beginning of this week, so here is a quick rundown through various interpretations and how things are inherently connected.

Citrix Ruins Xen for Linux



The latest announcement from Citrix is one which was covered yesterday and here is the press release from the company. There is nothing particularly shocking there.

Ignition Partners and Citrix were apparently used for their relationships with Microsoft to bring over Xen to Microsoft's side. Having planted influence/cronies inside XenSource, Microsoft then 'bought' it using a partner [1, 2], only to hand it over back to Microsoft, over time [1, 2, 3]. The saga can be summarised as follows:

  1. Former Microsoft employees (Ignition Partners) put money in XenSource, which other companies have come to depend on as means of enabling GNU/Linux and choice
  2. At least one crony was put in charge of Xen (former Microsoft General Manager)
  3. XenSource was sold to Citrix without resistance
  4. Microsoft took Xen's agenda from Citrix, which was crowned Microsoft Partner of the Year (2008) after buying XenSource


According to Parallels, it's not surprising that Xen is no longer what it used to be, which leads to a cascading effect (companies dependent on Xen.org).

“I make the further prediction that Citrix will stop developing XenServer altogether since it is not needed to make XenApp work. This will signal the eventual end of XEN. You really have to applaud Microsoft’s Server group here: XEN could have been a serious competitor to them, but instead it ended up being a partner and technology provider. Now, when the difficult economic climate could have created considerable opportunities for the open source XEN offering, it is instead largely out of the picture due to its relationship with Citrix, and by extension with Microsoft.”


Novell is bound to help it too.

[Y]ou can safely bet that Novell will soon be joining up with Microsoft and Citrix to try to shove VMware out of the game with Citrix's free XenServer.


Further, about Novell.

Particularly prior to the interoperability announcement between Red Hat and Microsoft, some bloggers were attacking Novell for moves such as improving interoperability with ASP.NET, getting the Novell/Microsoft Moonlight project included in Ubuntu Linux 9.04, and increasing its hiring of .NET developers.


It's a case of focus shifting. Is Novell's fate similar to that of Xen?

Novell and Maritz



Microsoft has already stirred up trouble inside VMware as well. It put its employees in charge of another virtualisation option that's by far the market leader. This deserves or even warrants investigation by competition authorities. Now Novell is sidling with VMware as well.

Novell and VMware said Tuesday that they are collaborating so independent software vendors can build SUSE Linux Enterprise virtual appliances. The two companies will also develop VMware-ready appliances on SUSE Linux.


Red Hat Goes It Alone



The Microsoft-Red Hat agreement remains a bit of an enigma. This has been the subject of much debate recently, but it's not known what the agreement actually meant in technical terms and whether it involved KVM or Xen (or both) on the non-Microsoft side. Sam Varghese wrote about the subject and also included a valuable quote from Samba's lead (Samba has always been against the Novell deal).

Said Tridgell: "I certainly have no objection in principle to interoperability agreements, and I am pleased that Red Hat have gone to the trouble of pointing out that the agreement does not contain any of the patent components that are so problematic with the Novell agreement."


"How does this impinge on Microsoft/Novell's 'virtualisation interoperability' deal? What do Novell get out of it? Or what did they think they were getting out of it," asks one reader.

"As far as I can see, Novell signed away some IP rights and agreed to get out of the desktop business in return for Microsoft collaboration in the data center. Now it seems that Microsoft has signed a similar deal with Red Hat, without signing away any patent rights, and now VM 'partner' Citrix is 'giving away' its offerings. Seems like Microsoft stole the wind right out of their sails."

Novell is by all means the biggest loser in this case and as announced in an important press release, Red Hat has just outlined its virtualisation strategy.

Red Hat Monday introduced an entire line of virtualization software aimed at disrupting the current market and leader VMware's position by giving customers an open-source option for virtualizing their data centers.


Red Hat unleashed another press release about its ISVs and the role of virtualisation, which it is careful not to label "cloud" or some other buzzword.

Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT), the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced its virtualization agenda and roadmap for 2009, including confirmation that its broad ecosystem of applications tested and certified to run on Red Hat Enterprise Linux are certified to run in a Red Hat virtualized platform with no modifications. Red Hat offers a broad ecosystem of certified applications, enabling expanded flexibility and choice for customers.


There is additional analysis from Sean Michael Kerner and from Timothy Prickett Morgan of IT Jungle/The Register.

Red Hat is a player in operating systems and middleware, and it wants to be a player in server virtualization - at least more of a player than it has been since it parked the Xen hypervisor inside its Enterprise Linux 5 distro back in March 2007.


This news also got the attention of Dana Blankenhorn and that of IBM's Linux chief. SJVN argues that Red Hat demotes Xen and pushes for KVM instead.

Despite Red Hat’s surprising announcement last week that it would be partnering with Microsoft on virtualization, on February 23rd, Red Hat’s announced that it would be switching its virtualization strategy from a mix of virtualization programs, including the Microsoft-friendly Xen, to focusing on Linux’s baked-in KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine)

KVM, as Red Hat CTO Brian Stevens admitted during a press call, is still a work in progress. But, Stevens assured the audience, by working with IBM and Intel, Red Hat will be able to deliver its full Red Hat Virtualization portfolio within the next 12-months. The first fruits of this switch will appear in RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) 5.4, which is due out in August 2009.


"The Microsoft-friendly Xen," it says right there. Paula Rooney rightly opines that Red Hat has lost interest in Xen:

More importantly, Red Hat issued its war plan against Xen.


So Microsoft turned Xen from a friend of GNU/Linux almost into its foe, at least from some companies' perspective. What a difference cash infusions can make.

Red hat woman

Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

Live as You Preach
technology is fast becoming dysphoric
Computers Got Smaller, So GNU/Linux Got Bigger
Many people here recognise the lack of urgency (or need) to get expensive new laptops
GNU/Linux Grows at Windows' Expense and Microsoft Trolls Infest and Maliciously Target Articles About It
Microsoft is - and has long been - organised crime
They Say I'm Mr. Bombastic
They didn't take good lawyers
 
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part VII: Washing Their Hands After Corruption and Abuse
"Tragedy or comedy?"
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, June 09, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, June 09, 2025
Gemini Protocol Turns Six in 10 Days From Now
If you haven't tried it yet, then give it a go today
Culling Bad RSS Feeds of Bad Sites
Not throwing out the baby with the bathwater
Gemini Links 09/06/2025: Addition Addiction and Nitride
Links for the day
Links 09/06/2025: Science, Hardware Projects, and Democracy Receding
Links for the day
BetaNews is a Plagiarism and LLM Slop Hub, the Chief Editor Isn't Addressing This Problem Anymore
SS Fagioli is basically a parasite leeching off or exploiting other people's work
Links 09/06/2025: Chaos in Los Angeles and Hurricane Season
Links for the day
Links 09/06/2025: Windows TCO and Many Data Breaches
Links for the day
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part VI: Political Stunts by Former President Edyta Demby-Siwek and the Connection to Profound Corruption at EUIPO
it's like a money-laundering operation where one politician rewards another at taxpayers' expense
Gemini Links 09/06/2025: Pipelines and Splitgate
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, June 08, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, June 08, 2025
Links 08/06/2025: Tiananmen Carnage Censorship Persists, North Korean Goes Offline
Links for the day
Gemini Links 08/06/2025: Love as an Ethnographic Method and Monitorix Gemini-Frontend v0.1
Links for the day
Links 08/06/2025: Exposure of More GAFAM Surveillance and Social Security Records Compromised
Links for the day
Linux Foundation is a Mediator for Microsoft et al, Not for Small Companies That Support Rather Than Attack the GPL
Many people still wrongly assume that because it is called "Linux Foundation", then it is pro-Linux and represents the same mindset
This Past Friday, Confirming What We Said All Along About Brett Wilson LLP: It's Shrinking, Has Considerable Debt, Loss of Net Assets Despite the Microsoft SLAPP Money
The documents only became publicly available less than 2 days ago
Some of the Many Reasons We Sued Microsofters for Harassment
perpetrators of harassment
For 20 Years Many People Were Sharecropping for Canonical's Oligarch, Now He's Deleting All Their Contributions
"Ubuntu has erased instead of archiving the trove of material at Ubuntu Forums"
There Was Always Too Much 'Crazy Stuff' Going on Around Freenode
What many IRC users lost sight of
Exposing Crime is Not a Crime (It Never Was)
In the eyes of rich and powerful people, those who speak about their crimes are the "criminals"
GNU/Linux Distros Abandoning Microsoft GitHub
Will curl be next to leave Microsoft GitHub?
Expect More XBox Mass Layoffs Soon If the Rumours Are True
From a Microsoft media operative
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, June 07, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, June 07, 2025
Europe Needs to Move Away From GAFAM; The Sooner, the Better
Europe - not just the EU - must abandon GAFAM as soon as possible
The Issue Isn't GNOME's Promotion of Diversity But GNOME Corruption, Abuse, Censorship, and Worse
So-called "Conservative" (republican, pro-Trump, bigoted) people want you to think the problem with GNOME is politics
When the News Sources Become Scarce and Increasingly Full of Polluted/Contaminated 'Content' (With LLM Slop and Slop Images)
Integrity matters
"Linux" Sites That Spew Out LLM Slop
We're lacking enough material for another "Slopwatch"
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part V: Breaking the Law, Just Like EPO
We'll hopefully cover some of the pertinent details later this year