Summary: Novell's latest press releases are largely well received by Microsoft and its proponents; Microsoft's latest GPL violation claimed confirmed

AN item of news that was mentioned yesterday touches on two points; one is the anniversary of Microsoft's patent deal with Novell and the other is Mono/Novell promotion of Visual Studio (and by extension .NET and Windows).

Most/all sites that are focused on GNU/Linux and Free software were apathetic at best towards Novell's press release which is mostly good news to Microsoft and the Microsoft ecosystem. The response was very telling, as it was covered by Mary Jo Foley and Microsoft booster Gavin Clarke (podcast colleague of Mary Jo Foley).

Now, there's a little less to laugh about. Microsoft partner Novell has delivered a plug-in designed to help Visual Studio developers easily build, debug, test, and port applications built using C# in Visual Studio 2005 to Linux, Unix, and OS X. The plug-in has Microsoft's full blessing.

We have yet to find coverage of this which does not come from Microsoft proponents; this is very typical when it comes to Mono and Moonlight matters.

In order to promote Visual Studio Microsoft has also just bought a company from SourceGear.

Buyout gives software maker a suite of tools for cross-platform development in Visual Studio.

It's all about enriching Microsoft's fortresses, especially when Windows-only passes as "open-source".

To Microsoft, part of these moves is to do with harming the GPL, which is at the core of Free software. Microsoft's latest GPL violation affected Vista 7 and there there were more GPL violations [1, 2, 3] which show that Microsoft disregards the law, as always. SJVN wrote about it as follows.

Microsoft violates GPL

[...]

The Windows 7 tool, of course, has Microsoft licenses all over it, doesn't allow users any access to its source code, and makes no acknowledgments to the debt it owes to ImageMaster. So much for the GPL.

I never bought for a moment that Microsoft had any real interest in working with open-source developers except for its own benefit. This case just underlines it.

Sam Varghese claims that Microsoft has just gotten rid of the "evidence".

Microsoft has taken offline an utility it supplies to help download DVD and USB images of Windows 7 purchased online, while it investigates allegations that GPL-ed code was used to develop the tool.

How might Microsoft treat and handle this public relations disaster?

This was not covered in many places, but Microsoft boosters Mary Jo Foley and Gavin Clarke both covered this as well, noting that "Microsoft has pulled a Windows 7 media and administration tool from the Microsoft Store site for apparently violating the GPL." Apparently? Really? Mary Jo Foley -- unlike SJVN for example -- uses a question mark. Also, there is a fair bit of denial in these articles, such as claims that Microsoft denies prior GPL violations (not true). Typical Microsoft spin and promotion. They rewrite history.

Going back to Novell, here is its joint press release with Microsoft. Yes, it's a joint press release, as if Novell is now a subsidiary of Microsoft.

REDMOND, Wash., and WALTHAM, Mass., Nov. 9 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Three years after Microsoft Corp. and Novell Inc. first inked their groundbreaking interoperability collaboration agreement, more than 475 customers have successfully future-proofed their Windows and Linux* IT operations by helping ensure business continuity, minimize risk and optimize mixed-source infrastructure. As a result of this unique industry relationship, Microsoft and Novell announced that more than 20 of these new joint customers have signed up for a subscription service launched a year ago by Novell. The service provides expanded support, and for customers running other Linux distributions, including Red Hat* Enterprise Linux, the support subscriptions qualify them for intellectual property (IP) peace of mind from Microsoft, while they transition to SUSE€® Linux Enterprise Server from Novell.

One journalist put it as follow: "Novell Pushes Benefits Of Microsoft Protection"

The service provides expanded support, and for customers running other Linux distributions, including Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the support subscriptions qualify them for intellectual property (IP) peace of mind from Microsoft, while they transition to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server from Novell.

"Intellectual property (IP) peace of mind," eh? Nothing has ever changed at Novell and unfortunately this is hurting OpenSUSE. Zonker writes, "Don’t forget: 11.2 will be released on Thursday! [that's tomorrow]," one response to which (the only response in Linux Today) is: "Thanks but I think I'll pass on yet another Microsoft product." ⬆

"[The partnership with Microsoft is] going very well insofar as we originally agreed to co-operate on three distinct projects and now we’re working on nine projects and there’s a good list of 19 other projects that we plan to co-operate on."

--Ron Hovsepian, Novell CEO