Summary: Novell's role as a stooge in Microsoft's agenda is shown in the latest news

ONE YEAR ago we showed that Novell helped Microsoft's SharePoint lock-in by cozying up to Microsoft SharePoint. Novell wants to sell the illusion that by helping Microsoft it is helping the adoption of GNU/Linux, but this is total nonsense. Google and IBM fight against SharePoint the right way [1, 2], whereas Novell, which receives part of its revenue from Microsoft, is just helping SharePoint.

Recently, Mr. Worthington went over to Microsoft and Novell, which in turn resorted to misinforming or pampering him. Now he is writing this:

Microsoft, Novell collaborate on LDAP access to SharePoint

Microsoft and Novell are collaborating on an identity federation solution that will allow LDAP directories to access Microsoft SharePoint.

The solution, which will ship in March, adds a service component to Novell's Access Manager identity management system to federate identities to SharePoint, said Joshua Dorfman, Novell's senior director of global partner marketing.

Yes, that's Novell developing in collaboration with Microsoft. These two companies are becoming indistinguishable. Other obvious areas where Novell is developing for Microsoft are Mono and Moonlight. Microsoft is still working hard to spread Silverlightâ„¢, even using the development scam which strives to characterise Silverlight as "open source" [1, 2, 3, 4]. It's only pretense of "open source" and the confusion proves effective. Here is another potential attempt to associate Silverlight with "open source":

McObject€® announced it has successfully ported Perstâ„¢, its open source, object-oriented embedded database system, to Microsoft’s Silverlight technology for building rich Web applications.

As mentioned in the previous post, Microsoft is now bribing Web users to try out Bing Maps, which turns out to be a Silverlight trap. One Microsoft booster (Emil) defends this assault on web standards and another one suggests it can be used as a lock-in strategy for removing or taxing other people's phones with software patent "licensing". GNU/Linux does not have Silverlight, except Moblin. We wrote about this before [1, 2, 3], noting that Microsoft had stabbed Novell in the back. Linspire found that out too. It's the usual sob story of betrayed partners that Microsoft is just exploiting and then throwing to the den of wolves when it's all done. Microsoft compares partners to "one-night stands".

A few months ago, Microsoft's partner FASA Interactive said that Microsoft “destroys” partners. We are seeing it all the time, even with Novell. Microsoft is still squeezing out what's left at Novell.

"Now [Novell is] little better than a branch of Microsoft"

--LinuxToday Managing Editor

"Has anyone ever benefited from a Microsoft partnership," asks one of our readers. He quotes Sun/Scott McNealy regarding that question:

Scott McNealy signs off in style

Selected previous quotes:

`We're the only computer company that isn't a partner in some way to Microsoft, so they have a lot less leverage over us.'

Q: So how do you feel about the proposed [Nov. 2] settlement between Microsoft and the Justice Dept.?

A: It's garbage. We've now got a much more unfettered monopolist now-one that will hurt innovation and take away people's choices.

"It's mankind against Microsoft" November 2001

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"The way I put it is: Chapter 58 in most antitrust textbooks is 'Bundling the Browser With Your Operating System.' Chapter 1 is 'Buying Your Distribution Channel,'" McNealy said in an interview with Newsweek magazine to be published tomorrow. "It's like Standard Oil buying gas stations." June 2003

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"As you know, I didn't have to write a note to my engineers that said 'security is important'" June 2003

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"We are in a fairly unique position in a couple of ways. We have patent amnesty/patent peace as part of our contract [...] the customer doesn't have to anticipate a patent or an IP [intellectual property] battle between the two companies.

"I can guarantee you that Microsoft is going to have a very different view if Red Hat or SUSE desktops step on Microsoft IP-there's no patent peace/patent amnesty and 10-year interoperability agreement between Novell and Microsoft or between Red Hat and Microsoft." March 2005

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A year and a half later Microsoft essentially bought Novell's heart, using that so-called "Microsoft IP" mentioned above. ⬆

"I'd put the Linux phenomenon really as threat No. 1."

--Steve Ballmer, 2001