Don Quixote and his sidekick Sancho Panza. By Gustave Dore.
(January 6, 1832 – January 23, 1883)

Summary: Microsoft's companions help the company either influence other companies or take over their agenda, Mono being the tool by which .NET gets injected into rivals

THE previous post argued that Novell's Microsoft MVP (who does nothing but Microsoft boosting in his blog this week) could fulfill his lifelong dream of becoming an employee of Microsoft because Novell might be bought by Microsoft. Analysts say so too. Having already changed the direction of Novell to one that is centered around Mono (to promote Windows, Xbox, .NET, Visual Studio, and so forth), Novell becomes a more convenient target for Microsoft to acquire. We have warned about it for several years and it is no longer far fetched.

“...Novell becomes a more convenient target for Microsoft to acquire.”When a company adopts something like Mono, it is rather telling. One proponent of Mono is Mainsoft and this week we find Mainsoft helping Microsoft by augmenting its software or ecosystem. Another example is the Mono boosters from Microsoft itself (former Microsoft employees) who seem to be all over the place. Not even one of them seems to oppose .NET, not after leaving the company that treats .NET like it's a "religion" (there are several examples which we prefer not to name as that would make it personal or confrontational).

Meanwhile, Novell forgets about OpenSUSE. Some of the people who contribute a lot to Linux were let go and laid off (naming them would seem abrasive) while Novell increased focus on Microsoft-assistive software instead. In fact, Novell's neglect of OpenSUSE is so apparent because the SUSE Planet is currently down and now we find out the reason:

Planet SUSE aggregates blog posts from the SUSE Linux universum, including openSUSE and SUSE Linux Enterprise. It aggregates not only English blog posts but also as separate feeds German, Spanish, Polish, and Portuguese posts.

Planet SUSE has been unavailable for the last days due to some problems while renewing the domain. We have therefore setup an alternative DNS entry for the server under the openSUSE domain, you can reach the planet now as planet.openSUSE.org. The alternative name will stay, so feel free to change your bookmarks permantelty to it.

If you'd like to see a blog shown on Planet SUSE, please tell the admins James Ogley and Pascal Bleser.

A special thanks to our Planet heros - James, Pascal, Darix and Justin,

Andreas

Last year we showed that Novell's neglect of OpenSUSE was so serious that the project was looking for sponsorship. If it were Mono, this would never happen. ⬆