Summary: The growing danger of a Linux Foundation which is funded not just by proprietary software giants but also direct opposition of Linux and serial violators of the licence of GNU (GPL)

THE level of entryism at the Linux Foundation has become way beyond acceptable and now that only corporations are involved in decision-making (see reminder below) we expect to see the verge of the farcical. How long before the Linux Foundation is not even pro-Linux but is instead pro-industry (for the industry giants that fund and thus dominate it)? Or, put another way, will it endorse things irrespective of the very spirit of both Linux and GNU? Whether something is or is not Free/Open Source software and whether it promotes (GNU) Linux? You know something is very wrong when the (paid-for) keynote speech at the biggest Linux conference is given by the company that called Linux “cancer” and continues to attack Linux to this date. That’s like having Donald Trump at the Democrat’s conventions and campaigns.

We have been trying to write more about patents, especially about the EPO, so not many articles mention Linux or talk about Microsoft these days. Microsoft’s latest patent attacks on Free software are revealing; Microsoft says it “loves Linux”, but its attacks on Linux definitely carry on (as recently as a couple of weeks ago or less).

“Microsoft’s latest patent attacks on Free software are revealing; Microsoft says it “loves Linux”, but its attacks on Linux definitely carry on (as recently as a couple of weeks ago or less).”The following points were mentioned a lot over the past 2 weeks, but we finally decided to write an article about it because sponsored articles (for Linux Foundation funders) continue to come out from the Linux Foundation’s Web site (this disclosure says IBM, but previously it was Microsoft). Why is the Linux Foundation simply morphing into a mouthpiece? Why, for example, is it willing to publish Microsoft lies? Just because Microsoft pays for it doesn’t mean it’s ethical or worthwhile. It reminds us of the years when Microsoft used (exploited) Novell for Microsoft marketing. I’ve exchanged nearly a dozen E-mails about this with Stallman this past week and he too is concerned about it.

The main subject of this article is actually VMware, a company that has been notorious for GPL violations for quite a few years (almost a decade). Some people wrote articles noting that Torvalds had publicly acknowledged the important role of the GPL at LinuxCon. Shortly thereafter, however, Torvalds blasted GPL enforcement. A week ago we saw at least two articles about exactly that [1, 2] (related but less relevant is this article).

“VMware recently poached Dirk Hohndel from Intel (head of Open Source [sic] or whatever they call it) and it was him who interviewed Torvalds as his trusted colleague less than a fortnight ago at LinuxCon, just shortly before the above attack on Kuhn et al.”Journalists then saw a rant in the mailing lists and decided to inform readers regarding Torvalds’ public rant against the Conservancy [1, 2] (these link to the original from the mailing list). A few more articles about the subject have been published since (these are in our daily links) and they serve to reinforce suspicions that Sandler (not just Kuhn) from the Conservancy got pushed out of the Linux Foundation, causing a lot of backlash about a year ago. The backlash was about abandonment of funds (material support) to the Conservancy; it happened after VMware had joined the Linux Foundation and the Conservancy got involved in a GPL enforcement lawsuit against VMware.

But here comes the interesting thing — an observation which I mentioned last week (in passing) over at Tux Machines. VMware recently poached Dirk Hohndel from Intel (head of Open Source [sic] or whatever they call it) and it was him who interviewed Torvalds as his trusted colleague less than a fortnight ago at LinuxCon, just shortly before the above attack on Kuhn et al. It reinforces the suspicion that the Conservancy’s decision to uphold the GPL on behalf of a client made Hohndel an enemy and then, by inference, made Torvalds somewhat of an enemy. Remember that a lot of ‘ex’ Microsoft executives now run VMware (look who has been running the company since 2008) and the company famously violates the GPL (this has been known for many years), just as Microsoft did when it created a shim for its proprietary, back door-compatible Hyper-V (that too was a GPL violation, but Microsoft moved quickly to comply once caught [1, 2, 3])?

“How long before the Linux Foundation is truly/entirely incapable of defending Linux from patent lawsuits and upholding the GPL because Linux foes and GPL foes develop financial strings, making them harder (or riskier) to publicly criticise?”The above observations came out late (I did not wish to write about the subject), but when Microsoft attacked Linux with patents it became too much to skip (I only say “Linux” because it’s Android in this case). How long before the Linux Foundation is truly/entirely incapable of defending Linux from patent lawsuits and upholding the GPL because Linux foes and GPL foes develop financial strings, making them harder (or riskier) to publicly criticise? █

Why do so many FOSS sites cover VMware and VMWorld when all it’s about is proprietary software and EEE (embrace and extend) against FOSS? Remember that it was Paul Maritz, Vice President at Microsoft who later became the CEO of VMware, saying that he wanted to “cut off Netscape’s air supply.” VMware is not a friend of FOSS and it is also a GPL violator, based on strong evidence that was never quite revisited in recent years. VMware is about exploiting FOSS while giving nothing in return.

Maritz and his influence linger on because, as even a Microsoft-friendly site put it, this is “embrace and extend” all over again. It looks like VMware is ‘embracing’ FOSS, but it’s embracing it like a python embraces a lamb. From the summary:

VMware’s VMworld announcements are a case study in the “embrace and extend” approach used so well by Microsoft. The big difference is VMware doesn’t want to and couldn’t add the “extinguish” to the cloud (hybrid or otherwise).

Larry Dignan is wrong in that last part. Having been an involuntary user of VMware in some places at work, it seems clear that VMware and their effect on VMs is similar to that of Oracle in databases. Many who insist on FOSS compromise for proprietary software and if the openwashing PR works (many thing of Oracle and VMware as ‘Linux-friendly’ due to marketing), then better options like PostgreSQL or MySQL (and KVM) get ignored or only scarcely explored.

VMware should generally be considered a proprietary software snake crawling inside the FOSS yard, offering nothing more than back doors at hypervisor level (remember that VMware and RSA, the NSA’s back door ally, are owned by the same company). Watch this new article titled “VMware CEO details offensive strategy for containers, open source”.

In other news, Sonatype, which has a consistent track record of FOSS licensing FUD, uses its spun credentials to make itself seem like FOSS while bashing FOSS in the FOSS-hostile IDG. Sonatype should spend more time explaining to the public the grave dangers posed by proprietary software EULAs and licensing costs, not to mention gangsters/lobbyists such as the BSA.

Lastly, but not leastly (no, it’s not really a word), watch this coverage of a Mono release. This article does not cover the issues around patents, Microsoft and a lot more. Instead it quotes the Microsoft boosters from Xamarin as follows:

The developers are saying that “Mono is an open source implementation of Microsoft’s .NET Framework based on the ECMA standards for C# and the Common Language Runtime. A growing family of solutions and an active and enthusiastic contributing community are helping position Mono to become the leading choice for development of cross platform applications.”

Mono is a great example of a FOSS mole. Mono and the company behind it are basically a Microsoft Trojan horse inside FOSS. The goal of Xamarin and of Mono is to make Microsoft richer, more dominant, more omnipresent, and in great control over all software. Xamarin hardly even cares for free/libre operating systems. It’s all about C# and other proprietary, heavily-patented Microsoft frameworks. Follow the money to better understand what drives Xamarin and what its true goals are. Look at who the company hires and what its staff says.

Writing about Microsoft’s pretense of embracing FOSS (like a wolf guarding the hen house), Jim Lynch cited us calling this whole thing “digital imperialism” the other day. He wrote: “I have seen some articles recently that asked if Microsoft has become a friend to open source over the last few years, and I think the behavior detailed in this article puts the lie to that idea. Microsoft was never a friend to the open source movement and it certainly isn’t now. But such press coverage is probably useful to the company as a cloak to hide behind while it tries to slip a dagger into the back of open source software.

“I also noted in an earlier article this week my skepticism of some of the articles about Munich supposedly dumping open source. If Techrights is correct then it looks like Microsoft may have had a hand in promoting some of the negative press coverage of open source in Munich. Sometimes it’s easy to smell a rat when you see a story like that suddenly cascading through technology media. ”

All that Microsoft can offer Munich is the return to blue screens of death, surveillance (espionage against Germany), a higher overall bill (in the long run), and fewer German jobs. Last week we noted that the one man who caused all the commotion in Munich (a self-professed Windows fan) was potentially a mole. People like John Dvorak are currently trying to exploit this deception to provoke and perhaps even troll GNU/Linux users. █

Summary: Nicolas (Neela) Jacques is appointed by the Linux Foundation to be Executive Director, overseeing efforts that involve GNU/Linux vendors

MICROSOFT ENTRYISM is a serious problem. We already know what impact it has had on Yahoo! and Nokia. Microsoft also occupied VMware after EMC’s Tucci foolishly let Ballmer do this (almost all the top executives were Microsoft executives bringing in former colleagues). The Ubuntu project too is now steered by a former Microsoft employee (who still lives in Seattle, just like Elop) as the project angers more and more people [1, 2].

Among the VMware managers who are former Microsoft employees there is this guy who, after the Linux Foundation let Microsoft get closer (to OpenDaylight), becomes the Executive Director. “Until now, the OpenDaylight Project has not had its own Executive Director, but that has changed,” says this article. So now we have a former Microsoft manager in charge of a Linux Foundation initiative. Wonderful! What could possibly go wrong? █

Summary: OpenSUSE is still being neglected, whereas the product it is used to promote (Microsoft Linux/Ballnux) gets promoted by former Microsoft executives who run VMware

THE OPENSUSE project is a PR sidekick of Microsoft Linux, which is one of the few distributions that Microsoft endorses (for they pay Microsoft a patent fee).

According to numerous reports, the download servers are down and the OpenSUSE site itself acknowledges this:

The SAN array of the backend server server seems to have lost 3 hard disk at once now.

That means the array with the built RPMs is broken atm. We are currently checking and replacing from backups – but since not all binary parts of the projects are in backup it means that we will need to rebuild some of them afterwards. This will take time until Monday, 2012-01-16.

That’s today. Well, previously when OpenSUSE had server issues it sought help from volunteers or donations/sponsors rather than Novell. This just comes to show how much the company cares about this PR front; letting it be down for such a long duration of time is truly a sign. Had it been SUSE (Microsoft Linux), things would be brought back up promptly (and also properly backed up with redundancy). Here we find another new article about the Microsoft Linux push that we mentioned the other day.

One news article says:

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server Now On Dell Cloud With VMware vCloud DC Service

SUSE has announced that SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is the first Linux distribution for Dell’s new VMware software-based cloud offering, Dell Cloud with VMware vCloud Datacenter Service. SUSE Linux Enterprise offers the broadest application portfolio, as well as optimisation with the VMware cloud infrastructure suite. Now, Dell customers can efficiently run a wide range of ISV applications, on demand with maximum performance, while receiving streamlined support from Dell and SUSE across the Dell public and private cloud offerings.

Here is another take which goes like this: “The new Dell Cloud Datacenter Service has embraced SUSE as its first Linux platform. The hidden twist: The Dell-SUSE announcement is likely built on the SUSE-VMware relationship, which seeks to counter Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization.”

As we showed in previous posts, Microsoft veterans run VMware and the monopolist seeks to hijack the competition wherever it may be, knowing that the days of Windows may be numbered. As one person put it the other day:

Not that this means Microsoft is going away. It just means they will become steadily less relevant, and steadily less required. Because people will want to work, and play, with handhelds and tablets, and they won’t put up with applications that require a desktop-with-Windows. And that’s good news.

Microsoft is busy trying to hijack or tax those who win in today’s market. The solution is to boycott those who serve as proxies of Microsoft. █

Summary: Novell becomes an historical symbol of rapid business demise

IN MY DAYTIME job I happen to see the staged disposal of VMware as a result migration to Free software such as KVM, the preferred Linux solution which is also gratis, not just free/libre. As we pointed out before, VMware is now managed by former Microsoft managers and it is said to have been close to buying Novell last year. According to this new article, VMware and Novell have things in common other than the Microsoft connection. To quote: “So where does this leave Microsoft? As Wittmann pointed out in his analysis of VSphere 5, it feels like VMWare is becoming a bit like the Novell of old: Novell provided a dominant network operating system but let Microsoft creep up with features that were good enough and, most important, cheap enough to eventually win over IT pros and developers. VSphere 5 may be a great way to distance VMWare’s offering from the rest of the pack, but how long can the virtualization stalwart fend off other players, especially with the resulting community unrest over pricing?”

“As for Novell, some years ago it bought a virtualisation company (PlateSpin) whose heads quit Novell shortly thereafter.”Linux virtualisation solutions now have the same features as VSphere, so it will be hard for VMware to justify its prices. The other day we came across reports that suggest Hyper-V from Microsoft is not doing particularly well. In fact, we hardly hear about it anymore. Microsoft sure does not rave about it much. As for Novell, some years ago it bought a virtualisation company (PlateSpin) whose heads quit Novell shortly thereafter. Based on some new reports, PlateSpin is not dead yet, but the”remaining two PlateSpin products, PlateSpin Orchestrate and PlateSpin Recon, were apparently not enhanced at this time.” There is more information here. Is Attachmate serious at all about competing in this area? Maybe it is too early to find out, but there were layoffs. And in other news involving Novell, “Colin Byrne, EMEA credit and collection manager at Novell (Ire) Software Ltd, says: “Every day we have a new case of a customer delaying payment and it always relates to the knock on effect of them struggling to recover cash from their own customers. We do try to be flexible where we feel a customer needs a little elbow room. However, there are certain companies taking advantage of the “crisis” to attempt to push terms out unnecessarily – and these are the cases where we try to stand firm.

“Personally I’d like to see banks giving more support, particularly to the SME sector. But also, tougher sanctions on larger companies who are contributing massively to the cash slow down by deliberately paying smaller suppliers late. I cannot understand how this can be a genuine long term commercial strategy, given the blatantly obvious impact it is having.”

That’s just generally one of the dangers of having one’s servers dependent on proprietary products like VMware’s and Novell’s. How long can these two companies justify the expense? █

Summary: Patches for Windows 7 leave users without access to VMware

A SERIOUS glitch from VMware/Microsoft has proven to be a pain to Windows users/administrators. “Non-free Software Provide Multiple Points of Failure” is one way of putting it:

I am often accused of encouraging use of GNU/Linux and thin clients with a single point of failure vulnerability, the server or network.

This is said in reference to reports such as this one: “Windows fix on Patch Tuesday ‘breaks’ VMware software”

VMware is telling customers that two Windows 7 security patches have left the VMware View desktop virtualization client unable to access the View Connection Server, which brokers the connection between a user’s computer and a virtual desktop.

This led Gartner virtualization analyst Chris Wolf to write a blog post titled “Windows 7 Update Breaks VMware View Client” that says this week’s event is “an important lesson in BYOD” deployments that let workers bring their own devices to work.

Early adopters of Vista 7 may gradually discover that it is a risky option. Needless to say, GNU/Linux users are unaffected in this case. █

Summary: KIN Data Service is dead; Now that Microsoft blames not an unnamed party but actually accuses — along with its boosters — the ‘client state’ Yahoo!, there is rejection of accountability

Vista Phony 7 [sic] is supposed to cancel, erase, or annul all memories of the disastrous KIN, which has got to be one of the least successful products to ever come out of Microsoft. “Microsoft Kills Disastrous KIN Phone’s Data Service” based on this article which Girts has just mailed us. It says:

…the ill-fated KIN project was neither well received nor hot selling.

Microsoft’s major booster Rafael Rivera was spinning another mobile disaster for Microsoft. It’s that “phantom data” glitch which Microsoft tried to blame Yahoo! for. Well, guess what? As usual, Microsoft’s blame games are far from trivial:

Later on Tuesday, Yahoo issued another statement, this time shifting some of the blame to Microsoft. “Yahoo! Mail is widely available on tens of millions of mobile phones, including those running on Apple iOS, Android, Nokia Symbian, and RIM,” Yahoo said in a statement to CNET. “The issue on the Windows Phones is specific to how Microsoft chose to implement IMAP for Yahoo! Mail and does not impact Yahoo! Mail on these other mobile devices.”

Let us remember that Yahoo! is partly run by former Microsoft executives and VMware is the same although now there are changes at the top (which is already occupied by several Microsoft veterans):

In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, VMware said that Maritz is no longer president of the company, but rather just the chief executive officer. And now he has four co-presidents reporting to him. Carl Eschenbach, who was previously VMware’s executive vice president of worldwide field operations, is now co-president of customer operations. Richard McAniff, who used to be executive vice president of products and chief development officer, is co-president of products and chief development officer. Tod Nielsen, who came to VMware after a long stint at Microsoft like Maritz, was VMware’s chief operating officer, and he’s now co-resident of applications platform. Mark Peek, who was chief financial officer, is co-president of business operations and chief financial officer.

There are some other Microsoft executives in VMware’s management. What’s interesting is that Yahoo! does not just sit back while Microsoft passes blame. Things just don’t go Microsoft’s way nowadays. █

Direct link: SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for VMware

Summary: OpenSUSE Conference largely fails to attract press coverage, which may show that Novell no longer cares so much now that it negotiates selling SUSE to VMB_ware

EARLIER TODAY we wrote about the expectation that VMB_ware will take over OpenSUSE, which is currently a Novell product/project. A key member of SUSE who is also a Novell employee did not want to talk about it and shown above is a very recent video we found of VMB_ware and Novell chatting about their relationship. The talk is focused on virtualising SUSE and it ends with Studio, which is also a virtual appliance paradigm. OpenSUSE is not mentioned.

As stated earlier in our audiocast, a lot of people did not know about an OpenSUSE Conference (OSC) which took place this week [1, 2, 3]. Novell hardly advertised this. Brian Proffitt too has realised that something is amiss. As an OpenSUSE user he stated that it’s time for “introspection” at OpenSUSE:

I don’t want to be rude, but could somebody tell me what happened at the openSUSE Conference last week?

[...]

I think it’s a confluence of reasons, really. First, Novell, the platinum sponsor of the event, did not seem to put a lot of PR effort into the conference. This might be because Novell is supposed to be the acquistion target of VMware. “Supposed” to be because just because the media reports it doesn’t mean it’s a done deal yet. Presuming this goes forward, though, I can see why folks at Novell might be distracted.

I would also speculate that perhaps the openSUSE community didn’t want a big fuss about this conference.

[...]

Even more recently, a survey of the openSUSE community produced a SWOT document that displays two sides still trying to figure out their relationship.

With its new Community Manager Jos Poortvliet and renewed calls for finding a direction for openSUSE, I have a strong feeling that the openSUSE Conference was not about making headlines or generating a big splash within the Linux community. Rather, I believe it was used as a chance for introspection.

Jos Poortvliet, the community manager of OpenSUSE, responded in the comments and also published impressions from the conference. Pascal Bleser too responded to Proffitt. People from OpenSUSE generally took offence in it. Thinq.co.uk was apparently there at OSC for interviews, but more examples of media coverage from OSC is generally scarce. Here is some OSC coverage of KDE:

THINQ cornered Will Stephenson, an OpenSuSE developer working on KDE, at this year’s OpenSuSE Developers Conference to find out what’s in store for the future of the project.

Stephenson, who is employed by principle OpenSuSE sponsor Novell but who works full-time on the KDE project, explained that KDE is a major focus for the OpenSuSE community with around 68 per cent to 72 per cent of all downloads of the platform shipping with the K Desktop Environment.

Another SUSE blogger had these comments to make; it’s a point about making OpenSUSE look different:

So, I just saw how OSX Lion has the new features showing up and I couldn’t help but notice that their idea about launching apps looks a lot like their way of launching apps on an iPhone. The other thing I noticed is that it looks a lot like my idea of switching desktops, especially about the dots at the bottom of the screen. Who would have thought? Are we all in the end making the same resolutions about desktop interoperability?

The problem is not that OpenSUSE lacks ideas. The problem is that Novell appears to be neglecting it and VMB_ware would not be a better steward. OpenSUSE ought to fork and make its escape route from being associated with Microsoft through Novell. █

Summary: New interviews from the OpenSUSE Conference reveal some interesting thoughts on the subject OpenSUSE would rather avoid discussing

There is an OpenSUSE Conference (OSC) going on [1, 2, 3]. Emerging from the meetup we have this group photo (Andreas Jaeger, who was in OSC, published it) and some other stuff like this:

Before and during the openSUSE conference, some nice people (Jens-Daniel, Jürgen, Darix) created the following site for you:

http://rtfm.opensuse.org

Gareth Halfacree spoke to Henne Vogelsang, the project manager of the “OpenSUSE Boosters” and he also spoke to Markus Rex, who preferred not to speak about the EMC/VMB_ware takeover, which still seems inevitable (latest reports suggest only price is being negotiated). From the interview:

Markus Rex, Novell’s general manager for open platform solutions, was first to the plate and told us clearly that the company had no new comments to make about its somewhat uncertain future. Discussing what he called “the big elephant in the room,” which is to say the rumours of a planned buyout of Novell, Rex explained that Novell’s board of directors, “is evaluating its various options, and that has not changed – and had that changed, you would know.”

In other news from OpenSUSE (there is not much anymore), OpenSUSE 11.1 already reaches its end of life, Project Bretzn is conceived, and there is this OpenSUSE “Cheat Cube”. Too bad the OpenSUSE community is too reluctant to ‘cheat’ on Novell by forking and becoming independent.

Groklaw continues to organise material from the Novell vs SCO case [1, 2] and it is important to know what happens to Novell because UNIX rights too are expected to be sold. █

Summary: VMB_ware and Novell reportedly still negotiate takeover of SUSE (the issue may price) and why OpenSUSE should prepare to become independent

YESTERDAY we covered some of the latest about VMB_ware, which is owned by EMC and is run by former executives of Microsoft. EMC was Microsoft’s partner of the year a while back and in the New York Post there is this new article about EMC buying Isilv (not confirmed yet). It also talks about Novell as follows:

Besides pursuing Isilon, EMC through its majority owned VMware, is still in exclusive talks to buy Novell’s division that develops and delivers Linux systems, a source said.

Resultant coverage claims that the Novell buyout is still on. Coverage from a Microsoft booster says:

The report also says that EMC-controlled VMware (VMW) is in “exclusive talks” – there’s that phrase again – to buy the Suse Linux business from Novell (NOVL).

From Murdoch’s rag:

The report also says that EMC-controlled VMware is talking to Novell about buying its SUSE Linux business.

This is also mentioned in one of Murdoch’s other rags and right here:

Also there are reports that its server virtualization hand VMware is in talks to acquire Novell, which adds to its software stack and allows it to move to the cloud.

And lastly:

Also there are reports that its server virtualization hand VMware is in talks to acquire Novell, which adds to its software stack and allows it to move to the cloud.

As we wrote yesterday afternoon, OpenSUSE ought to make exit plans because VMB_ware is not a company of communities. OpenSUSE folks wrote about OSB and OSC earlier this week (Sebastian’s coverage of OSC is here and more OBS coverage is in [1, 2]), but in these times of uncertainty and apathy from Novell, why keep so closely tied to it? As we’ll show in the next post, Novell is increasingly a proprietary software company. █

Summary: Several Microsoft executives who run VMB_ware continue to work on projects which, along with Novell’s projects help empower and spread Microsoft APIs

ACCORDING to this new article from IDG, VMB_ware and Novell are currently negotiating the price which VMB_ware will pay for SUSE (along with Mono and Moonlight based on some other reports). VMB_ware is run by executives who used to work for Microsoft and it may soon have power over Microsoft APIs inside GNU/Linux, including Gallium3D which appears to promote DirectX at OpenGL's expense.

IDG makes it sound as though the sale to VMB_ware is almost a done deal. To quote:

The Wall Street Journal is reporting rumors that VMware may buy Novell’s SUSE Linux OS business, though Atachmate is competing for the est of the company’s assets.

VMware and Novell have agreed on everything but price, according to the WSJ, which cites unnamed analysts as saying the tools built to help Linux administrators manage virtualized OSes will strengthen VMware’s own VM management apps.

We are beginning to wonder what VMB_ware may plan to do with Microsoft-taxed SUSE, Mono, and Gallium3D. These assets can help VMB_ware help Microsoft. To quote a conversation from yesterday, there is evidence to suggest Mono is now linking/embedding some Gallium3D.

Very informal discussion ought to be assumed (it is an IRC discussion, thus nothing polished):

jimbo_	I read a week or 2 ago about VMB_Ware pushing DirectX	Oct 20 19:33
schestowitz	Any news on that?	Oct 20 19:34
schestowitz	gnufreex and Diablo-D3 raised the issue	Oct 20 19:34
jimbo_	you might find it interesting to note that Moonlie is using it	Oct 20 19:34
schestowitz	I just published the logs	Oct 20 19:34
jimbo_	the gallium3d thing	Oct 20 19:34
Diablo-D3	Im completely fine with it	Oct 20 19:34
jimbo_	so team appologista is also pushing it	Oct 20 19:35
Diablo-D3	the tracker is only for dx10/11, which is an almost carbon copy of gl3+future.	Oct 20 19:35
gnufreex	It looks like there is no patent danger. I checked. But there is still API control danger.	Oct 20 19:35
Diablo-D3	and, the tracker itself is almost a carbon copy of how you’d write a future-only gl3 tracker.	Oct 20 19:35
jimbo_	diablo3d just like .not is a clone of java?	Oct 20 19:35
schestowitz	vmware gallium3d?	Oct 20 19:35
Diablo-D3	jimbo_: -D3, and yes, basically how c# copies java	Oct 20 19:35
Diablo-D3	jimbo_: except its c++ and LOOKs like d3d9, it just isnt	Oct 20 19:36
jimbo_	diablo: m$ has patents all over the place on .net	Oct 20 19:36
Diablo-D3	anyone trying d3d10/11 with a 9 mindset will write shit	Oct 20 19:36
Diablo-D3	sun has patents all over the place	Oct 20 19:36
Diablo-D3	also, this is an API	Oct 20 19:36
Diablo-D3	the patents being held will be held by companies like AMD and Nvidia	Oct 20 19:36
Diablo-D3	remember, gl and d3d both are high level wrappers for vendor-specific HALs	Oct 20 19:36
jimbo_	JoseX a while back wrote a very interesting piece about how you can patent APIs	Oct 20 19:36
Diablo-D3	they dont _do_ anything	Oct 20 19:36
schestowitz	APIs can have patent traps	Oct 20 19:36
Diablo-D3	schestowitz: not without having the patent invalidated	Oct 20 19:37
schestowitz	jimbo_: yes, beat me to it	Oct 20 19:37
jimbo_	schestowitz	Oct 20 19:37
Diablo-D3	like, I can write an API that uploads s3tc to a video card	Oct 20 19:37
Diablo-D3	they cant sue me	Oct 20 19:37
Diablo-D3	Im not decoding it	Oct 20 19:37
Diablo-D3	the video card is	Oct 20 19:37
gnufreex	Microsoft has one OpenGL patent they bought from failing SGI	Oct 20 19:37
gnufreex	Rest are expired.	Oct 20 19:37
Diablo-D3	gnufreex: except it applies to _running_ GL	Oct 20 19:37
Diablo-D3	as in, what happens on the video card	Oct 20 19:37
Diablo-D3	there is nothing being done usefully in software, for performance reasons	Oct 20 19:37
jimbo_	anyways, about to head out with friends	Oct 20 19:38
jimbo_	just thought I’d pass along the info about moonli and gallium3d	Oct 20 19:38
schestowitz	Diablo-D3: APis alone are not the infringement, but writing for them may be	Oct 20 19:38
jimbo_	moonlie	Oct 20 19:38
schestowitz	link/	Oct 20 19:38
schestowitz	?	Oct 20 19:38
schestowitz	SVN/GIT?	Oct 20 19:38
jimbo_	hold on, gotta re-search for it	Oct 20 19:38
Diablo-D3	schestowitz: but we’re not writing for them	Oct 20 19:38
jimbo_	yea, it’ll be in git in the configure.in	Oct 20 19:38
Diablo-D3	AMD and Nvidia and Intel did	Oct 20 19:39
schestowitz	Maybe VMB_ware will just buy Mono	Oct 20 19:39
Diablo-D3	remember, all this shit runs on the card	Oct 20 19:39
-TRIdentica/#techrights-[gotunandan/@gotunandan] RT @cassidyjames So, OS X Lion App Store = !Ubuntu Software Center, Mission Control = Gnome Shell, Multitouch Gestures = UTouch… what …		Oct 20 19:39
jimbo_	http://github.com/mono/moon/blob/master/m4/gallium.m4	Oct 20 19:40
TechrightsBot-tr	Title: m4/gallium.m4 at master from mono’s moon – GitHub .::. Size~: 38.95 KB	Oct 20 19:40
jimbo_	that’s the gallium3d detection code	Oct 20 19:41
jimbo_	configure script code	Oct 20 19:41
jimbo_	http://github.com/mono/moon/blob/master/configure.ac	Oct 20 19:41
TechrightsBot-tr	Title: configure.ac at master from mono’s moon – GitHub .::. Size~: 72.32 KB	Oct 20 19:41
jimbo_	that’s their configure.ac which uses it	Oct 20 19:42
jimbo_	phoronix also talked about it	Oct 20 19:42
jimbo_	iirc	Oct 20 19:42
-TRIdentica/#techrights-[flameeyes/@flameeyes] Did #Canonical not trademark #Launchpad? Now we’re going to get confusion between theirs and Apple’s :/		Oct 20 19:42
-TRIdentica/#techrights-[tekk/@tekk] okay !rmsgnulinux, I know you’ve been waiting forever for 1.2.5 kde but right now I’m working in a kde 3.5.12(trinity) package for ya \o/		Oct 20 19:42
-TRIdentica/#techrights-[schestowitz/@schestowitz] Open source moves into the enterprise at NZ organisations http://ur1.ca/24rip Not just NZ, but this is NZ-based site		Oct 20 19:42
TechrightsBot-tr	Title: Open source moves into the enterprise at NZ organisations | Computerworld NZ .::. Size~: 44.47 KB	Oct 20 19:42
-TRIdentica/#techrights-[eff/@eff] Geotag, You’re It! https://eff.org/r.2tv Android and iOS respect your geolocation settings. Check them!		Oct 20 19:44
TechrightsBot-tr	Title: Geotag, You’re It! What Your Smartphone Might Be Saying Behind Your Back | Privacy Rights Clearinghouse .::. Size~: 26.49 KB	Oct 20 19:44
*scientes (~scientes@c-76-28-168-154.hsd1.wa.comcast.net) has joined #techrights		Oct 20 19:45
jimbo_	http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2010/Jan-07.html	Oct 20 19:47
TechrightsBot-tr	Title: Pixel Shaders for Moonlight – Miguel de Icaza .::. Size~: 14.13 KB	Oct 20 19:47
jimbo_	that shows they are indeed using it	Oct 20 19:47
-TRIdentica/#techrights-[tekk/@tekk] !rmsgnulinux if anyone doesn’t know, trinity is the kde3 continuation project. Hopefully we may become a go-to distro for kde3 lovers =3		Oct 20 19:47
-TRIdentica/#techrights-[schestowitz/@schestowitz] #HP announces #Palm Pre 2 with WebOS 2.0 http://ur1.ca/24rl9 “1GHz Palm Pre 2, as well as a major WebOS 2.0 update” !llinux		Oct 20 19:47
TechrightsBot-tr	Title: HP announces Palm Pre 2 with WebOS 2.0 – News – Linux for Devices .::. Size~: 55.63 KB	Oct 20 19:47
jimbo_	vm_bware might be buying mono/moonlie as an injection vector	Oct 20 19:48
jimbo_	for gallium3d	Oct 20 19:48
jimbo_	piggyback on other patent trojans	Oct 20 19:48
jimbo_	you can probably find more info about this	Oct 20 19:49
jimbo_	this is only a start	Oct 20 19:49
jimbo_	but I find it highly suspect	Oct 20 19:49
-TRIdentica/#techrights-[nhi/@nhi] ♻ @eff: Geotag, You’re It! https://eff.org/r.2tv Android and iOS respect your geolocation settings. Check them!		Oct 20 19:49
-TRIdentica/#techrights-[nhi/@nhi] ♻ @schestowitz: #HP announces #Palm Pre 2 with WebOS 2.0 http://ur1.ca/24rl9 “1GHz Palm Pre 2, as well as a major WebOS 2.0 update”		Oct 20 19:49
-TRIdentica/#techrights-[schestowitz/@schestowitz] Sheesh! When Will Folks Acknowledge GNU/Linux Has Arrived? http://ur1.ca/24rlo Linux dead? 2000 called, wants headline back…		Oct 20 19:49
TechrightsBot-tr	Title: Geotag, You’re It! What Your Smartphone Might Be Saying Behind Your Back | Privacy Rights Clearinghouse .::. Size~: 26.47 KB	Oct 20 19:49
jimbo_	too much of a coincidence	Oct 20 19:49
TechrightsBot-tr	Title: HP announces Palm Pre 2 with WebOS 2.0 – News – Linux for Devices .::. Size~: 55.63 KB	Oct 20 19:49
TechrightsBot-tr	Title: ur1 Generator .::. Size~: 1.93 KB	Oct 20 19:49
jimbo_	good night	Oct 20 19:49
*jimbo_ has quit (Quit: Page closed)		Oct 20 19:50

Assuming there is intent to just promote Microsoft APIs, OpenSUSE ought to escape Novell/VMB_ware by forking and breaking away from Novell trademarks (VMB_ware has no real development communities). There is an OpenSUSE Conference (OSC) these days [1, 2], but apart from that, almost nothing is going on at OpenSUSE anymore. Andreas Jaeger has just announced a new release of OSB, but that’s about it:

The openSUSE Build Service – OBS – is now officially at release 2.1. We’re delighted with the improvements in this release, including an enhanced web interface, integration with online code management systems and better access controls.

More here:

Tomorrow the openSUSE Conference is beginning in the always-wonderful Germany for a three-day event about the openSUSE project and free software in general with a variety of hacking sessions, birds of a feather sessions, and surely some Nürnberg beer along the way. Sadly due to some last minute scheduling changes and only getting back from San Diego yesterday, I on the behalf of Phoronix will not be in attendance at the German conference, but there is openSUSE news to report today: version 2.1 of the openSUSE Build Service has just been released.

In order for OpenSUSE to secure a GNU/Linux direction, its developers may have to get dissociated from Novell before it’s sold to the Microsoft executives who run VMB_ware. It seems as though they are quite interested in the Mono part, which is Novell’s crown jewel (in its own eyes at least). █

Summary: Non-standard and Microsoft-controlled APIs are said to be pushed into Microsoft’s #1 competition (Linux) via the VM company people should beware as it also strives to buy Mono

MICROSOFT is not the only company which attacks GNU/Linux using software patents, not anymore anyway (thus the need to diversify). But some of the companies which are attacking GNU/Linux using software patents are either Microsoft partners or entities which are accommodated by former Microsoft staff and today we’ll show some examples from the news. This post concentrates on VMware, which would be better off known as VMB_ware.

As we’ve been stressing and documenting for a couple of years, VMB_ware is the home of several ex-Microsoft executives. Even Microsoft bloggers are saying it. This does not take some crazy theory to show, one just needs to read the CVs of the top management there.

We have written several lengthy posts which explain how VMB_ware suffocates Zimbra [1, 2, 3], which poses a risk to Microsoft’s Exchange (VMB_ware’s parent company, EMC, appears to be promoting Exchange). Why can’t more people foresee the negative effects of SUSE being offered to VMB_ware?

One of our readers who goes by the name of gnufreex raised a curious point a short while ago. By the way, his opinions are his own are there are attempts by mobbyists to smear Techrights over mere informal words (IRC) of people who participate, so be sure to check context. To quote just a portion of a much longer discussion:

[...]

DiabloD3	Tekk_: yes, but they cant patent anything here that GL isnt already in violation of	Oct 08 17:59
Tekk_	oh, so there’s hope	Oct 08 17:59
DiabloD3	its just an API	Oct 08 17:59
DiabloD3	it works the same way GL3 in future mode does.	Oct 08 17:59
Tekk_	so they could basically just make it a wrapper?	Oct 08 18:00
Tekk_	cool	Oct 08 18:00
DiabloD3	well, wine is “just a wrapper”	Oct 08 18:00
DiabloD3	they’re making a native state tracker just to make it faster	Oct 08 18:00
gnufreex	But there is again problem.	Oct 08 18:00
DiabloD3	theres no “problem”	Oct 08 18:00
gnufreex	Games will port to Linux and it will be DirectX	Oct 08 18:01
gnufreex	That is bad.,	Oct 08 18:01
DiabloD3	you can write D3D10/11 native code on linux… but you cant run that code on windows	Oct 08 18:01
gnufreex	They should be OpenGL	Oct 08 18:01
DiabloD3	and you cant take your windows code and compile it on linux	Oct 08 18:01
DiabloD3	so you still need wine	Oct 08 18:01
DiabloD3	gnufreex: and no	Oct 08 18:02
DiabloD3	go look at d3d10/11	Oct 08 18:02
DiabloD3	its almost an entirely different API	Oct 08 18:02
gnufreex	OpenGL is better. I looked.	Oct 08 18:02
DiabloD3	opengl3 in future mode, and d3d10/11 do shit how the card wants it	Oct 08 18:02
-TRIdentica/#techrights-[mairin/@mairin] @fabsh i could tell from the smaller version – it’s brilliant. the circuit board roots too		Oct 08 18:02
DiabloD3	they both act and work the same	Oct 08 18:02
DiabloD3	microsoft basically admitted d3d was trash, and cloned opengl with a d3d naming style	Oct 08 18:02
DiabloD3	its sorta like what c# is to java	Oct 08 18:03
gnufreex	So they will later do extend and extinguish	Oct 08 18:03
DiabloD3	get what Im saying?	Oct 08 18:03
DiabloD3	well, they cant extend and extinguish	Oct 08 18:03
DiabloD3	opengl keeps pushing features first	Oct 08 18:03
DiabloD3	microsoft has to somehow get AMD and Nvidia both to support d3d features before opengl has them	Oct 08 18:03
DiabloD3	which is impossible	Oct 08 18:04
DiabloD3	microsoft refuses to let vendors be part of the design process	Oct 08 18:04
-TRIdentica/#techrights-[fabsh/@fabsh] @mairin Hehehe…. Thanks. @bkuhn had the original idea and we refined it together. I really like doing logos!		Oct 08 18:04
DiabloD3	which is extremely hilarious about d3d10	Oct 08 18:04
DiabloD3	they copied an API that has 100% vendor input AND is older than d3d	Oct 08 18:04
gnufreex	Stupid people think DirectX is better than OpenGL. And most people are stupid. So it doesn’t matter.	Oct 08 18:04
DiabloD3	gnufreex: well now it no longer matters	Oct 08 18:05
DiabloD3	d3d IS opengl.	Oct 08 18:05
DiabloD3	well, d3d10/11 is	Oct 08 18:05
DiabloD3	its the same fucking api, just with incompatible syntax.	Oct 08 18:05
gnufreex	I have tough time beleiving that.	Oct 08 18:05
DiabloD3	microsoft has basically killed d3d10/11 adoption because of it	Oct 08 18:05
DiabloD3	all the hardcore opengl haters wont go to 10/11 from 9	Oct 08 18:05
-TRIdentica/#techrights-[bkuhn/@bkuhn] @fabsh sounds like you and @vinzv should fight over who gets the !FaiFCast logo,then. competing logo proposals could be fun for me & @kaz		Oct 08 18:06
DiabloD3	(which 10/11 is vista7′s big selling point for gamers)	Oct 08 18:06
gnufreex	So then, this is the time when OpenGL should be pushed hard. No phuckin DirectX	Oct 08 18:06
DiabloD3	gnufreex: not at all.	Oct 08 18:06
DiabloD3	the problem is, the state tracker doesnt do anything for me	Oct 08 18:06
DiabloD3	portal 2 is a d3d9 game.	Oct 08 18:06
gnufreex	Why to let MS kill DirectX	Oct 08 18:06
gnufreex	?	Oct 08 18:06
gnufreex	If Linux have DirectX, OpenGL is dead	Oct 08 18:06
gnufreex	Nobody will use it	Oct 08 18:07
DiabloD3	not at all	Oct 08 18:07
DiabloD3	the most important game of the year is d3d9.	Oct 08 18:07
gnufreex	Everybody thinks DirectX is best thing since slice bread.	Oct 08 18:07
DiabloD3	and no, NO ONE thinks directx is any good	Oct 08 18:07
gnufreex	Everybody are idiots.	Oct 08 18:07
DiabloD3	it costs sales.	Oct 08 18:07
DiabloD3	no android sales, no mac sales, no iphone sales.	Oct 08 18:07
DiabloD3	and theres only one game console that uses d3d, and thats xbox, and the xbox doesnt do 10/11, it uses a customized version of 9	Oct 08 18:08
DiabloD3	so if they’re shipping pc AND xbox, its going to be a d3d9 pipeline (or multiple pipelines, and everyone hates that)	Oct 08 18:08
-TRIdentica/#techrights-[fabsh/@fabsh] @bkuhn OK. I have an idea for one. Will try to squeeze it into my schedule…. @vinzv		Oct 08 18:09
DiabloD3	all the other game consoles either offer some opengl or opengl-like api, or the rendering pipeline is completely different (ps2/psp/ps3, etc)	Oct 08 18:09
DiabloD3	gnufreex: dx is rather dead	Oct 08 18:10
DiabloD3	most games being sold are either opengl, or are neither gl or d3d.	Oct 08 18:10
DiabloD3	why sell a silly PC game, when you can sell 25 times more on the DS? or 15 times more on the wii?	Oct 08 18:10
DiabloD3	or if you need those next gen graphics, 10 to 15 times more on a PS3.	Oct 08 18:11
DiabloD3	xbox has very few native xbox titles, and they dont sell well	Oct 08 18:11
DiabloD3	gnufreex: so d3d10/11 on linux really doesnt mean shit at the end of the day.	Oct 08 18:11
DiabloD3	not only that, they’ve cut themselves out of the largest gaming segment: casual gamers	Oct 08 18:13
DiabloD3	I already mentioned iphone and android	Oct 08 18:13
DiabloD3	but appletv and google tv may end up being casual gamer platforms as well	Oct 08 18:13
DiabloD3	and microsoft is totally fucked out of that.	Oct 08 18:13
gnufreex	Apple has propriatary OpenGL extensions. Stipid Steve Jobs.	Oct 08 18:14
DiabloD3	nope.	Oct 08 18:15
DiabloD3	Apple is a vendor, they actually CAN name new extensions	Oct 08 18:16
DiabloD3	its legit	Oct 08 18:16
DiabloD3	and several apple extensions have made it into core.	Oct 08 18:16
DiabloD3	apple maintains their own opengl stack for osx, and also a different one for opengl es on iOS hardware	Oct 08 18:16
DiabloD3	mesa also has extensions	Oct 08 18:16
DiabloD3	gnufreex: you cant just mysteriously have a phantom extension	Oct 08 18:17
DiabloD3	you have to register for a number, and you cant register without a completed spec	Oct 08 18:17
DiabloD3	gnufreex: I have no problem with Apple proposing new extensions	Oct 08 18:19
DiabloD3	even Microsoft had that power at one time, before they quit the opengl board	Oct 08 18:20
gnufreex	When I last heard about that, Apple was not feeding back into core.	Oct 08 18:20
gnufreex	You say they are.	Oct 08 18:21
gnufreex	Then it’s fine.	Oct 08 18:21

The short story is that it’s being suggested that VMB_ware is promoting Microsoft’s DirectX at OpenGL’s expense, even inside Linux. The problems are obvious; just like with Mono, it’s about control and patents. It’s something to keep an eye on, for sure.

Microsoft is already attacking GNU/Linux using patents (even in the courtroom several times) and that’s a subject we’ll cover in the next post. █

Summary: Microsoft may be organising a coup against Linux, especially inside some of its very top supporters, and evidence from the news concurs

“Nokia’s MeeGo device chief quits,” reports Engadget. This is the type of thing we have been expecting ever since a Microsoft president was made the CEO of Nokia, right after Nokia had become one of the top developers of Linux (the kernel) and told the press that its future crown jewel phones would run MeeGo. And now, just 2-3 weeks after Microsoft’s Elop comes to Nokia:

Nokia’s MeeGo device chief quits

[...]

In case you’re keeping track, Jaaksi’s departure follows the high-profile exits of Nokia’s former CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo (replaced by Stephen Elop) and the head of Nokia Mobile Solutions, Anssi Vanjoki. Notably, Nokia’s MeeGo team picked up Palm’s Peter Skillman as the head of MeeGo User Experience and Services during the same period.

Nokia can whitewash this all it wants, but in recent weeks we learned that Nokia had allegedly started playing with Vista Phone 7 [sic] and the commitment to MeeGo was weakened. Microsoft comes in as CEO, Linux comes out, eh? Sounds like potential entryism to us, unless the import from Microsoft only came after a strategic decision from ‘old Nokia’ (perhaps the board). Microsoft would not mind it so much if Nokia carried on with Symbian because Symbian development — unlike Linux development — does not help hundreds of Microsoft competitor at the same time. It is “the Linux phenomenon” — not Symbian — which Steve Ballmer called “threat number one” 9 years ago.

A key partner and co-developer of MeeGo, Intel, appears to be procrastinating as a result of all that news from Nokia. “Intel Says No MeeGo Handsets Until 2011,” reports a Forbes blogger and David Wood, known for his old role in Symbian, says “(sounds like Q2?)”. That’s a whole year from now. From the informal article:

MeeGo, the open-source mobile operating system that Intel and Nokia are jointly creating, recently took a hit with the departure of its Vice President of Devices, Ari Jaaksi. In the wake of that announcement, an Intel executive who oversees MeeGo development insists the project is on track, but concedes that MeeGo-powered smartphones–and tablets, for the most part–won’t debut until next year.

The news could disappoint gadget fans that have been anticipating the release of a portable MeeGo device since Intel and Nokia joined forces in February. It could also have implications for Nokia. Though the Finnish mobile technology giant is still the world’s largest handset maker, it is struggling to reinvent itself under a new Chief Executive and has been looking to MeeGo to rekindle interest in its high-end smartphones.

MeeGo is very important because of relative LSB compliance which Android, for example, does not have.

Having expressed some concerns after the “pee in the pants to get warm” remark from Nokia (about Android), Glyn Moody told me that “Eric [Schmidt] is not stupid: that just makes his poker hand stronger” when he contacts Nokia:

As MeeGo VP Quits, Nokia CEO Taking Calls From Eric Schmidt

News broke this morning that Nokia’s executive in charge of MeeGo devices, Ari Jaaksi, resigned last week. This continues a string of high-profile people leaving the world’s largest mobile phone company as it attempts to establish an identity in the quickly-evolving mobile space. The internal turmoil and the recent hiring of former Microsoft executive Stephen Elop to be Nokia’s new CEO has led to quite a bit of speculation that Nokia may turn away from its own operating systems and go with the new Windows Phone OS — or at least fork its products to have this OS as an option on top of the upcoming MeeGo. But don’t rule out Google’s Android OS just yet either.

We’ve heard from a good source that Google CEO Eric Schmidt has called Elop to discuss the possibility of Android running on Nokia phones. We actually heard this information about a week ago, but today’s news makes it potentially more interesting. Around the time Jaaksi was resigning, Elop and Schmidt were talking.

Why would a CEO who came from Microsoft embrace the same platform which Microsoft is zealously suing? This whole affair is somewhat depressing and worth keeping track of. We previous covered it in:

• If You Can’t Beat Them, Hijack Them (Microsoft Joins Nokia and It Already Shows)
• Linux Battle in Mobile Phones Becomes Primarily Legal, Not Technical, Due to Software Patents
• Taking Over Linux, by Proxy
• Microsoft Passes More of Its Executives to the MSBBC. What About Nokia?
• Microsoft President Quits, But is Nokia the Next Victim?
• Microsoft Insiders Galore: BBC, Nokia, Others Already Damaged by Microsoft Hires
• Linspire/Ballnux in Tablets; HP Possibly Experiments With Vista 7 in Slate After Abandoning It, Then Hiring From Microsoft
• New Article Says Nokia Might be Bought by Microsoft After Appointing Microsoft President as CEO
• Entryism Watch: Yahoo! Keeps Being Abducted by Microsoft Executives, HP Cancels Android Projects After CEO Appointment From SAP

Nokia is not the only company which seems like a victim of Microsoft entryism. “HP-SAP merger talk considered far-fetched,” opines a writer from IDG, but the Microsoft boosters now report that HP “Windows 7 slates [come] ‘this Christmas,’ touch optimizations in 2011″ (as a reminder, HP sort of abandoned Vista 7 when it comes to slate, but then top appointments were made from SAP and Microsoft [1, 2]). Are we seeing Nokia and HP going through a phase similar to the one Yahoo! and VMB_ware went through (they became occupied by Microsoft executives who brought more Microsoft executives, over time)?

Never underestimate Microsoft’s willingness and ability to compete against Linux using dirty tactics like FUD, lawsuits, and entryism. HP and Intel (of MeeGo) were both distinctly named in Microsoft’s SEC filing as threats, specifically because they were promoting Linux. Gary Clow, a famous victim of Microsoft, once said that “[a] lot of people make that analogy that competing with Bill Gates is like playing hardball. I’d say it’s more like a knife fight.” █

“Where are we on this Jihad?”

–Bill Gates (about removing Linux support at Intel)

Summary: The more Microsoft executives enter other companies, the less committed those companies become to projects that use GNU/Linux and the more receptive they become to other Microsoft veterans (friend brings a friend)

Entryism is much cheaper than buying an entire company (rather than taking over it from the inside). Entryism is usually a zero-cost means of converting a rival into an ally, with examples that in Microsoft’s case include Novell, Corel, Xandros, and XenSource. One of the most recent examples is VMB_Ware, which now wants to buy SUSE. VM_Bware is filled with former Microsoft executives at the top. Other ongoing cases of entryism appear to be Yahoo!, Nokia, and HP. These are the ones we deal with in this post.

Microsoft’s multi-year shakedown of Yahoo! has had Yahoo! hijacked by Microsoft from the inside. We documented this in many dozens of posts since 2008. What usually happens is that old Yahoo! managers leave or get expelled, only to be replaced by managers from Microsoft. It becomes like a Microsoft alumni reunion inside the newly-conquered company, whose old logo and name remain even though the agenda is different.

Many top managers are fleeing Yahoo!, still.

Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) is finally confirming the departure of a trio of top executives, including Americas head Hilary Schneider. In a just-filed statement with the SEC, Yahoo says Schneider will “be leaving after a transition period.” And, in a statement provided to us, the company says it expects to appoint Schneider’s successor by year-end.

Yahoo is also confirming that SVP of audience, mobile and local David Ko and Yahoo Media Head Jimmy Pitaro are both also leaving. The company isn’t saying why, but Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz says in a memo sent to staff (via AllThingsD’s Kara Swisher) that all three are leaving for “different reasons that suit their life.”

Here are the terms of Schneider’s departure from Yahoo! [via Joseph Tartakoff] and here is indication of more of this exodus (“Yahoo In Disarray: Schneider, Ko, Pitaro All Reportedly Leaving”). There is more coming later today, based on the now-AOL-owned TechCrunch. The third paragraph is quite revealing:

Yahoo is in shambles right now. You’ve likely already heard about the most recent SVP exits, which CEO Carol Bartz has tried to spin. Now we’ve heard another one is leaving as well — Jeff Kinder, the SVP of Media Products and Solutions. And you know what that means — time for a massive re-org at the top of Yahoo. Yes, again.

Based on what we’re hearing, this re-org will take place next Tuesday. Of course, us reporting on this means that it could possibly be moved (as has happened in the past with Yahoo deals), but as of right now that’s the plan.

Based on what we’re hearing Yahoo Chief Product Officer Blake Irving may be the big winner of this re-org, as he’s been seen as the rising star in the company. Word is that he’ll be bringing some of his old Microsoft chums in to join him in high-up positions at this new-look Yahoo.

So, according to this, the Microsoft VP who became Yahoo Chief Product Officer “may be the big winner of this re-org, as he’s been seen as the rising star in the company. Word is that he’ll be bringing some of his old Microsoft chums in to join him in high-up positions at this new-look Yahoo.”

Yahoo! is making it all quite stealthy. Joseph Tartakoff, who has been somewhat of a Microsoft watcher (especially in the past) and a Yahoo! watcher more recently, writes: “So, if this report of another Yahoo SVP leaving is true … umm … why didn’t Yahoo announce his departure with the others yesterday?”

He also says: “Like, if Yahoo announced it, then people would cover that. Instead, people are being forced to write all these analysis pieces.”

“It seems like Yahoo is just asking for yet ANOTHER story about how top people are leaving the company in droves”
      –Joseph TartakoffThe rants go on as he argues: “It seems like Yahoo is just asking for yet ANOTHER story about how top people are leaving the company in droves”

“But instead it seems we’ll have another week of stories about all the troubles at Yahoo,” he adds.

Lastly, says Tartakoff, “Yahoo will continue to leave their external PR/messaging to bloggers instead of taking control of it themselves.”

Microsoft is having problems and suffering many notable departures too (cannot be good for orientation); the issue is that these departing executives help Microsoft occupy some of its direct competition, due in part to HR mistakes. The thing about these seniors is that they land inside other companies and in the case of the mobile, entertainment, and Office businesses, we already see the negative impact. Microsoft appears to be poisoning Nokia these days, as we covered in:

• If You Can’t Beat Them, Hijack Them (Microsoft Joins Nokia and It Already Shows)
• Linux Battle in Mobile Phones Becomes Primarily Legal, Not Technical, Due to Software Patents
• Taking Over Linux, by Proxy
• Microsoft Passes More of Its Executives to the MSBBC. What About Nokia?
• Microsoft President Quits, But is Nokia the Next Victim?
• Microsoft Insiders Galore: BBC, Nokia, Others Already Damaged by Microsoft Hires
• Linspire/Ballnux in Tablets; HP Possibly Experiments With Vista 7 in Slate After Abandoning It, Then Hiring From Microsoft
• New Article Says Nokia Might be Bought by Microsoft After Appointing Microsoft President as CEO

Chips B. Malroy alerts us that following the latest news about SAP inside HP [1, 2] there are signs that HP is indeed losing some of its Linux direction, just like Yahoo! and Nokia. “If the headline is true,” wrote Malroy in IRC, “this is what Roy has been saying.” The headline says “HP Officially Drops Plans For Android Phones and Tablets” and here is a portion from the article:

The decision isn’t surprising, particularly as HP already announced it had no plans to make a phone running Windows Phone 7. However, the company still plans to sell that slate that Steve Ballmer was waving around back at a CES in January. Albeit, only business customers will see that still-unnamed slate.

This — combined with the lawsuits from Microsoft (against Android) — may lead to all sorts of conclusions or at least speculations. There was a lot more discussed in IRC (some parts to appear tomorrow as it went on past midnight). To quote some portions, Malroy said that “it looks like HP is only doing one Windows tablet” and Ziomatrix replied by saying that “it’s only logical considering [that] if the new CEO proclaimed to not use acquired Palm assets for future projects that’s worth $1.2B, the BoD would have him thrown out faster then you can say sexual harassment.

“I as well as other analysts foresee the new CEO forging a deeper relationship between SAP and MS in enterprise packages while competing more fervently with the likes of Oracle…”
      –Ziomatrix“HP as an OEM has plenty of room to continue to accommodate MS products in PCs and Enterprise. I as well as other analysts foresee the new CEO forging a deeper relationship between SAP and MS in enterprise packages while competing more fervently with the likes of Oracle, like this: http://tinyurl.com/2c8wudg Perhaps we’ll be surprised, don’t forget most of the folks who re-vitalized Palm came from Apple and they wanted to be as un-Apple as possible as far as software openness is concerned.”

“We are at the point where computer tech is changing at a faster rate and it becomes increasingly harder for Microsoft to hide both it’s failures and it’s decline,” Malroy remarked later on and Ziomatrix responded with the claim that “perhaps this is the start of HP wanting to assemble an executive dreamteam to pen a strategy that will take them on their own path with exclusively their own assets such as Pheonix or HP-UX 11i+. One can dream…” █

Summary: Novell’s focus is increasingly on proprietary software and as far as SUSE goes, Novell only adds to it more of a Fog Computing aspect

Eric Savitz, a longtime booster of Microsoft, seems to be urging Novell to give in to the Microsoft executives who run VMB_ware and just sell SUSE to them. A couple of days ago he published “Something’s Got To Give” where he says: “Since March, the company has been considering strategic alternatives; the Street expects a resolution of the situation soon. The Wall Street Journal a few weeks ago reported that the company was talking to VMware (VMW), among others, about buying the company’s SuSE Linux business; but Reuters subsequently reported that private equity buyers were balking over the price the company was asking for the rest of its assets.”

“The sad thing about Novell is that before signing the software patents deal with Microsoft there was a good deal of commitment to Free software, with nice innovative projects like Compiz.”Novell keeps losing value as more major contracts are being lost and the stock declined quite a bit in recent days (see financial news about Novell in [1, 2, 3, 4]).

The sad thing about Novell is that before signing the software patents deal with Microsoft there was a good deal of commitment to Free software, with nice innovative projects like Compiz. These days Novell seems to be focusing on virtualisation for Fog Computing, with examples in the press such as this new article about “Intelligent Workload Management” (proprietary).

This is a guest post by Mark Oldroyd, a senior technology identity and security specialist with Novell.

Here is another new press release which is about ZENworks and obviously just proprietary software:

GroupLink Corporation, makers of the first and only ZENWorks 10 integrated service desk, the everything HelpDesk (eHD), announces its commitment to further integration with ZENworks 11.

Novell is even turning its SUSE component into a Fog Computing thing, according to this new press release which generated coverage in [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]. In short, SUSE is being refocused by Novell so as to take further control away from users. How on Earth is that a step forward? Some of Novell’s pro-software freedom people have quit the company and it shows.

According to this guest commentary from The H, “Open Core is over” (‘open’ core is an “open source” marketing gown for proprietary software). Here is the part about Novell:

“Open core” always used to be the problem with SUSE (proprietary Yast) and, since the take-over by Novell, the company’s proprietary components have been called eDirectory or Groupwise. Red Hat with its “perceived” 99% of open source components has been considerably more successful. As correctly pointed out in the article, people quickly realise that “open core” doesn’t actually represent an advantage, and our company also encountered the described “dialectic problems” before we made the decision to release our software as 100% open source code.

The SUSE Studio blog writes about One-click WebYaST. Is that too being ‘foggified’?

Anyway, in other news there is this deceiving new headline from South Africa. What it says is not news at all as Novell announced this months ago. It’s an attempt to grab Solaris users and put them on Microsoft/Novell Ballnux instead (paying Microsoft and Novell for a patents-encumbered distribution). SAP too loves Ballnux and here is one more article about Novell’s renewed vows with SAP (a lot about it was published last week):

There was a little blurb on internet.com a couple of days ago mentioning that Novell would be optimizing the SUSE Linux OS for SAP applications.

[...]

This feels right considering that Elliott Associates, a Waltham, Mass-based Hedge Fund, made an offer to buy Novell back in March. The offer was rejected. An optimized Linux enterprise server for SAP applications will benefit the new SUSE Linux owner, whoever that may be. I will be sad to see an independent Novell go the way of so many other enterprise software vendors… how Darwinian eh?

The proprietary software giants just love Ballnux because it gives them that warm fuzzy feeling that even “open source” is living under the rules of proprietary software legacy, including software patent monopolies.

Novell’s “governance suite” (more proprietary software) is covered here in the South African press and Amazon — another proprietary software giant which pays Microsoft for GNU/Linux since many Microsoft executives were appointed to its management — finds a place for Ballnux at sight of the aforementioned announcement from Novell.

Watch the latest publicity stunt which Novell uses to promote Ballnux, in line with the announcement above:

Novell today announced the judging panel for the First Annual aEURoeDisteraEUR Awards, a SUSE Studio contest celebrating innovators and inventors of Linux-based software appliances. Industry luminaries from Computerworld, eWeek, the Linux Foundation, openSUSE and Novell, will select and award each winner in the categories of aEURoeCommunity UseaEUR and aEURoeCommercial UseaEUR a $10,000 grand prize. In addition, due to unprecedented interest in the competition, Novell has extended the submission deadline to Nov. 1, 2010.

This says that it’s about the “Annual aEURoeDisteraEUR Awards Celebrating Linux Innovators”, but only Ballnux is mentioned there, not GNU/Linux. Shameful marketing from Novell? Here is Novell’s head of marketing (John Dragoon) saying in the PR blog that “Silence is not Goal(den)”. Well, maybe it’s time for Novell not to keep silent about its shameless attempts to stomp on competing distributions that give Novell code (primarily Red Hat, which is still the only other option in many cases). Dragoon writes:

Keeping your goals to yourself can apparently help you train for marathons and shrink dress sizes. It will not help you achieve your goals as a department or a company.

Well, Novell will soon be sold to one company or another. Dragoon and Hovsepian are almost the only top chiefs that seem to have stuck with the company to this point. They don't know a darn thing about software freedom; they never knew nor cared, otherwise they would have written on the subject. So here we have Novell going back to its proprietary software days. SUSE too may soon be sold to a proprietary software powerhouse. █

Summary: The National Health Service (NHS) is cutting down its contract with Novell; there is more cluelessness among Novellers who have no clear strategy

NOVELL’S imminent sale (of the company) is said to be interfering with Novell sales and a major crash being reported in the news cannot help, either.

Yang, a Novell computer server, crashed at 10:45 a.m. Sept. 21, causing setbacks in departments across campus, including The Tech Talk and athletics.

Novell has just suffered a major blow in the UK as the NHS dumps Novell (as a ‘blanket’ type agreement):

The Department for Health has confirmed the £6m Enterprise Wide Agreement with Novell, due to expire next month, will not be renewed. Local trusts will be responsible for ensuring compliance.

Coming only months after Microsoft’s £80m EWA was brought to an end by the Department for Health (DfH), the deal with Novell, which included ID management, discovery tools and maintenance looked unlikely to get the go-ahead, but some have still branded the government’s decision as short-sighted.

As stated in the previous post, the Microsoft-stuffed VMB_ware is expected to seize control of SUSE, which the the Microsoft-stuffed Amazon is also promoting at the expense of Red Hat (that it pays Microsoft for). From The Register we learn that:

Novell might not be sure about what it wants to do with itself, but the company has been pretty clear what it wants you to do with its products. It wants to build virtual software appliances with all kinds of software stacks running inside of virtual machines and atop its SUSE Linux Enterprise distro.

For Novell, the direction/vocation at the moment seems to be very proprietary. In fact, the proprietary software which we wrote about some days ago appears to be the only formal news from Novell (at least from this past week):

Novell on September 23 announced a new version of Novell Access Governance Suite, a set of software products that simplifies how customers govern user access to corporate resources and manage regulatory compliance.

We found only one ‘article’ (not original) based on the press release about Novell Access Governance:

Helping companies to control user access to corporate resources and manage regulatory compliance, Novell has unveiled a new version of Novell (News – Alert) Access Governance Suite.

This is one of those products which Novell knows not what to do with. What company would conceivably be interested in this asset now that Novell wants to sell its entire portfolio? █

Summary: The Microsoft-stuffed VMware picks a Novell manager to be its channel director; Novell buys some virtualisation propaganda from IDG; other Novell staff on the move is being tracked

MOVEMENT of staff is sometimes indicative of things to come, which is why staff migration from Novell to VMB_ware should be seen as significant. According to this new report from IDG, Novell’s Donovan is “crowned VMware channel director”:

VMware has appointed John Donovan as its new director for partner organisations across A/NZ.

Donovan will take the reins as of November 1 and will continue his position at Novell as its Asia-Pacific vice-president of alliance and channel sales until then.

Here is another IDG article which names Novell as competition of VMB_ware:

VMware, Microsoft and Citrix, the most widely used virtualization vendors, are all touting their ability to automate management of virtual resources and build cloud networks. But they have competition from Red Hat, Novell and others.

Another new article asks, “Should VMware add Novell’s virtualization management tools?”

VMware’s customers say that the server virtualization vendor still lags third-party specialists in virtualization management. And though uncertainty about the rumored Novell merger continues to reign, some parts of Novell’s management portfolio could bolster VMware’s.

Initial reports on Novell’s ongoing liquidation sale held that the process would happen in two phases: one deal with a “strategic buyer”– reportedly VMware Inc. — for the SUSE Linux OS business, with the rest, including its NetWare and IT management software product lines, going to another buyer. Now, Reuters reports that talks have stalled and quotes a source describing Novell’s management tools as “a dying cow.” But at least in some corners, Novell’s virtualization management tools are the most intriguing part of the acquisition rumors.

It is still being said by the financial Web sites that VMB_ware is likely to buy at least part of Novell (the stock is affected accordingly). Well, Novell has just bought some PlateSpin whitepapers (propaganda) [1, 2] from IDG/IDC, which means that IDC shows what the client wants shown and then IDG pushes this into ‘news’ channels/circulation. Here in Novell’s PR blog IDC was even writing blog posts last week. How corruptible.

Guest Post by Brett Waldman, Analyst, IDC

It will be interesting to see if other Novell staff moves to the Microsoft-stuffed VMB_ware (or vice versa). In the mean time, all that we see this week are the following movements:

- On Mark Cuban and Novell:

When I started there were no local area networks. There was a company you might remember called Novell that was called Novell Shared Data Systems back then and we were like the third or fourth reseller nationally. So we took the initiative.

- GemLogic, which was acquired by SilverStream/Novell, has its co-founder become Vice President of Marketing at VoltDB:

Prior to OSA, Holahan was co-founder of LexiBridge Corporation (acquired by Level3 Communications), GemLogic, Inc. (acquired by SilverStream/Novell) and Active Endpoints, Inc. He also held leadership roles at Progress Software and Interactive Data.

- Eric Schmidt’s role as CEO at Novell is mentioned in some news sites, including IDG where Dave Kearns writes:

And to show that not much as changed in 10 years, I added “Even more indicative, though, were comments made by Novell executives including CEO Eric Schmidt that eDirectory was now the core of Novell’s business.

More here:

In 1997, he left Sun to become the CEO of Novell, then, a premiere networking company in the business world.

- The new CEO of Apperian comes with the burden of Novell roots:

There’s some interesting personnel news today in the world of mobile software apps for companies. Boston-based Apperian, a mobile development and platform startup, says it has appointed a new CEO as of last week. He is David Patrick, a veteran of Lotus, Sun, Novell, and a number of cutting-edge tech startups on both coasts. He succeeds founder Chuck Goldman, a former Apple executive who is staying on as chief strategy officer and will continue to run the company’s services, sales, and business development.

Novell is a shrinking company, so migration of its top staff continues to matter. The same goes for Microsoft.█

Summary: Sales of products from Novell/SUSE are depressed by expectations of a takeover

NOVELL was recently seen slamming Oracle Linux. Oracle just wants a lot of control, which is why OpenOffice.org gets forked for example.

Left out from Novell’s blog post, however, was a statement about Novell’s relatively low share in the GNU/Linux market. As The VAR Guy put it in his post “Memo From Novell to Oracle: No Oracle Linux Needed”:

Applebaum certainly has a point: When it comes to business-centric Linux, Red Hat and Novell seem to dominate the market. But Applebaum doesn’t take the time to disclose individual market share numbers for Red Hat and Novell. Hmmm…

While Red Hat continues to grow organically, some Novell customers are delaying purchases because of Novell’s unclear ownership status. Novell’s board reportedly has been trying to sell the company off — perhaps in two parts — but the potential deals apparently hit a snag amid unclear valuations for Novell’s legacy businesses.

It may seem amusing that Novell was trying to limit choice, but either way, the interesting part to be taken from the above is that “some Novell customers are delaying purchases because of Novell’s unclear ownership status.” That’s just to be expected. In the next post we are going to address this subject. Novell was down 7% after acquisition worries/hesitation. █

Summary: Some of the very latest developments in Novell’s sale saga and interpretation from various sources

NOVELL is at the stage where it must sell due to expectations from clients and investors (there is apparently an offer on the table). Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols says, based on reporting from Reuters, that “VMware’s Novell SUSE Linux buy out runs into a snag”. The thing about Novell is that the shares fell (Novell, Inc. (NOVL.O) was down $0.43/-6.61% yesterday with an additional -0.33% after hours) because a sale might not be so immediate.

Reuters wrote about this fall, Susan said that “Novell acquisition delayed over legacy assets”, and the main report says that Novell is looking at more options: “The auction of Novell’s (NOVL.O) NetWare and identity management products is dragging as rivals appear more willing to pay up for the software maker’s crown-jewel Linux operating system unit, sources familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.

“Novell’s board, which hired JPMorgan in March to look at strategic options for the whole company, is unwilling to part with its best performing unit SUSE Linux alone and be left with a shell of legacy assets, according to three sources, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record about the auction.”

“Novell is where companies and products came to die.”Novell is just too diverse for a simple sale to be made. Ron Hovsepian made things worse by further diversifying the company with the acquisition of other companies like Managed Objects (whose CEO quit Novell last year). It turns out she was not alone: “Prior to Playxpert, Manning was the vice president of product management at Managed Objects. Managed Objects was the industry leader in Business Service Management and was later acquired by Novell.”

Novell is where companies and products came to die. Hovsepian just had little clue what he was doing with the company and his technical chief/strategist quit the company earlier this year. Now the company is in a freefall, except of course if one considers the impact of the company’s sale on the stock. There are still many more articles about that sale (e.g. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12]). “Novell Could Sell for $2.8B,” says this one report and the effect on the stock got covered in [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18].

One writer from IDG argues that “VMware Could Abandon Anti-OS Crusade with Novell Linux Purchase” (Groklaw might beg to argue that this "crusade" is fake).

But analysts say VMware’s apparent attempt to purchase SUSE Linux makes perfect sense, and will help VMware compete against Microsoft (MSFT), its primary rival, and also Red Hat, which claims VMware can’t offer a full cloud computing stack because it lacks an operating system.

If Microsoft Windows retains its current dominance, VMware may not be able to compete against Microsoft in the long run, says Burton Group analyst Chris Wolf.

Sam from ITWire wonders, “[i]f VMware buys Novell, what happens to the Microsoft deal?”

Novell sponsors this project with people, hardware and services. But OpenSUSE has its own board and along with community contributors has put together what it calls a list of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. It makes for extremely interesting reading.

How will VMware, which was once suspected of using code from Linux in its ESX Server and not releasing the source, handle the crowd of developers at OpenSUSE who are quite clearly not a docile lot?

There are other interesting questions that present themselves. What happens to Mono and Moonlight, both projects run by Miguel de Icaza, a vice-president at Novell, which aim to make it easier for Microsoft products to play with Linux, in particular SUSE?

Novell has long used these projects as a means of claiming better interoperability with Microsoft. Once VMware has its own operating system – as it would if it bought Novell’s Linux business, why would it care for projects like Mono and Moonlight?

Both projects, it must be added, have not increased Novell’s popularity among the free software and open source software communities. VMware can do without negative karma in these communities – it already has plenty.

It is long a article that does not actually answer the question presented in the headline. It is not entirely clear how such an acquisition would affect the Novell-Microsoft deal. As far is SUSE is concerned, the same rules would probably apply (e.g. the Microsoft-stuffed VM_Bware paying Microsoft for GNU/Linux sales).

OStatic incorrectly characterises Novell as an open source company and asks, “If VMware Buys SUSE Linux, Could Red Hat Feel the Heat?”

Could VMware indeed be a part of an acquisition plan for Novell, and if so, could that spell bad news for Red Hat?

Red Hat, of course, has been a market darling for some time now, continuing to post quarter after quarter of good financial results based on its basic business model of supporting Linux. It has always competed with Novell in the Linux business, but Novell’s Linux business has had spotty results in recent years, due in part to its partnership with Microsoft and dependence on Microsoft to help turn up Linux deals. Now, according to some, Novell may have only a few weeks left as an independent company.

Daniel Kusnetzky, a virtualisation guru, looks at ramifications of VM_Bware buying SUSE:

If the worst case scenario that is possible occurs, I’m expecting to hear cries for interoperability and cross platform migration that will be similar to the cries heard in the 1960s and 1970s. Are we doomed to repeat this cycle over and over again?

Novell is about to be sold; the question is to who and under what conditions. █

Summary: More people are afraid of VMware, Groklaw suspects that VMware only pretends to compete with Microsoft, and there are reasons to believe that VMware would abandon free elements such as OpenSUSE

IT APPEARS as though the Microsoft-occupied VMware (which we may call MSWare or WCware, as suggested by one of our readers) will become a subject of greater focus at Techrights. It seems like the future owner of Ballnux [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8], the Microsoft patent tax-encumbered distribution of GNU/Linux. VMware would most likely try to hurt Red Hat with it, using the hypervisor as a sales channel. VMware has been buying FOSS to bury it, based on our experience and many links we covered here before. We realise that a lot of people are unaware of this, just as they do not know that the top of VMware’s management is filled with former Microsoft executives after the old management was ousted with help from EMC, a close Microsoft partner.

Earlier today in IRC it came up that the news about VMware is definitely bad news for SUSE and for FOSS. “[I] don’t think Novell was a good fit for Suse,” Chips B. Malroy said to kick off this discussion (which may be more long-winded than this post). What would happen to OpenSUSE, whose weekly activity seems to be decreasing over time? VMware does not have a history of fostering much of a community at all. As pointed out in IRC, it is possible that VMware is just Microsoft’s way of getting better control over SUSE. ThistleWeb
says: “isn’t the MS dictionary definition of “embedding” about getting their own employees embedded with other companies or committees to help further the MS agenda? yahoo, vmware, iso style”

“[I] don’t think Novell was a good fit for Suse”
      –Chips B. MalroyBrian Proffitt from IDG says that “A VMware/Novell acquisition makes sense, but care must be taken.”

Another IDG columnist writes the article/column: “Dear VMware: Please don’t buy Novell”

From Novell’s point of view, he is right. VMware would be bad news given its staff and its history. It’s a brain drainer to FOSS.

It does seem inevitable that Novell will be sold (and SUSE sold separately) based on this new report from Bloomberg.

Investors should buy bullish Novell Inc. options to profit from a potential breakup of the maker of Linux operating-system software, which is exploring a sale of its assets, MKM Partners LP said.

Etai Friedman, MKM’s head derivatives trader, recommended purchasing November $6 calls on Waltham, Massachusetts-based Novell while selling the same number of November $7 calls, a strategy known as a call spread that cuts the price of the trade while capping potential profit. Novell rose 1.2 percent to $6.12 at 4 p.m. New York time and has gained 47 percent this year.

“Speculation of a Novell deal has whipsawed the stock for quite some time,” the Greenwich, Connecticut-based strategist wrote in a report today. “With specific buyers in the mix,” MKM “believes investors’ attention should move toward the valuation of Novell with prospects of a deal much higher than current prices.”

Paul Singer (Elliott Associates) too will be making a profit from his shares of Novell. Vultures tend to get their way in such a society with a “free” market. That’s another subject anyway.

TechFlash, a Microsoft boosting news site, had this to say about Novell:

A potential acquisition of Novell could pose an interesting situation for Microsoft, which partnered with the Linux vendor on virtualization technologies in 2006. But VMware, led by former Microsoft executive Paul Maritz, inked a key partnership with Novell earlier this year which sparked strong negative reactions from the Microsoft brass.

Over at Groklaw, Pamela Jones supports our suspicion that the ‘new’ VMware (with Microsoft veterans in charge) is still working for Microsoft in a way. “Let me hasten to say I have no knowledge if this is so or not,” Jones wrote, “He goes on to say that Maritz and Microsoft have been publicly trash talking each other, so that means there’s no love lost. Maybe. Or maybe it’s like professional wrestling, where it looks like a fight, but in reality it’s a choreographed dance so it looks like a fight.”

“Maritz and Microsoft have been publicly trash talking each other [...] maybe it’s like professional wrestling, where it looks like a fight, but in reality it’s a choreographed dance so it looks like a fight.”
      –Pamela Jones, GroklawJones said this last year as well. It does seem like a possibility and we have publicly inquired for more information about the private relationship between Maritz and existing executives of Microsoft.

If it turns out that VMware serves Microsoft’s interests, then maybe it would be suitable to change how we refer to the ‘new’ VMware. “MSWare” would confuse people too much, but we can figure something out. Today’s VMware is clearly not the VMware people knew some years ago (we covered in great detail what Tucci had done to the management while he was getting closer to Ballmer).

“Red Hat let VMware have: Zimbra, SpringSource, RabbitMQ, Tungsten Graphics, GemStone,” wrote gnufreex. “They could intercept at least two of those… Zimbra and Spring source for example.”

Our main concern is that VMware has some Microsoft loyalty (like EMC, its owner) and that together they will both try to hurt Red Hat, drain FOSS competition to Microsoft, and sell just ‘Microsoft Linux’ (SUSE) through hypervisors they wish to control at KVM’s expense, for example. Our “VMware” wiki page may be required reading for those who have not seen what happened to VMware over the past couple of years. It’s just not the same company anymore. Jason from The Source wrote about it before he knew that the likely buyer would be VMware and he wondered what this would mean to Mono and Moonlight:

Mono goes on, maybe under a spin-off company with Miguel de Icaza and troops. Team Apologista is large and insular enough to remain divorced from the overall FLOSS community and still soldier on as a Microsoft team. Mono has always been and will always be a niche product in a niche market, but you can make money off of niche products. Besides, the ideological and personal investment of many Team Apologista members mean they are not going to give up on Mono, no matter what.

I have a harder time imagining an existing company taking on Mono, though. The reason is – even if you think Mono is perfectly fine to use, it is still true that a large and vocal segment of your potential user base disagrees. A segment including the Free Software Foundation, by the way.

If you aren’t a desperate company flailing about for some lifeline – any lifeline – and you know what happens in terms of FLOSS community trust and respect when striking deals with Microsoft – not to mention what happens to companies in general that deal with Microsoft – why would you take on such a white elephant as Mono?

Speaking of Mono, the FSF is not a fan of it as projects like Banshee are clearly a patent liability, based on the MCP from Microsoft. We still saw arbitrary reviews/advocacy of Banshee a few days ago [1, 2]. People should not be encouraged to install this Novell software, which gives Microsoft a legal weapon against distributions other than SUSE. Mike Masnick is meanwhile reminding us of what empty copyright allegations have meant to GNU/Linux and to SCO:

Unix For Sale: Massively Damaged, Sold As Is & Absent Delusions Of Grandeur Over Linux Copyright Infringement

[...]

It’s unclear what anyone would really do with whatever magical assets the sale comes with, but I would suggest suing IBM for infringement is not one of the better ideas.

We covered this last week on a few occasions [1, 2]. We don’t need another SCO and Novell owns UNIX rights (now on sale). █