Summary: A few bits and pieces about SLES, SLED, Novell’s performance, Xandros and Scalix
THERE WAS almost nothing about SLES and SLED in the past week’s news. Here is just a boring Novell attraction which was uploaded to YouTube some days ago, having been captured in Computex not so long ago.
Permalink
Comments off 
Send this to a friend
“Our products just aren’t engineered for security.”
–Brian Valentine, Microsoft executive
Summary: The cost of Windows to the economy is higher than most people realise
THE OLD estimates of 320,000,000 or so zombie PCs on the Web simply mean that Windows botnets are bound to cost a lot of money. They cause great damage and waste hours per week, per person, depending on the person’s occupation. Conficker shows that Windows flaws tend to be seriously severe. Microsoft continues its tradition of ignoring and overriding user settings by installing patches without permission.
SOFTWARE GIANT Microsoft has been installing updates against the wishes of users who have set up their computers to stop them deploying patches without permission.
This is done for security reasons, but it does raise serious questions. Microsoft essentially owns one’s PC once Windows is installed on it. Not even user settings are obeyed. Regardless of this practice which has gone on for years, the Windows botnets problem remains unresolved and everyone pays the price. Here are some new figures about the cost of SPAM alone (there are many other costs).
And just in time. According to Ferris Research, a San Francisco and London-based e-mail and groupware analysis firm, “spam will cost $140 billion worldwide in 2008, of which $42 billion will be in the United States alone.”
[...]
That’s largely because spam hasn’t been bound to the U.S. in years. Instead, spam comes from botnets. These are made up of anywhere from dozens to tens of thousands of malware infected Windows PCs that their controllers use to spread spam around the world.
Will Microsoft pay the bills to compensate for this? One of my Web sites, for example, goes beyond the allowed traffic because well over 90% of the traffic there is devoured by Windows zombies. It has gone on for months and it is costing a lot of money, not just time.
Those who are responsible for this chaos whine about it too. Gates describes it as “irritating”. █
“Like almost everyone who uses e-mail, I receive a ton of spam every day. Much of it offers to help me get out of debt or get rich quick. It would be funny if it weren’t so irritating.”
–Bill Gates
Summary: The remainder of the news about Novell
Permalink
Comments off Send this to a friend
Summary: An interesting real-world example of Microsoft’s influence on the press
Microsoft’s use of Free software is a subject that we covered many times before, e.g. in [1, 2, 3, 4]. Hotmail, for example, was running BSD long after Microsoft had acquired it, but how far did a dishonest Microsoft go to deny it? Well, Slated has picked up some old links which nicely fit and explain a newer incident.
The first link he picked is this one where Microsoft admits being a BSD user.
Despite the company’s bitter campaign against open source software, Microsoft continues to use FreeBSD to power important functions of its Hotmail free e-mail service. Much to the chagrin of the folks at Redmond, FreeBSD and Apache continued to run Hotmail for several years after it was purchased in 1997. Microsoft publicly claimed to have removed all traces of FreeBSD last summer, and even published a case study documenting its experiences. Microsoft told BetaNews that solutions such as FreeBSD are in use throughout its IT infrastructure. A spokesperson also clarified the the software giant’s position on OSS technologies, and views on GPL licensing.
Microsoft maintains however, that it is migrating to its own proprietary software and any delays are meant to ensure a positive experience for its customers.
Contrary to recent claims, the popular Hotmail service does not run entirely on the Windows 2000 platform. First reported by the Wall Street Journal, FreeBSD developer Trevor Johnson determined that Microsoft was still using the open source operating system for DNS hosting and also for tracking advertisements. It has also been reported that FreeBSD software components are utilized in Microsoft products, such as Windows 2000. BSD’s TCP/IP stack, a vital communication protocol, is rumored to have been used in several Windows operating systems, enabling users to connect to the Internet.
Slated does not stop there. “The original WSJ article,” he points out, “has mysteriously disappeared, but fragments remain elsewhere.”
Wall St. Journal: Microsoft Uses Open-Source Code Despite Denying Use of Such Software
Lee Gomes, the reporter who wrote the friendly (and curiously MSNBC-edited) piece last week about “Microsoft’s Uphill Battle Against Linux” is back this week with an amplification on Microsoft’s use of open source software:
“Microsoft Corp., even while mounting a new campaign against open-source software, has quietly been using such free computer code in several major products, as well as on key portions of a popular Web site — despite denying last week that it did so.
Software connected with the FreeBSD open-source operating system is used in several places deep inside several versions of Microsoft’s Windows software, such as in the “TCP/IP” section that arranges all connections to the Internet. The company also uses FreeBSD on numerous “server” computers that manage major functions at its Hotmail free e-mail service, whose registered users exceed 100 million and make it one of the Web’s busiest sites.
Microsoft acknowledged its repeated use of open-source code Friday, in response to questions about the matter. Just two days earlier, it had specifically denied the existence of any such software at Hotmail.”
Also from LinuxToday (as per yesterday):
Why is the NY Times so Dumb About Linux and Windows?
The New York Times seems hard-wired to rarely identify any Windows malware as Windows malware, but rather as “computer malware.” They seem to share this illness with other people too, such as researchers and professors. Can it be that all these educated people who make their livings knowing things and uncovering new knowledge really don’t know that there are other computer operating systems besides Microsoft Windows?
Their latest failure at making this distinction is China Orders Patches to Planned Web Filter, and they also missed the real story: since this censoring software is required to be installed on all computers sold in China, does that mean that Mac, Linux, and Unix computers are banned? Because it’s a Windows program.
Microsoft and the New York Times are very close. Steve Ballmer publishes articles in there sometimes. A year ago we wrote about the New York Times promoting Silverlight and this was hardly surprising given the strong relationship between those two. Just months ago there was a rumour that Microsoft would buy the debt-saddled New York Times.
So, what Carla points out above is that the New York Times, which enjoys a wide daily distribution, consistently defends Microsoft through omission of critical details. The BBC too perpetuates the belief that computers and Windows are synonymous. We previously explained why the BBC and NBC cannot ever be trusted on Microsoft and Novell matters and returning to Slated’s links, he also shows that “The MSNBC even tried to censor the story [about Hotmail running on Free software].”
MSNBC has been caught doctoring copy originating from the Wall Street Journal to make it more favourable to the news channel’s co-owner Microsoft. The changes introduced by MSNBC also had the effect of removing references to Microsoft competitors.
Amongst many fairly harmless edits, designed to improve readability, were some more ominous changes.
The original WSJ report gave a harsh analysis of Microsoft’ offensive against open source software and the GNU General Public License, initiated six weeks ago by Craig Mundie. The WSJ cited Microsoft’s own dependence on open source software, and cited lawyers who were critical of its interpretation of the General Public License.
“Microsoft said that since last summer, Hotmail has been running on both Windows 2000 and the Solaris operating system from Sun Microsystems Inc.,” noted the original copy from the WSJ.
MSNBC amended this to:-
“Microsoft said Hotmail has been running on Windows since last summer.”
By Friday, the original version of the story that appeared in the WSJ had been restored to MSNBC.
“Here’s the best rebuttal I could find,” writes Slated, “although the author still does not actually deny that Microsoft benefited from “freeloading” the BSD code.”
I worked at Microsoft for ten years, most of it on the core Windows NT/2000 (hereafter referred to as NT) networking code. As such I briefly dealt with the Hotmail team, mostly to hear them complain about the lameness of the telnet daemon in NT (a valid point). I do know that when Microsoft bought Hotmail, the email system was entirely running on FreeBSD, and Microsoft immediately set about trying to migrate it to NT, and it took many years to do so. Now it seems that the transition is not complete. Well, what are you gonna do.
[...]
Now, some of Spider’s code (possibly all of it) was based on the TCP/IP stack in the BSD flavors of Unix. These are open source, but distributed under the BSD license, not the GPL that Linux is released under. Whereas the GPL states that any software derived from GPL’ed software must also be released under the GPL, the BSD license basically says, “here’s the source, you can do whatever you want, just give credit to the original author.”
Eventually the new, from scratch TCP/IP stack was done and shipped with NT 3.5 (the second version, despite the number) in late 1994. The same stack was also included with Windows 95.
However, it looks like some of those Unix utilities were never rewritten. If you look at the executables, you can still see the copyright notice from the regents of the University of California (BSD is short for Berkeley Software Distrubution, Berkeley being a branch of the University of California, for some reason referred to as “Berkeley” on the East Coast and “California” on the West Coast…and “Berkeley” is one of those words that starts to look real funny if you stare at it too long – but I digress).
Keep in mind there is no reason to rewrite that code. If your ftp client works fine (no comments from the peanut gallery!) then why change it? Microsoft has other fish to fry. And the software was licensed perfectly legally, since the inclusion of the copyright notice satisfied the BSD license.
To conclude, Slated writes:
Did Microsoft satisfy the BSD license?
Yes.
Are they “freetards”, according to [some] definition?
Yes.
Microsoft and their anti-Freedom supporters are a bunch of hypocrites. Or, to use the words of the above author, it’s “like the event horizon calling the kettle black”.
So when can we expect Microsoft (or even Spider Systems Ltd.) to compensate The Regents of the University of California for “all their hard work”?
It sure changes one’s perspective. █
Summary: The remainder of Novell’s news from the past week
THOSE who expect interesting news from Novell should probably skip this post. There is almost no output from Novell and mentions in the press are therefore of little value.
Permalink
Comments off Send this to a friend
Summary: A grouping of Novell news from the past 7 days
AS we showed last week, Novell is offshoring some workforce in a move whose value exceeds $100 million.
Summary: Remarks on takeover possibilities and interoperability with Microsoft Exchange Server
Investopedia is not a Web site whose name comes up quite so often. It seems to stick to conventions rather than question or challenge them. For example, it uses the Microsoft-based IDC numbers to belittle GNU/Linux (notice the “ASPX” in Investopedia), but either way, there is this new short report regarding Red Hat, Novell, and takeovers.
Novell Takeover Talk Overplayed (NOVL,RHT)
Despite reporting earnings beating expectations, shares of network software provider Novell (NYSE:NOVL) failed to rally on the news, as uncertainty regarding the company’s ability to successfully transition to a new business model based on so-called “open source” Linux software appears to remain a significant concern for investors.
According to this, Red Hat and Novell are similar in the sense that neither will be acquired any time soon (by the way, both companies are symbolised by red colours too). It has been weeks since Egbert's prediction that Red Hat will be acquired -- potentially by IBM — and even months since she spoke about Oracle. She just never gets it right. It is worth pointing out that Red Hat and Novell are in very different positions. Novell’s revenue keeps declining because it carries a baggage from the past, whereas Red Hat is the type of company Novell wishes to be.
Meanwhile, Paula Rooney writes about OpenChange and she makes it sound very much like it’s only a Red Hat thing which bears resemblance to a Novell deal.
Red Hat is not going to let the Microsoft-Novell partnership dim its own prospects for interoperability.
That seems to be the case with the Red Hat-sponsored open source Fedora project, which plans to release on June 9 a major upgrade of its free Linux that offers robust integration with Microsoft Exchange via a new feature called OpenChange.
As one of the commenters points out:
Is this particular to Redhat? My understanding is that OpenChange is being implemented by Gnome Evolution and KDE Akonadi. (It would be nice if the Mozilla Messaging also supported it.) I think OpenChange is already available in some form on OpenSuse, SLED and maybe other recent Linux distro releases and will be available on others soon.
And, yes, it is a big deal, a bigger deal than just Exchange. The European Commission forced Microsoft to cough up the details of all their server protocols. Microsoft are of course doing it to “foster innovation and interoperability”. Ha, ha!
http://www.microsoft.com/protocols/default.mspx
So patent deals are not required for interoperability after all. What was Novell thinking at the time? Speaking of Exchange, Google Wave renders it obsolete (if adopted) and to a large extent the same goes for SharePoint and Outlook (even the whole of Office, by extension). Google terrifies Microsoft for this reason. It puts together a lot of pieces like video (YouTube), spreadsheets editor (Apps), image viewer/album sharing (Picasa), E-mail (GMail), and so on. But that’s another story. █
Summary: The past week’s news about Novell, excepting SUSE
ANOTHER analysis of Novell’s financial results is very near. A major component of it is proprietary software, so this post looks mostly at this lesser-explored part.
Permalink
Comments off Send this to a friend
« Previous Page — « Previous entries « Previous Page · Next Page » Next entries » — Next Page »
Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Guest Editorial Team
Community: Get involved
RSS Feed: subscribe to the RSS feed for regular updates
Site Wiki: You can improve this site by helping the extension of the site's content
Site Home: Background about the site and some key features in the front page
IRC Channels: Come and chat with us in real time
Design by Beccary and Weblogs.us · Valid XHTML · Valid CSS · Hosting by CoPilotCo · Part of Bytes Media
 |  |
Content is available under CC-BY-SA