06.22.07

Do-No-Evil Saturday: Novell Partnerships and Improvements

Posted in Deals, Free/Libre Software, GNU/Linux, Identity Management, Marketing, Novell, Servers at 8:50 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

The latest in this series includes some interesting bits, but not as many as we saw last week.

Open-Xchange, which was sad to see Novell dropping Hula, seems to have gotten closer to Novell again.

Novell and former partner Open-Xchange are updating their
collaboration offers in an effort to make their respective
products more feature rich for users.

Novell has revealed its intention to improve its real-time Linux products.

Novell today announced new enhancements to SUSE Linux Enterprise Real Time and unveiled new partnerships that expand the ecosystem around Novell’s low latency Linux solution.

There is also another new partnership.

Working with Novell, Transitive created its QuickTransit Virtual Appliance — a pre-built virtual machine comprised of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 and QuickTransit for Solaris/SPARC-to-Linux/x86-64, resulting in a ready-to-run application migration solution.

A couple more so-called “Open Source” companies have joined Novell’s Market Start.

Novell has added two new members to its Market Start partner program, which designed to provide a leg-up to open source software start-ups.

Systems management vendor Zenoss and portal and content management player, Liferay, have been added to the program, which promotes open source software running on Novell’s SUSE Linux Enterprise at small and medium businesses.

On to some less intersting stuff, a company demonstrated its product which relies on Novell’s.

Concurrent, a leading provider of time-critical Linux® operating systems, software and integrated computer solutions for mission-critical applications, today announced that the company will demonstrate NightStar tools for SUSE Linux Enterprise Real Time in Novell’s booth at the Securities Industry Financial Management Association (SIFMA) Technology Management Conference & Exhibit, being held June 19-21, 2007 at the New York Hilton, New York, USA.

The following came from Voltaire, which partnered with Novell.

Voltaire, a provider of grid backbone solutions, today announced that it has entered into an agreement with Novell to offer a joint low latency solution to improve performance of real-time trading applications in the financial markets. The combined solution reduces latency bottlenecks on both the operating system level and the data center fabric to offer a low latency solution. In addition, the solution is coupled with a support package that provides comprehensive support for both the operating system and InfiniBand capabilities allowing customers to take advantage of improved performance and the highest levels of availability.

SAP illustrates the fact that Microosft and Novell can be conveniently mentioned in the same sentence.

Starry-eyed or no, SAP isn’t entirely monogamous when it comes to partnering with other vendors—or Microsoft competitors, for that matter. Also last month, the ERP giant expanded its relationship with Novell to promote SAP applications running on SuSE Linux Enterprise Server.

There is also an article about Novell identity management and an article that reminds us that patents achieve nothing but keep good products away.

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Novell’s Compiz and Beryl Unite (Video Demo)

Posted in Free/Libre Software, GNU/Linux, Novell, Videos at 8:43 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

For those who do not know, Novell’s Compiz was forked last year due to Novell’s (possibly misunderstood, at least in retrospect) ‘grip’ on the project. This resulted in Beryl, which gained a lot of attraction and left Compiz a little behind, unless stability is accounted for as well.

Earlier this year, the two projects decided to converge again. The fruits of the merge can be seen in the video below.

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Patents Perceived as “Harassment“, Microsoft Falls Victim to More Patent Trolling

Posted in GPL, Law, Microsoft, Patents at 8:25 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Based on PwC, it’s looking as though companies are kind enough (or just tactful enough) to realise spurious patent lawsuits are a form of harassment, which does more harm than good.

Forty-seven percent of the 195 technology executives taking part in the survey also suggested that a large majority of IP-related lawsuits were spurious and intended simply to harass the competition. The figure was significantly higher among North American respondents, at 63 per cent.

Yesterday, Microsoft had a little taste of its own poison. This reaffirms Mark Shuttleworth’s recent warning about minuscule patent trolls.

Publisher sues Microsoft over patents

[...]

The patents in question are 5,982,889 – “Method and apparatus for distributing information products” and 6,173,403, with the same title.

In another nice new article, innovation is being tied to use, as opposed to patents and so-called innovation (let alone trolling over trivial ideas).

How uses, not innovations, drive human technology.

[...]

We tend to think of technology in futuristic terms, barely noticing many older technologies so ubiquitous as to be almost invisible.

Another little item worth reading explains why attempts to squash patents actually make them stronger, but it goes further than and links to various bits off interest.

There is scrutiny of patent claims, comparison of those claims to existing knowledge and prior art, and a purported desire to improve the quality of technological patents. However, if the FOSS movement does not like the Peer-to-Patent Project, but supports the patent busting efforts of relatively anti-patent FOSS affiliated parties, one must question whether those parties really want to improve the patent system or simply take it apart.

The past few days have been quite as far as Microsoft’s legal team and ‘FUD Brigade’ are concerned. The big day for GPLv3 is meanwhile approaching. Let’s hope for calm, not to be followed by any storms.

While it’s quiet we might as well add that if you, the reader, have anything you want published in the Web site, just send it over. As we said before, we’re open to contributions by anyone. It’s a community effort to squash FUD and inform the gradually-growing number of site visitors.

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