Summary: Microsoft’s Hyper-V is reportedly being used to cripple and marginalise — artificially — guests that are running GNU/Linux

MICROSOFT apparently has not gotten enough advantage with UEFI exclusion of GNU/Linux from new PCs. We recently learned that a lot of new computers (without Windows XP) will simply refuse to have GNU/Linux installed and/or running. Even some technical people in JoinDiaspora say that they are unable to install GNU/Linux on such computers (not OS-agnostic machines anymore, as per Microsoft’s manipulative legal requirements).

Adding insult to injury, Microsoft now uses Hyper-V, the proprietary hypervisor which is strictly attached to an NSA honeypot (Microsoft Windows), for something that resembles AARD. iophk called it “AARD again” and it should be treated as a serious antitrust violation.

Citing the original report [1], Susan Linton writes: “The Register is running an article explaining how Microsoft is trying to sabotage Linux.”

The article begins by stating that “Hyper-V was found to treat Linux guests as second-class citizens” and it should not be too shocking given that Hyper-V drivers for Linux were originally a GPL violation (Microsoft was forced to comply). This is one of the things that Microsoft paid Novell to help with (others being .NET, Moonlight/Silverlight, OOXML, patent FUD, and more).

With the death of Windows XP it is possible that the common carrier for desktops/laptops will soon be no more. FUD games like these ones are only to be expected from the thuggish, criminal company. █

Related/contextual items from the news:

1. Hyper-V telling fibs about Linux guest VMs

   If Microsoft’s Hyper-V was found to treat Linux guests as second-class citizens, the resulting storm of controversy would probably generate enough heat and light to make a dent in some climate change models.

AS we briefly noted yesterday, OpenDaylight is having an event (summit) and some Linux journalists attend. This is interesting because through OpenDaylight there is now somewhat of a proprietary software mole inside the Linux Foundation, acting as a manager.

Recall the time Red Hat hired from Microsoft for virtualisation, repeating the mistake of some other GNU/Linux vendors. Red Hat is complaining about the USPTO [1] and Microsoft’s patent extortion, so what was it thinking when it hired from Microsoft? The same mistake was made by the Linux Foundation when it hired a former Microsoft employee to head OpenDaylight after Microsoft had paid a lot of money. To quote a new article, “Microsoft is invested in OpenDaylight” (as in, bought it off to a degree, just like it did with Novell). We spent year covering the distortion of virtualisation, especially by Microsoft. Lots of Microsoft executives took over VMware, a Microsoft ally bought Xen, and generally speaking the Novell deal enabled Microsoft to turn GNU/Linux into a guest under Windows hosts. It also allowed Microsoft to promote Hyper-V right inside Linux (initially a GPL infringement), essentially making Linux dependent on proprietary spyware with NSA back doors.

“As a platinum member, Microsoft is paying half-a-million a year to the consortium and devoted ten full-time developers to OpenDaylight. That may be small change for Microsoft, but it’s not chicken feed either. The company has already demonstrated the first release of OpenDaylight, Hydrogen, on Azure” writes Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols. Azure to GNU/Linux is surveillance and patent tax. Is this where Linux is going? Hosting by Microsoft, which engages in extortion and racketeering? This is worrisome and we’re not the only ones claiming so. █

Related/contextual items from the news:

1. Top court decisions to come for US public policy in 2014

   A recent post on the top events ahead in 2014 for reforming abusive patent litigation focused on efforts by State Attorneys General, the Federal Trade Commission, and US Congress. Let’s now take a look to another field involved in the multi-prong strategy to address patent abuse: the Supreme Court, which is considering a number of important cases.

Now that Android is truly dominant, Microsoft is trying to pretend that the only party one needs to pay to (for Android) is Microsoft. It’s the same thing Microsoft did to Novell and others. There might not be payments, but even pretense of payments is rather infuriating. It is a huge injustice which shows that we need to ostracise Microsoft.

GNU/Linux is quickly transforming into a market leader and the platform to catch up with. Microsoft is desperately trying to get a grip on Linux or “court Linux-based workloads with a new driver package that enables support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux/CentOS 5.5 and 5.6.” Having totally destroyed Linux at Nokia [1,2] (Nokia was a leading Linux contributor), Microsoft now uses its Novell moles to put code inside Linux, enabling dependence on proprietary software from Microsoft [3].

It is not hard to see why Microsoft resorted to this strategy of hijacking Nokia (alienating some other OEMs). Microsoft wants to control the hardware companies (like Dell) because with disasters like Vista 8 they just no longer pre-install (or rent) much of Windows [4]. Hyper-V is like a Trojan horse strategy and a Plan B, not just for servers. Microsoft is trying to dual-boot Windows along with Android devices right now. Nobody needs or wants it, but with enough moles it can become a reality.

Phones with GNU/Linux are coming (e.g. Ubuntu phones [5]), signaling a trend [6]. Even platforms which Microsoft tried to kill are coming back [7], notably WebOS (with Microsoft tax) and Tizen [8] (derived from MeeGo), not to mention Firefox OS [9,10] and Jolla’s Sailfish OS. Microsoft will try to impose inclusion of Windows (we see this in the press these days), but we must reject it and work hard against it. “I once preached peaceful coexistence with Windows,” Be’s CEO Jean-Louis Gassée once wrote. “You may laugh at my expense — I deserve it.”█

Related/contextual items from the news:

1. Nokia officially walks away from Symbian, MeeGo

   The company stops allowing developers to submit new applications or updates for the mobile operating systems.

2. So Previewing Smartphone Bloodbath Year 5: Who Is Still Left Alive

   When I started this ‘Bloodbath’ intense focus on the upcoming smartphone wars four years ago, I said the wars would bring a lot of change. Back in 2009 the world’s largest smartphone makers were very well known brands of the handset tech space such as Nokia, Blackberry, Palm, Motorola, HTC and SonyEricsson, with the upstart Apple iPhone having appeared only two years earlier. No Chinese smartphone maker was ranked in the Top 10. What happened has been dramatic, indeed the most volatile period of any global industry. Motorola and Palm died early and were sold. Ericsson quit the races leaving the partnership to Sony. Nokia was sold late last year. Blackberry is on the ropes and HTC is not faring much better. Four Chinese vendors have already crashed into the Top 10 (Huawei, Lenovo, ZTE and Yulong/Coolpad) with a fifth, Xiaomi likely to enter the Top 10 early in 2014.

3. Microsoft Updates Hyper-V Linux Integration Services

4. Is Microsoft Grasping at Straws?

   Two articles caught my attention this week and both of them came from The Verge. Both stories came out within 2 days of each other. In that they both dealt with Microsoft talking about or actually reversing previous decisions about Windows 8, I had to wonder if this was Microsoft damage control at work. It would seem so.

   It’s not just me. A lot of my friends in IT think the Windows 8 release was a disaster. Microsoft was seen as telling the computing public, “You will accept our new Windows and you will like it.”

   Uh, no they won’t.

   Early sales figures were far more than disappointing for the folks at Redmond. So disappointing in fact, that the company made public at least some intentions of making amends to their customers.

5. It Looks Like Ubuntu’s First Phone Might Be For China

6. The rise of GNU/Linux-powered mobile OSes in 2013

   There’s no such thing as a saturated market — not at least for gadgets. And in the world of gadgets, there’s one field that happens to be a hot battlefield: MOBILE OPERATING SYSTEMS.

7. LG to bring Palm’s webOS BACK FROM THE DEAD in TVs next week – report

8. First Samsung Tizen phone hits the FCC?

   Samsung’s first Tizen phone reportedly will debut at Mobile World Congress Feb. 23, and will reach consumers in Europe and Japan in the second half of 2014.

9. Run Android and Firefox OS on x86 chip with Revolution phone

   LinuxGizmos is reporting that a new phone is coming this year that will let you run Android and Firefox OS with an x86 chip.

10. New Geeksphone to run Android and Firefox OS on x86

Summary: Involvement in Linux development from the NSA and close corporate partners means that in order to restore real trust some code may need washing away (Linux-libre style)

THE news last week claimed that the US Defense Department was embracing FOSS [1,2]. We already know that it uses RHEL extensively and this may actually have strings attached to it. See, there is always aspiration to put control of the software at the hands of US corporations (and by extension bureaucrats who can compel those corporations to comply with surveillance desires); for others, there are back doors.

The other day we saw how a leading GNU/Linux vendor worked to promote and to spread UEFI ‘secure boot’, which is all about remote control (unless the signatures are maintained by the physical owner of the computer). UEFI ‘secure boot’ — like TPM — is about control by remote entities like Microsoft. Never forget that man from Microsoft (who still lives around there) manages Ubuntu now. Another man from Microsoft is now speaking on behalf of a Linux Foundation project (there are other people, but he is their manager). This really is a cause for concern because even “Linux” technologies are turning somewhat hostile towards users. When companies like Intel and IBM call the shots and when companies like Red Hat try to appease the Pentagon we just simply cannot assume that Linux will remain user-serving (as a matter of priority).

There are some news these days about Italy [3,4], Switzerland [5] and several other European nations moving to Free/Open Source software (this may include GNU/Linux) for control and autonomy, but they should keep a close eye on those who steer Linux development (and the government they lobby to oversee them amicably in particular). Yesterday when I had a discussion about this subject someone suggested embracing Hurd, but I on the other hand thought that perhaps Linux-libre should start removing NSA-sourced components (if they can be traced back to the NSA, as it is not just SELinux and some was submitted by @redhat.com addresses) and other suspicious or user-hostile code.

Even as Linux advocates we should recognise that there is a diversity of interests and the agenda of the NSA is to spy on everything and everyone, not to protect our privacy and security. █

Related/contextual items from the news:

1. Has open source officially taken off at DOD?

   As far as technology trends in the federal government go, the use of open source is on a multi-year hot streak. Alongside movements such as the cloud, open source is one of those agency options like an oasis – or perhaps a mirage — in a funding desert, promising savings and efficiencies.

2. DOD gradually embracing open source

   The Defense Department, looking for ways to cut costs and share information, is slowly but surely embracing open source software, sister publication FCW’s Amber Corrin reports.

   “The problem with proprietary solutions is the limited set of folks who can use them, rather than opening the core components to the community to drive…and just be the experts and the integrators,” Andy Goodson, program manager for Lockheed Martin’s Distributed Data Framework, told FCW. DDF is a newly open source software search engine for intelligence.

3. Italy working on a guide for comparing open and closed source software

   It’s no hidden fact that the European Union has a special love for free and open source software for all the merits these have to offer and for the huge cost savings EU’s various organizations get to make from these. In the past, several member countries have made the switch from Windows to Linux in a drive to make their systems more secure and save costs. Their governments and educational institutions have also moved on from using proprietary and expensive day-to-day software such as Microsoft Office to using OpenOffice and LibreOffice, software that get the same work done and are absolutely free. Now it is Italy’s turn to follow on the same path.

4. FOSS in the Italian public administration: fundamental law principles

   We take a first reading of the recent modification to the fundamental law that governs the digital aspects of the Public Administration in Italy. These modifications require Public Administrations to prefer internally made solutions and FOSS solutions over proprietary ones, mandate an increased degree of interoperability and strengthen the push for open data.

5. Swiss Lausanne piloting open source desktops

   Lausanne, Switzerland’s fourth-largest city, is considering a switch to open source desktop PCs. “The time has come to evaluate a migration, by launching a pilot project on 5 workstations”, the city announced on 14 November. “Free and open source software is becoming more mature, user-friendly and compatible with other environments.”

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: Why Microsoft ‘supports’ GNU/Linux (while attacking it) and why one must never rely on Microsoft products for managing UNIXy machines

Using Hyper-V hype for eternal deception, Microsoft wants people to believe that it is playing nice with the competition, but this article reveals that words are not actions:

Microsoft’s System Center platform includes a wide range of options for configuring and managing Unix and Linux systems. However, when it comes to rolling out and managing virtual machines and creating private cloud environments, there’s not much room for Unix.

The reason Microsoft has been pretending to support rivals is that those rivals are now market leaders and it is not getting easier for Microsoft because even its booster face the reality:

Maybe the PC isn’t dead, but the upgrade cycle may be at death’s door, according to an IDC analyst.

In the wake of very ugly numbers released today by market researchers IDC and Gartner, Windows 8 is getting a lot of the blame.

It deserves that. Vista 8 is a failure that even Microsoft folks admit is a failure; this is why Microsoft is now focusing on bringing Office to other platforms and wants to ‘play nice’ with Linux. It is everything to do with profit, just like the patent extortion. Without the desktop monopoly, Microsoft at the back end becomes irrelevant too.

Recalling antitrust testimonies from Microsoft’s patent troll, and writing about lack of technical edge in Microsoft products [1, 2] (today I had to explain to someone that many people use Windows definiteluynot out of choice),

Pogson says that desktops/laptops are on the decline, citing some more numbers and analyses. The end of Windows domination was long-awaited by many. We’re beyond the tipping point now. Patents are a threat right now and so is Restricted Boot, so the next two posts will deal with each in turn. █

Summary: Money from Microsoft helps influence a Linux banding of companies that need virtualisation

AS Red Hat recently hired from Microsoft for virtualisation leadership we needn’t be shocked that in a Linux Foundation article from Zemlin [1, 2], with help or a boost from New York Times blogs that label it “Corporate Style” (as if ethics can be neglected when you deal with a corporation), Red Hat et al. enter into bed with Microsoft. This is widely covered, naming both the Linux Foundation and Microsoft. “Is Microsoft influence already making itself felt at Red Hat?” This is what Will Hill thinks. It is about virtualisation:

Recently, I argued that while there’s been a lot of Software-Defined Networking (SDN) hype, it’s also real and will redefine corporate networking in the coming years. The Linux Foundation agrees and — in its OpenDaylight Project — has introduced a community-led and industry-supported open-source framework to accelerate SDN adoption, foster new innovation, and give it a more open and transparent approach.

[...]

Red Hat will be working on building and delivering an SDN solution that integrates with OpenStack and Linux’s built-in Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) hypervisor.

Microsoft hasn’t spelled out what it plans to contribute to the project yet.

For now, it provides funding and insists on making its virtualisation purely proprietary. Last year Microsoft indirectly (but more directly than before) paid the Linux Foundation as well. We has seen that before and it leads to self-censorship. █

Summary: Removing Microsoft’s “boobs” from Linux would lead to technical complications

Microsoft’s decision to put “boobs” [1, 2, 3] in the Linux kernel (in the code, not the comments) is not so easy to fix by mere revision because some older builds now technically rely on the “boobs” being inside the code:

Microsoft Azure users may have their service disrupted as the software giant tries to rectify an embarrassing line of code, which roughly translates as “Big Boobs.”

The 0x0B16B00B5 string of code has been causing blushes for Microsoft since its presence was highlighted by coder Paolo Bonzini. B16B00B5 is leet speak for ‘Big Boobs’.

However, it was Matthew Garrett, who works for open source provider Red Hat, who claimed the code could cause problems for Microsoft’s public cloud platform.

Great. So Microsoft made Linux sexism-reliant. Thanks, chauvinist Microsoft [1, 2, 3, 4], and thank you, Novell, for letting Microsoft do this. What a disgrace.

Speaking of virtualisation, notice how the Australian government helps subsidise Microsoft. As Pogson puts it:

ATO has tax-filing software that only runs on that other OS. MacOS and GNU/Linux users are out of luck but the ATO will allow them to deduct from taxes the cost of running that other OS just to run the software, a pure subsidy of M$.

STUPID! STUPID! STUPID! Australians and their government do not owe M$ a living. M$ should work for a living and Australian taxes should not go directly into M$’s coffers. Make your software a web-application that any browser on any OS can access. Get your act together, ATO.

He is right, the “$” aside. This just helps show how out of touch the world has become; it aids criminals rather than their victims, taking up public money to make up for Microsoft’s loss [1, 2, 3]. Bailout? Too big to fail? Sociopaths get all the entitlements? █

Summary: The clock is ticking on users of PlateSpin, which Novell acquired only to put to waste

OVER THE years we’ve expressed concerns about PlateSpin, whose founders and head left Novell shortly after Novell had acquired their company. There was no mention of this product from Attachmate and “the product hasn’t been updated in a while,” says this new article. To quote in context:

Novell PlateSpin Orchestrate is another multi-hypervisor management tool, and it’s been around for a long time. The product supports VMware, Xen and Hyper-V, and it can carry out various administration tasks — such as creating, starting, stopping and deleting virtual machines. Since Attachmate’s acquisition of Novell, however, PlateSpin Orchestrate’s maintenance and development status remains unclear, and the product hasn’t been updated in a while.

Here is another one who fled Novell:

Chui has more than 15 years of marketing experience in the technology space, including the leadership of an award-winning marketing team at PlateSpin, which was later acquired by Novell.

He has just moved.

Is it safe for the long run to use something from the PlateSpin brand (Novell did some rebranding for marketing reasons)? We think not and there is precedence in the news that involves Novell:

The clients were computer illiterate for the most part, and had tried to install some third-party software on their Novell server by themselves. However, the software wouldn’t run properly after being installed (most likely a permission issue), and the client called our shop to ask for help.

How likely is it that Novell customers that depend on PlateSpin will soon stay unsupported and helpless? Remember under what circumstances Novell was bought. It seemed like a liquidation move. From last week’s news we are reminded that:

Closed on Oct. 14, the fund is the fourth raised by Golden Gate, which has purchased a wide range of companies over the last 12 months, including California Pizza Kitchen and two software makers, Novell and Lawson Software.

It made no sense for Attachmate to buy Novell unless it was trying to serve some external agenda, as we explained a long time ago. Attachmate could not even afford to buy Novell, it needed financial support from the outside and it found it. █

Summary: The Novell-Microsoft agreement still helps Microsoft ‘pollute’ open stacks and tax Linux

NOVELL was obliged to give Microsoft several big gifts in exchange for money, as we have shown over the years (it is right there in the contract too). One of those gifts was the pushing of Microsoft deep into the kernel, Linux. Jos does not like to talk about it. As OpenSUSE’s community manager and a paid employee he would rather ignore all those “hard” subjects and instead talk about happy news. But the matter of fact is, just as we repeatedly showed, Microsoft used Novell to make a hook for Microsoft inside Linux and now it is using this hook to interfere with GNU/Linux domination in so-called “clouds”. Microsoft tries to shove proprietary into open after help from its slaves at Novell/SUSE, as shown by this Microsoft booster who tries to put a positive spin on it.

“Microsoft is already making a fortune from “Linux tax”, which Novell helped standardise nearly 5 years ago.”The short story is (not to entertain the booster’s own spin), some people are trying to establish an open/free stack with Linux at the centre, so Microsoft exploits the hooks Novell planted in there (as per the contract) to make this stack Microsoft- and proprietary-dependent.

Well done, Novell. Microsoft is very proud. Microsoft is already making a fortune from “Linux tax”, which Novell helped standardise nearly 5 years ago. This is the legacy of Novell — a legacy we still need to cope with before it’s eradicated for good (or Microsoft goes out of business █

Summary: Microsoft PR, along with Microsoft proponents masquerading as journalists, promote Microsoft’s latest manoeuvre whose purpose to extract money out of GNU/Linux in China

YESTERDAY we wrote about Novell's role in the Hyper-V infestation, which Novell was paid hundreds of millions to help advance. A lot of people may no longer remember how it came about, but we sure documented this over the years.

In its embrace-and-extend-like fashion, Microsoft currently uses what the now-defunct Novell helped create as a departure gift for Microsoft. Novell used to work hard for GNU/Linux tax (through SUSE) in China. But Microsoft has just announced in a press release that it will “help sell Hyper-V infused Linux distro in China,” says a Linux site. This was mostly covered by Microsoft boosters like Scott Fulton, IDG, and Mary Jo Foley who called it “legal covenant agreement” (as in patents too?). “Microsoft has signed a “legal covenant agreement” with Linux operating system provider China Standard Software Co. Ltd. (CS2C),” writes the Microsoft booster and other Microsoft proponents (e.g. Gates-funded Seattle Times which boosts Microsoft all the time) did the same thing to make it seem like Microsoft is a friend of GNU/Linux when it fact it’s working to tax GNU/Linux, thanks to the seminal work from Novell. █

Summary: More examples of the way Microsoft uses SUSE developers to put its Trojan horses inside the competition so as to grow from the inside

SEVERAL years ago and even last year we showed how Microsoft was using Novell as a back door for entering the HPC market, which is overwhelmingly dominated by GNU/Linux. Now, watch how Microsoft is using Novell’s implant for Microsoft (inside Linux) to create an unnecessary dependency on proprietary software. The whole Hyper-V nonsense that Greg K-H has been helping Microsoft advance is finding its way in a Linux-oriented market, leading to Microsoft partnerships and a drift away from software freedom. Novell has been nothing but trouble and SUSE is likely to be equally troublesome. Putting aside Microsoft’s and Novell’s Windows harmony (new YouTube videos), there is clearly some sort of attempt to embed Microsoft (and Microsoft tax) inside GNU/Linux. The question remains then, why would anybody choose SUSE over another distribution? And why would anyone attend the OpenSUSE events rather than broader scope events such as the recent one in Berlin? SUSE — like Novell — is like Microsoft inside the GNU/Linux world. It’s only serving itself. Boycott Novell and SUSE.

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: Ian Pratt and Simon Crosby quit Citrix

THIS site has been critical of Xen since 2007 for all sorts of reasons which we provided evidence to back and support. Well, Microsoft’s ally Citrix was not quite the ideal home for the project based on the fact that Xen’s leaders are quitting:

The founders of Xen.org and the former XenSource- Ian Pratt and Simon Crosby — will leave Citrix to launch a new company called Bromium that will address the “intersection of security and virtulization.”

It doesn’t look like a big rift between Xen.org and Citrix, at least on the surface. Citrix applauded the two men and their new startup on its web site yesterday and wished its former CTOs the best. And Pratt and Crosby are entreprenaurs at heart — their former company, XenSource, was acquired by Citrix in 2007.

This is what happens to companies that get close to Microsoft. KVM is favoured by the Linux Foundation now and among clients I work for it is proving to also be a good replacement for VMware (a company run by former Microsoft managers and owned by a Microsoft ally). █

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: Novell lost its identity as a “Linux vendor” and the news shows reluctance to do anything to change this

NOVELL HAS had virtually no news to tell this week, the only exception being a press release about Identity Manager 4. At this stage, Novell is just floating, waiting to be acquired (that’s what probably occupies the management right now). Based on this week’s financial news about NOVL [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16], there have been no major shifts. News about Novell was very scarce and casual mentionings of the company were made in light of historical things like Novell’s IPX:

PCs with documents to fax often “spoke” to their servers over proprietary protocols (eg: Novell’s IPX) and telephone carriers were the most common intermediary between those and other servers (and fax machines as well).

More about Novell’s past:

Microsoft on Wednesday reached a deal with New York City to supply software directly to local government but which avoids the controversial practices of earlier years.

[...]

Unbundling is a rare step for Microsoft, which has usually preferred mandatory licenses for its software whenever making a deal. The strategy helped marginalize Corel/Novell WordPerfect over the past two decades and also sparked some antitrust concerns, especially when Microsoft charged a per-computer Windows license even for systems that didn’t have Windows installed.

The Economist ponders verbing Novell like people have verbed “Google” and this one article from the Middle East says something odd:

Novell, the leader in Intelligent Workload Management (identity)…

The thing about Novell’s “Intelligent Workload Management” (not identity) is that it owns it, so it’s not the “leader” in it. Some other new articles from the Middle East cover similar grounds [1, 2]. Novell tries growing its market there. It is mostly about proprietary software though, as articles name Identity Manager 4 and WorkloadIQ. Novell has been spreading self-promotional/self-serving ‘studies’ recently and these are being used to market Fog Computing, which Novell wishes to control using proprietary software like WorkloadIQ.

Another piece of proprietary software from Novell is GroupWise and this one too received some coverage this week, even though it was very minor, e.g. [1, 2, 3, 4]. GWAVA announced a keynote speaker for GWAVACon. Additionally, “LiveTime and Novell Announce the Launch of Novell Service Desk Software” says this item:

LiveTime Software, a California-based provider of Web, Software-as-a-Service, cloud-based ITIL 3 Service Management, and Service Desk software, announced a partnership with Novell, for worldwide distribution of LiveTime as Novell Service Desk.

Novell’s marketing type Grant Ho has just had a placement at ZDNet. It’s for identity management, which Novell has a new release of [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. Novell’s identity management bags this new partner:

Arrow Enterprise Computing Solutions (ECS) has deepened its relationship with Novell by bagging distribution rights to the software vendor’s identity and security line-up.

People with history at Novell are being mentioned in some releases and articles this week, for example:

Bradford served as CEO of Fusion-io and was senior vice president of Novell. He is now chairman of Fusion-io’s board, “giving me a little more time for LDS.biz.”

Lastly, Novell was mentioned in the following couple of items (minor significance):

i. HP ExpertONE Targets Cisco Training with New Certifications

They never mention Cisco by name, but it does seem a little late to be targeting Novell CNEs as a major source of pre-trained candidates.

ii. Swicon360 set to shine as Silver sponsor at Saphila Conference

Swicon360, in association with partners Vodacom Business and Novell, will be represented as a Silver sponsor at the event, which is co-hosted by The African SAP User Group and SAP South Africa.

Up to a point this year we were publishing Novell news on a weekly basis. News about Novell has become very scarce though, so we stopped. The company is now on the verge of being no more and given its focus on proprietary software, a takeover won’t be loss to FOSS. In some ways it will help demote/eliminate a distribution which Microsoft unfairly extracts revenue from (dubbed “Ballnux”). █

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: An overview on Novell activity, intended to spare overemphasis on unimportant matters

ZENworks

• GroupLink Announces the Novell ZENworks 10 Integrated Service Desk

GroupLink Corporation, the leader in help desk, service desk, incident management and CRM solutions for Novell environments, announces the only Novell ZENworks 10 integrated service desk, everything HelpDesk. The ZENworks 10 integration adds to the current integration points of GroupWise or Exchange, eDirectory or Active Directory (LDAP), and Linux (OES2/SLES10) or Windows.

• GroupLink unveils new integrated service desk

GroupLink, a provider of help desk, service desk, incident management and CRM offerings for Novell environments, has unveiled Novell ZENworks 10 integrated service desk, an everything HelpDesk.

Virtualisation

• Small shops try virtualization for disaster recovery recovery

Gregory Rosenberg, the CEO of Red Hat value-added reseller RICIS Inc., says his smaller clients use Novell’s open source tool SUSE Studio, a kit for preconfiguring and packaging virtual machines.

• Novell PlateSpin Orchestrate Graph Rendering Component Vulnerability

• Bahrain Ministry of Social Development adopts Novell technology, reduces IT support workload by up to 60 per cent (also here)

Bahrain’s Ministry of Social Development (MOSD) has recently implemented the Novell Open Enterprise solution, which has resulted in a more stable, secure, flexible and cost-efficient IT infrastructure, while helping reduce up to 60 per cent of the Ministry’s IT support workload. Novell, the leader in Intelligent Workload Management (IWM), has likewise helped MOSD successfully streamline and automate user and desktop management within its offices, keeping skilled technicians free to focus on more important tasks.

Messaging Architects

• Messaging Architects: The Future of Novell – Better Informed Speculation

Messaging Architects: “Messaging Architects webinar to feature former Novell Canada chief Don Chapman” (page removed)

Analysis

• The Future of Novell — Better Informed Speculation: Don Chapman, Former President of Novell Canada Speaks at a Live Webinar

Mr. Chapman will discuss the decisions that led up to the current situation and what elements can be considered as almost inevitable in the short term. He will present his views on what this will probably mean for Novell clients and partners, and the options they should be considering. Time will be provided for questions.

Don Chapman served as President of Novell Canada for 11 years and is currently Advisor to Institutional Investors that track Novell.

SAP

• Novell and SAP Collaborate to Optimize Customers’ SUSE Linux-Based SAP® Application Deployments – press release (also here)

• Novell and SAP team up to make SLES for SAP

Excerpt: “Novell and SAP have released a specialised version of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, SLES for SAP Applications. Designed to ease deployment issues and reduce installation time and costs, SLES for SAP offers – an unattended installation framework to seamlessly load SAP applications onto the operating system, clustering support and a stack validated by SAP and Novell. SAP says it is committed to delivering support for its proprietary software on open source based platforms.”

• Novell, SAP Buddy Up On SUSE Linux-based SAP Apps

• Novell and SAP in Linux application alliance

• Partnership extends SAP data management to Novell users

• Novell Launches SUSE Linux for SAP

• Novell Releases SUSE Linux Optimised For SAP

• Novell Debuts Linux OS for SAP Apps

Well, this whole relationship is generally not new.

SUSE

• 2 Universities Deploy High-Density Rack Servers for Research Computing

Excerpt: “The PowerEdge C6100 is a high-density rack server with low energy requirements. It runs Intel Xeon 5600 processors running Novell or Red Hat Linux and can accommodate up to 96 GB of memory. Each node in the unit can be serviced separately from the others.

• HP tunes blades for Oracle apps

Excerpt: “Novell’s SUSE Linux Enterprise Server has not been certified on this Matrix for PeopleSoft setup because, as Crowsen puts it, no one has asked for it yet.”

• Novell: Why we don’t need a third Linux distro (relates to two SUSE items we covered before [1, 2], now we have other critiques)

Training (Novell India)

This is not belated news as we suspected last week, but it’s about India and it comes via India PRwire/Novell India.

• Novell announces new SUSE Linux Certification Programs in association with Leading Institutes and Training Partners

Excerpt: “Novell India announced their new SUSE Linux Certification Programme in conjunction with leading academic institutes and training partners.”

A Novell-certified blind woman makes the Canadian news [1, 2].

LDS

• New website aims to link LDS businesspeople

Excerpt: “A self-described social-networking junkie has launched a new website designed to help Mormons and others with similar business interests meet online.

“David Bradford, chairman and former chief executive of Fusion-io and a former Novell executive, is creator of LDS.biz, which formally debuted Tuesday but has been quietly attracting followers for several weeks.”

• LDS.Biz Launches Social Networking Site

The site was started by David Bradford, who was the former CEO of solid state disk drive firm Fusion-io, and also has been an executive at Novell.

Misc.

• Pay me now or Pay me later (John Dragoon speaks favourably about the marketing needs)

The bottom line is that, while Hurd was able to achieve some short-term goals by cutting the R&D budget at HP, the company now has to make up the loss by essentially buying innovation and they are paying top dollar. Alternative innovation investment strategies are also an interesting commentary on make versus buy and how critical innovation is as a core competence of technology companies.

Being a marketeer, I brought this back to marketing. Many organizations think that they can save money by draconian cuts to the marketing budget and, frankly, in the short term they can save money in this way. But at what cost?

• Running The Data Center

Excerpt: “Benjamin Grubin, director of solutions at Novell (www.novell.com), says containerization, virtualization, and cloud computing are three related technologies. Containerization, or the use of densely packed, highly standardized computing resources in modular containers, can potentially accelerate the shift to standardized pools of resources, Grubin says. These pools can be divided among various shifting computing duties.”

• Excom unsecured creditors owed $2.14m

Among the listed creditors are Excom in Australia, Google, Microsoft in Singapore, Novell and VMware International. The liquidators report notes these creditors may not have filed a claim in the liquidation.

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. █