02.27.08
Posted in News Roundup at 2:27 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
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Posted in GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Novell, Red Hat, Ubuntu, Virtualisation, Windows, Xen at 11:53 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Live and learn. What we have said all along (and from the very start in fact) continues to turn into reality. Microsoft hijacked XenSource (and Xen) by proxy. It’s repulsively anti-competitive, but all one can do here is learn in order to prevent recurrence. From this news article:
Xen may have become the de facto virtualization platform for Linux, but, ironically, don’t expect to see Citrix applications running natively on Linux any time soon.
“It’s market driven and we never got the uptake on Linux,” Willis said. “Our focus for XenApp (formerly Presentation Server) is as a Windows application which we recommend customers run on bare metal for performance reasons.”
Willis said Citrix has partnered with Microsoft to develop Linux extensions for its Hyper-V platform.
Yes, that’s how Microsoft intends to beat ‘evil’ VMWare. It wants to just buy VMWare’s competitors, then leverage a Windows monopoly.
“Like XenSource, Microsoft along its ecosystem will have Novell used against other competitors like Red Hat and Canonical.”Ubuntu recently moved to KVM by the way, proving that it’s good not to have all eggs in a single basket.
Amid these events recall our somewhat prophetic post: Choosing Novell for Your Business is Like Choosing XenSoft (sic)
Boycott Novell. Things will change for Novell as time goes by and it’s not just because of Mono. Like XenSource, Microsoft along its ecosystem will have Novell used against other competitors like Red Hat and Canonical. █
Update: see this response from Katherine Egbert. For a change, this time she may be right.
Shares of infrastructure technology developer Citrix Systems Inc. fell Tuesday after an analyst cut estimates on a virtualization software product, citing a delay in revenue recognition, among other factors.
The stock lost 81 cents, or 2.4 percent, to $33.48 in midday trading.
Jefferies & Co. analyst Katherine Egbert lowered her outlook on the XenSource line, saying it should take longer than initially expected to recognize revenue for original equipment manufacturers, or OEMs, and that an agreement with IBM will likely not come until later this year.
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Posted in Antitrust, Europe, Fraud, Microsoft, Open XML at 11:10 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
"Evangelizing tiered Web is WAR?"
Comcast is linked to Microsoft as we have shown a month ago. The FCC is not a party to be trusted, either.
As such, you may wish to know about this latest incident of rigging that involves the FFC and Comcast. We have already warned about this.
Wireless watchers are still waiting for the final results of the The Great American Wireless Auction, but that hasn’t stopped at least one US Senator from dubbing the FCC’s $20bn bid-off “a disaster”.
If this sounds familiar, then it really ought to. More information can be found in the article “Comcast stacked Net Neutrality meeting”. And in light of what a US Senator has just called “a disaster” you might also wish to know that the Danes strike back at what they perceive as injustice and abuse favouring Microsoft.
Danish Unix User Group Files Complaint With EU Commission Against Denmark For Mandating MSOOXML
The Danish Unix User Group, DKUUG, has filed a formal complaint with the EU Commission regarding Denmark’s mandating ECMA 376, better known by us as MSOOXML, for certain procurements.
The complaint [PDF] is grounded in breach of the EC Treaty article 81 on unfair competition. The press release says that the regulation “can be seen as an attempt to continue the de facto monopoly of Microsoft in the Danish state on office software, as the various public agencies and institutions need to buy the products of Microsoft to comply to the regulation.”
We’ve gone through our archives and collected relevant information that was posted here in the past (about OOXML in Denmark). DKUUG might find some of the links valuable. They are appended below.
OOXML in Denmark: Additional Resources
Posts of interest:
Other posts:
For a more complete list that includes minor observations, look here.
For the curious. other complaints or lawsuits are likely to be filed over Microsoft's OOXML abuses (followup/update here). Don’t let them get away. █
“Microsoft boss Bill Gates threatened to kill 800 Danish jobs if Denmark opposed the European Computer Implemented Inventions Directive, reports today’s Danish financial daily Børsen, quoted by NoSoftwarePatents.com”
–P2PNet
Update: A reader has asked that we add the following.
“Maybe these three can be woven together“:
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080226164131724
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/02/28/gartner-warns-microsoft-patent
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/15/1334248&tid=109
“One of the worst problems in dealing with the Microsoft movement is the amnesia in the media, and the populace. The corruption is not new and not isolated to Microsoft attack on ISO.”
Mind the fact that past events in Denmark are woven here with recent events that may reveal Microsoft’s long-term intentions.
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Posted in CDDL, Database, Free/Libre Software, GPL, Microsoft, SUN at 10:32 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
[Important correction: mind the comments. Changes to the business plan, if any, were made before the acquisition.]
We have recently seen a good share of criticisms of Sun Microsystems, but they probably deserve trust (or the benefit of the doubt) where they have not caused any harm. Here is an interesting new observation which is made by Matt Aslett now that the acquisition of MySQL has been finalised:
Sun limits MySQL Enterprise Unlimited
[...]
A little less loudly the company has also confirmed that it has tinkered with the terms of MySQL Enterprise Unlimited, the site-wide agreement introduced in January last year that provided unlimited use of MySQL Enterprise for $40,000, the same price Oracle charges per CPU for Oracle Database Enterprise Edition.
MySQL Enterprise Unlimited is proof of the open source model’s ability to disrupt a market but also effectively places a cap on the revenue MySQL – and now Sun – can earn per customer. Or at least it used to. As the small print on Sun’s MySQL product page indicates, while Enterprise Unlimited still allows for adoption on any number of servers, the offer is now only available to companies with 400 employees or less.
Limits are not a nice thing. It’s a little concerning in light of this other news about Sun’s plan to acquire more companies (it recently snatched Innotek, but the acquisition seems benign so far).
Sun Microsystems said Tuesday that it has completed its acquisition of open-source database company MySQL for about $1 billion–and now is turning its attention to other acquisitions.
It does not say if these acquisitions will involve open source or not. And in any event, Microsoft has similar plans, based on what Steve Ballmer said back in October.
This is not a case of complaining about Sun, but it is important that we know what business model Sun intends to adopt for MySQL or open source in general (dreadful dual-licensing with CDDL comes to mind).
I’ve asked Simon Phipps (in his blog) to comment on this one. If I receive a response, I’ll share it here. █
Update: to Sun’s credit, according to the second article, “MySQL is governed by version 2 of the General Public License (GPL) since 2000, but the company likely will move to GPLv3, Mickos said.” That is truly a change because about a year ago, Mickos told Matt Aslett that he would stick with GPLv2. Well done, Sun.
Update #2: Here is the response to my question to Simon Phipps:
“I’m expecting Mårten to adjust all of MySQL’s business practices now they are part of Sun, without harming any established loyalties (so everyone is saying GNU/Linux is the priority for MySQL for example).
In this case it seems that they want the “Unlimited” plan to be aimed at small (presumably growing) business and are leaving room for a new plan for the sort of enterprises Sun deals with. What’s the concern? I don’t see an obvious Free software issue (but then again the coffee hasn’t cut in yet this morning).“
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Posted in Antitrust, Europe, Law, Microsoft, Patents, Servers, Windows at 10:10 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Feelin’ the heat again…
Okay, so we pretty much knew about this a couple of days ago, but here it is officially: [Pointer from "CoolGuy"]
European antitrust regulators on Wednesday fined Microsoft $1.3 billion for failing to comply with a 2004 judgment that the company had abused its market dominance.
The new fine by the European Commission brings the total fines levied on Microsoft to about $2.5 billion in current exchange rates.
If you think that’s bad, consider Microsoft's financial woes and be aware that it has just had a wound reopened — a fairly major patent lawsuit, whose target was Microsoft’s cash cow.
A federal court which hears patent appeals told a lower court on Tuesday to reconsider damages that Microsoft must pay a Guatemalan inventor for infringing his software in its popular Office Suite.
Despite the release of Server 2008 (which itself is bound to become a Vista-like disappointment, based on reports), this will be remembered as an appalling day for Microsoft, especially in the legal department. █
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Posted in Deception, Europe, Free/Libre Software, Microsoft at 9:51 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
…and it didn’t even ask anybody else for approval of the new definition
A reader has just asked us to re-emphasise a very important point that was alluded to before. Having entered the OSI back in October, Microsoft has been attempting to break the spirit not only of the GPL, but that of “Open Source” (as perceived by the OSI) as well, using their enormous marketing and publication power.
“It was not open source at all. Microsoft pitched to the press something altogether different.”The mainstream press proudly spoke about Microsoft “opening up to open source” (never mind the reality), but what is it that Microsoft called “open source” anyway? Guess what? It was not open source at all. Microsoft pitched to the press something altogether different.
Moments ago, the Office Open - OpenOffice confusion was discussed, following other recent posts that illustrate this self-serving confusion (serving Microsoft, of course). It was a good squeal to yesterday’s post about Microsoft’s redefinition of "cross platform" (not “multi-platform” or “dual-platform”), among many other things.
Our reader tells us that “Microsoft officially redefined OpenSource.” He point to this page and adds: “Predictable, but *DONE*.”
To quote the remainder of the followup message:
…You don’t stress the point that they [Microsoft] *ARE* redefining it.
We have merely jumped from reading between the lines to it getting written explicitly by Microsoft!
This point may escape many while reading your post. Actually, only a few comments reflected that.
Glyn Moody foresaw this. He pointed out early attempts to achieve this when Microsoft signed a horrible agreement with the EU, so it’s worth looking back at what we posted at the time [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12]. █
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Posted in News Roundup at 8:56 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
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Posted in Free/Libre Software, GNOME, Mono, Novell at 6:16 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
It was a few months ago that Miguel de Icaza spoke abut the possibility of Mono extensions for Evolution. Consider the following an important update from him:
“Update: Jeff wrote an add-in for MonoDevelop to do Evolution plugins in C#.”
It seems like the gradual evolution of GNOME. The issue here is that it’s a route to dependency where a crucial application (already used by many) is involved. People become ‘hooked’ on plugins.
See this hours-old post for more information about our concern. Evolution is Free software. Let’s not turn into to Fee software. █
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