10.24.08
Citrix, Microsoft and Novell Come Together
A lesson in buying out one’s competition
NOVELL, Microsoft and Citrix are still working to elevate Windows Server or the Microsoft-taxed GNU/Ballnux [1, 2, 3, 4] (only as a guest machine) while excluding or demoting others. None of this has changed since the last time it was covered, but this article from The Register provides some more evidence.
Part of it says: “Now that Microsoft has Windows Server 2008 and its Hyper-V hypervisor in the field, it won’t be long before Scalent has to deliver support. Hyper-V is running in the labs now, but as a startup, Scalent has to limit its production products to the ones customers will pay for. “Hyper-V support is inevitable,” says Epstein. The Xen hypervisors inside Novell’s SUSE Linux and Red Hat’s Enterprise Linux, which are compatible with V/OE as is the free-standing XenServer hypervisor from Citrix Systems. Thanks to a partnership between XenSource, the original creator of Xen and now part of Citrix, and Microsoft, Hyper-V is Xen-compatible, which means Hyper-V support should not be that big of a deal to deliver.”
In summary, Microsoft needed to capture Xen [1, 2, 3] and Novell only to use them to sell Windows Server and hurt GNU/Linux competitors — a pressuring tactic whose Grand Aim is software patent tax. Red Hat has already escaped this relationship by acquiring the company behind KVM and Ubuntu too has moved to KVM. They can't rely on Citrix, Microsoft’s digital spouse. █
“Novell pays us some money for the right to tell customers that anybody who uses SuSE Linux is appropriately covered.”
–Steve Ballmer
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