To Mark Shuttleworth, CEO of Canonical — the lead commercial backer of the Ubuntu Linux distribution — squaring off against Windows is a battle worth fighting.
“The operating system is the intersection of so many things in technology,” Shuttleworth said here at Wired’s Disruptive by Design conference. “It’s where software meets technology.”
And as Shuttleworth sees it, he and others who have built their businesses around open source — Canonical provides premium, paid services around Ubuntu in addition to supporting the OS’s development — have an distinct advantage against the Microsofts of the world.
This book provides thorough knowledge of Linux TCP/IP stack and kernel framework for its network stack, including complete knowledge of design and implementation. Starting with simple client-server socket programs and progressing to complex design and implementation of TCP/IP protocol in linux, this book provides different aspects of socket programming and major TCP/IP related algorithms
Unlike the still-mythical “$100 laptop” envisioned by the nonprofit One Laptop Per Child organisation, Dell’s machine starts at $706 and includes 1GB of RAM, 80GB HDD and runs on the Ubuntu operating system. It goes on sale tomorrow through Dell’s online store.
Canonical, the commercial sponsor of the Ubuntu Linux project, is expected to announce a collaboration with Hewlett-Packard to deliver an additional high-performance server configuration for Ubuntu users.
Right now Tanenbaum can point to Minix 3 — the latest version of Minix. This has a microkernel of just 5,000 lines of code running in kernel mode — less than 0.1% of the size of the Windows kernel. Device drivers run above the kernel in user mode, each one running as a separate process and restricted to accessing only its own memory. He points out that with just 5,000 lines of code there may be fewer than 100 bugs in the kernel, which could slowly be found and eliminated. In fact there could be far fewer: he says drivers typically have between 3 and 7 times as many bugs per 1,000 lines of code as the rest of the system. By removing the drivers from kernel space the most buggy kernel code is removed.
Tanenbaum is currently embarking on a project to produce a stable and secure operating system based on a similar microkernel architecture, which he intends to design with a POSIX interface (perhaps extended with Linux system calls) so that it will run UNIX (and Linux) software “without too much effort.” (An alternative approach is to run a hypervisor in kernel mode, emulating a virtual machine running its own OS in user mode. But as operating systems are often paravirtualized to run in these virtual machines, and the hypervisor is adapted with an extensive API to provide services to the virtual machines, the distinction between a hypervisor and a microkernel becomes blurred, he says.)
When *nix OS’s were developed, systems could be a bit on the slow side. Typical networks were either 10 Mb/s or, if you were lucky, 100 Mb/s. Accessing network based file systems such as NFS and AFS could be rather slow over these networks. In response to sometimes slow access, a local caching mechanism, called CacheFS, was developed to provide local caching for distributed file systems. This mechanism caches data (either complete files or parts of files) on local storage so that data can be possibly accessed from a local storage device instead of a network based file system.
It’s been many months since I last used Puppy Linux. I bet more than a year has passed since I seriously ran Puppy, still one of the best Unix-like distributions/projects for older, underpowered computers.
I decided tonight to break out the 1999 Compaq Armada 7770dmt (233 MHz Pentium II MMX processor, 144 MB RAM), which has OpenBSD 4.2 on the 3 GB hard drive (yes, I know 4.5 is out, and yes I do have the CD set, and yes, I’ll probably reinstall) and two pup_save files in its 0.5 GB Linux partition.
Yesterday evening, on June 16th, Patrick Verner proudly announced the immediate release of Parted Magic 4.2, a Slackware-based Linux distribution that was created to help users easily partition their hard drivers or perform recovery tasks.
1. Foreword
2. Announcements
1. CentOS Pulse #0901 and centos-newsletter mailing list
3. Featured Articles
1. CentOS Artwork SIG
2. Enabling multimedia on CentOS
4. Community Threads
1. What to do when your system is 0wned ?
2. How can I view .docx files?
3. 5.3 random reboots
4. Programming language madness
5. Wiki mugshot proposal and new HomepageTemplate
5. Tip Of The Newsletter
6. Jokes and Funny Stuff
1. Always end a loop
2. “\0″
7. CentOS Errata
1. CentOS-3
2. CentOS-4
3. CentOS-5
8. CentOS in the Spotlight
9. Upcoming Events
10. Contributing to this newsletter
Last week we delivered benchmarks comparing the performance of Ubuntu 9.04 vs. Fedora 11 and found for the most part that these two incredibly popular Linux distributions had performed about the same, except for a few areas where there notable differences. However, like in the past when we have looked at Ubuntu 7.04 to 8.10 benchmarks or benchmarking the past five Linux kernels, we are now looking at the performance of Fedora over their past few releases. In this article we have a range of system benchmarks from Fedora 9, 10, 11, and the latest Rawhide packages as of this week.
Commercial Linux distributor Red Hat threw its, er, red hat into the virtualization ring back in February when it announced it was creating a standalone Enterprise Virtualization hypervisor based on KVM to compete with the likes of VMware, Microsoft, and Citrix Systems. Today, that standalone hypervisor and the tools to manage it for servers and desktops moved into beta.
A few days ago I reviewed what is in my opinion the easiest Linux distribution for Windows switchers: Linux Mint 7.0 The small group of talented people that manage this distribution is led by Clem, the “founder” of Linux Mint. Today he was kind enough to grant me an email interview as a follow up to my review.
The combination of church and OS always struck me as a touch strange, but then, I suppose I’m not really the target audience for the Ubuntu Christian or Muslim editions. Nor am I exactly who developers were looking to when they first started working on Ubuntu Satanic Edition 666.6 (Jesus’ Jugular)666.6 (Jesus’ Jugular).It’s hard to say precisely when this got out so of hand.
H/T to Omir the Storyteller for this idea, I think it’s a great one. Now I need your help. The idea that Omir had was to roll a custom Linux Live CD that does one thing; creates a proxy that Iranians can use to connect and transmit photos and words outside the influence of their government.
Mozilla’s much awaited Release Candidate of the Firefox 3.5 browser has been through several delays, but, as Webware reports, Firefox director Mike Beltzner says it will arrive this Friday. Beltzner also says the final release of Firefox 3.5 will come out before the end of the month. If you haven’t been using the beta versions of the the browser, it’s much faster, and has more than 5,000 new features. Mozilla is also pointing out some articles and video demos that show off the new features.
Open source content management software applications have really blossomed in recent years, and I’ve written before about how a lot of companies and online publications are bound to switch to them, instead of expensive proprietary alternatives. Today, there is an updated version 4.1 of Magnolia available for download, and the long-standing open source content management platform now has pre-built templates that aim to make it easier for companies to share and publish everything from event calendars, to glossaries, to online forums.
Yesterday I popped into part of the London Open Source Forum. This was a laudable effort organised by Red Hat in conjunction with some of its partners to corrupt young and innocent minds – well, senior managers, at least – and convince them about the immanent wonderfulness of open source. To that end, they wheeled out some of the big names in the enterprise free software world like Matt Asay, Simon Phipps and Jan Wildeboer.
Time and again, then, this “Digital Britain” report betrays the fact that the government, its advisers and – most of all – the media industry lobby – are intent on locking down behaviour according to analogue norms. You can upgrade your broadband infrastructure until you are blue in the face, but if you are still trying to run it as if its payload were atoms, you’re doomed to failure.
The open source movement gave rise to Linux and spawned a generation of collaborative coders. Now it’s extending its reach to the hardware industry.
Open source hardware is designed to be reprogrammed or physically modified to make it easy to install custom firmware and software to create entirely new products. The big idea: crowdsourcing hardware development will encourage innovation in unforeseen ways, much like how Creative Commons licenses have enabled artists to remix existing content to create new works.
A couple of years ago, I posted a blog noting the complementarity between Wikipedia (which excludes original research from its scope, but strongly encourages citation of original sources), and open access journals which publish original research which Wikipedia authors can easily cite, and which Wikipedia readers can reliably follow links to gain access to.
If you haven’t heard the words “smart grid” before, that’s likely to change soon. That’s especially so if you live in the U.S., where billions of dollars in incentive spending is pouring into making the smart grid a reality. As you might expect, since I’m talking about it here, the smart grid will rely on standards to become real. A whole lot of standards, in fact, and that’s a problem
An employee of Google has expressed himself regarding the disadvantages of OGG Theora in comparison with H.264 in a discussion on the mailing list of the web hypertext application technology working group.
Two days ago we posted a comparison by Greg Maxwell of low and medium resolution YouTube videos vs. Theora counterparts at the same bit rates. The result in that test was that Theora did much better at the low bit rate and more or less the same at the slightly higher bit rate. The conclusion being that Theora is perfectly appropriate for a site like YouTube.
I think that Theora+Vorbis absolutely trounces H.263+MP3 and I don’t think there’s even a question of which kind of artifacts you prefer. Theora+Vorbis is just plain better than the majority of what YouTube and many other Flash video sites have been serving to users for years.
The new Virginia-based group “Citizens for a Safe Alexandria” describes itself as a grassroots group, but its founder works for a public relations firm that specializes in “‘grassroots’ and ‘grasstops’ media strategies.
Via Slashdot we learn that Germany is the latest country to consider a censorship regime that would create a blacklist of sites that ISPs would be required to block. As with most such things, the official claim is that this would be to block out child porn. Of course, this is a head-in-the-sand approach to fighting child porn. It’s about trying to pretend it’s not there, rather than tracking down those actually responsible
Germany is on the verge of censoring its Internet: The government – a grand coalition between the German social democrats and conservative party – seems united in its decision: On Thursday the parliament is to vote on the erection of an internet censorship architecture.
Germany’s main political parties have agreed the text of legislation designed to enshrine the blocking of selected internet sites in law.
Critics of the plan insist that take down would be more effective – and express concerns that however well-intentioned a block list, it would forever be open to abuse by the state.
While there are certainly many problematic US laws, the fact that our court system recognizes and values the right to anonymous posting as a First Amendment issue is something that’s quite wonderful. Tragically, very few other countries view things the same way.
After years of promising the feature, the finalization of the AACS licensing agreement brings managed copy to Blu-ray discs as early as Q1’10. But “managed copy” seems a day late and a dollar short.
In a new brief, the EFF alleges that in order to get around wiretapping’s “probable cause” requirements, the DOJ ordered a suspect’s ISP to start accumulating his emails so that they could later come in and use the Stored Communications Act to subpoena the archive.
So, the recording industry has been lobbying hard in any country that carves out an exception for private copying, trying to make it illegal. Unfortunately, it appears they’ve won in Japan. A new copyright law has been passed that specifically says that private, non-commercial copying is infringing (via Cybeardjm).
On Monday, however, some of our readers noted that the NY Times had “updated” or “corrected” its story. However, the really amazing thing? Even after realizing that it got the story wrong, it still hasn’t gotten the story right. Instead, they changed the first sentence from: “A Swedish court has denied the appeal of four men convicted of violating copyright law…. ” into “A Swedish court has said that the judge who presided over the case of four men convicted of violating copyright law for their involvement in the Pirate Bay, an Internet file-sharing service, was not biased against them.”
A Swedish court has said that the judge who presided over the case of four men convicted of violating copyright law for their involvement in the Pirate Bay, an Internet file-sharing service, was not biased against them, The Hollywood Reporter said. In April a court in Stockholm ruled that Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg and Peter Sunde, the three founders of the site, as well as Carl Lundstrom, who provided financing for it, had aided acts of copyright infringement.
In practice, most pre-20th century in-copyright materials are considered “ophan works” – items where the current copyright owners are impossible to identify, or trace. However orphan work status may also apply to more recently published works. The British Library, for example estimates that 40% of in-copyright works are orphan works.
The Sarkozy government will implement a law aimed at promoting legal online downloading in the coming months despite being prevented from cutting off the internet access of alleged three-time offenders, according to official sources. Meanwhile, the government has already begun preparing a new law that would restore penalties this time decided by a judge rather than by the newly created HADOPI commission. This would conform to a constitutional ruling on the HADOPI law.
The New Zealand government is still working hard — on behalf of the corporate movie and music cartels. And at taxpayer expense.
It’s trying to find another way to implement the now thoroughly sullied Three Strikes plan, the fact French efforts have just been shot down in flames notwithstanding.
We’ve pointed out in the past how ridiculous it is to have “collections societies” for music, which basically act as big bureaucracies for taxing any kind of music usage. These societies — both the for-profit and non-profit ones — have pretty much one goal and one goal only: to increase how much money they get. So when you hear about new schemes, like Choruss, to set up a new such collection society, you know it’s just a blatant money grab, rather than allowing for real business models to be developed. We’ve seen this all over the world, with SoundExchange
Summary: Microsoft’s future to revolve around licensing and litigation based on the latest observations
THIS is a quick report on the lesser-explored side of Microsoft — the one which FOSS-oriented Web sites tend to neglect or ignore, which is not a smart thing to do.
Microsoft on the Defence
Today’s report starts with this regret from Microsoft over the decision that costs them hundreds of millions (for a single lawsuit).
TO Microsoft, a $US368 million jury loss in California over its Outlook software provides an opportunity to argue in a federal appeals court that there should be greater limits on patent trial damage awards.
Microsoft Corp. argued before an appeals court yesterday that its Outlook calendar date-picker tool did not infringe an Alcatel-Lucent patent and asked for a US$358-million jury verdict to be overturned.
Well, meanwhile, Microsoft got sued again. The nature of the infringement? Dynamic Web page generation.
A case started in a Texas district court at the end of May 2009, with Microsoft being sued for allegedly breaching two patents.
Parallel Networks filed suit late last week in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas over two patents, United States Patent Nos. 5,894,554 and 6,415,335 B1. The company was granted the patents in 1999 and 2002, respectively, according to the court filing.
VirnetX Holding Corporation (NYSE Amex: VHC), a secure real-time communications and collaboration technology company, today announced that it has hired the law firm of McKool Smith to lead its ongoing litigation efforts in its patent infringement suit against Microsoft Corporation.
The suit against Microsoft was filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Tyler Division on February 15, 2007. In the suit VirnetX claims Microsoft infringes on three of its patents and seeks both damages and injunctive relief. In June 2008, Microsoft’s Motion to Dismiss was denied while VirnetX’s subsequent motion to amend infringement contentions was granted. On February 17, 2009, a “Markman” hearing on claim construction was conducted and the Company is currently awaiting the Court’s order.
theodp writes “Microsoft may have been a Johnny-come-lately when it comes to parallel programming, but that’s not stopping the software giant from trying to patent it. This week, the USPTO revealed that Microsoft has three additional parallel-processing patents pending — 1. Partitioning and Repartitioning for Data Parallel Operations, 2. Data Parallel Searching, and 3. Data Parallel Production and Consumption. Informing the USPTO that ‘Software programs have been written to run sequentially since the beginning days of software development,’ Microsoft adds there’s been a ‘[recent] shift away from sequential execution toward parallel execution.’ Before they grant the patents, let’s hope the USPTO gets a second opinion on the novelty of Microsoft’s parallel-processing patent claims.”
Architecture for providing feedback to a viewer and/or contributor on fashion and other personal appearance decisions that the contributor desires. The contributor uploads self images for viewing and rating (or voting) by viewers who choose provide an opinion on different fashion and/or cosmetic looks of the contributor. The contributor takes images show the contributor presented with a number (e.g., two) of different fashion choices. The snapshots can then be processed for upload to a website or other accessible location by one or more viewers. The viewers can cast a vote for one of the images by selecting the desired image, in response to which the viewer and/or contributor will be presented with overall statistics for that set of images as to how other viewers voted, as well as a next set of photos depicting the user in a different fashion and/or cosmetic choice. This process can continue until terminated.
Could Microsoft’s ability to produce intellectual property be the company’s future salvation? A few weeks ago I complained that Microsoft wasn’t innovating. Yet the book Burning the Ships talks of Microsoft’s burgeoning intellectual property treasure chest. How can both be true?
Microsoft’s future seems to be very much hinged and reliant on intellectual monopolies that already cause unrest. Microsoft thinks of a business transition, but alas, this is unlikely to prove successful. █
“Dear Commissioner: Along with many other computer scientists, I would like to ask you to reconsider the current policy of giving patents for computational processes.
“There are far better ways to protect the intellectual property rights of software developers than to take away their right to use fundamental building blocks.
“I find a considerable anxiety throughout the community of practicing computer scientists that decisions by the patent courts and the Patent and Trademark Office are making life much more difficult for programmers. ”
It’s not just about the profits of the pharmaceutical industry. The proposed alternative to pharmaceutical patents starts from the fact that the big pharmaceutical companies officially admit they only spend 15% of their revenues on research, to suggest that the governments could take 20% of what they currently spend on drugs (which is a lot of money!) and allocate it to pharmaceutical research, with the results free to anyone. However, the Pirate Party is the only political party to have asserted that all kind of patents have to be abolished, not only the pharmaceutical patents and the software patents!
In the same way, the Pirate Party opposes patents — especially in software, but also in other areas.
“All patents, at their base, are innovation inhibitors,” he maintains. “Patents delayed the industrial revolution by thirty years. They delayed the advent of the North American avionics industry by another thirty years, until the first world war broke out, and the US government confiscated the patents. It delayed radio for five years.” Today, he suggests, advances in electric cars and eco-friendly infrastructure are similarly blocked by patents.
Call him Dr. No. Locked in a bitter dispute over how he can use the fruits of his research, Bob Shafer is asking the same question the courts are now grappling with: Just what can be patented, anyway?
Our genes might be practically open to discovery, there’s very little physically I can do to prevent you from acquiring my genes and unraveling my genetic code. But that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be disturbing or unethical if you did this. The knowledge you could get about me, and use against me, is just too potentially disruptive to decide that we are not somehow each custodians, and maybe even more properly guardians, of our individual genetic data.
At the same time, the genome we share cannot be cordoned off. To the degree that our genetic information is mostly the same, we should all have access to it. No one should be able to claim that if we want to peek around, learn some more, and do some studies on this common genetic code, we somehow have to pay for this. Our “common genetic heritage” is, I argue, an actual commons like the sky, sunlight, or international waters. We should treat it as such.
Last night the House voted overwhelmingly to establish new U.S. policy that will oppose any global climate change treaty that weakens the IP rights of American “green technology.”
Staggering. Sickening. Suicidal. (Via Against Monopoly.)
Intellectual “property” (IP) is a sleeper issue. It seems uncontroversial: Someone invents or writes something and therefore owns it. What could be plainer? But IP contains the power to destroy liberty.
IP isn’t merely about rock bands preventing kids from sharing MP3s over the Internet. (See “Weird Al” Yankovic’s musical commentary, “Don’t Download This Song,” here.) It’s about crusty incumbent firms trying to preserve market share by stifling competition, domestically and in the developing world.
We’ve discussed the difference between “invention” (doing something new) and “innovation” (finding a new successful market) before, and it’s resulted in some long and occasionally contentious discussions. Fred Wilson put up a post recently where he looked at a series of product “success” stories, and tried to figure out what was the key to success. In each one, he noted that the product enabled people to do stuff in a different way — but one of the key findings, was that they all had something else in common: being drop dead simple, leading to much greater adoption
Since the launch of the Wii, Nintendo has been the subject of no fewer than 15 patent-related lawsuits. While many of those suits are still winding their way through the courts, Nintendo on Thursday issued a statement touting victory over Guardian Media Technologies in one of the more recent patent suits.
Summary: Both independent people and businesses call for the end of illegal procurement deals with Microsoft
YESTERDAY WE published an essay that explains how Microsoft built an ecosystem that rejects anything but Microsoft (and/or its ecosystem). Such is the case in most countries, but the level of this corruption (e.g. illegal procurement) depends on the country. The press gave a lot of coverage to the Switzerland example, but there is actually more than one story over there. Here is an update about the first:
The Swiss Open Systems User Group and the canton of Berne treasurer’s office have reached a rapprochement. The open source advocacy group had criticised the fact that a contract for revamping the canton’s 14,000 workstations was awarded to Microsoft without a tendering process. Although the canton is insisting that the contract should stand, the Swiss Open Systems User Group has decided not to pursue the case in the courts.
This is separate from another case in Switzerland, namely:
In a similar case, also in Switzerland, a group of open source companies including Red Hat, Univention and Collax recently brought an action against the Swiss Federal Office for Buildings and Logistics (BBL).
More on the latter situation in Switzerland can be found in our prior posts:
The UK is still a laggard at open source, even though the recession has increased pressure for its adoption, according to speakers at a London conference.
“I could go to Mali, and Mali would probably have a better adoption of open source than the UK,” said Matt Asay, marketing vice president at Alfresco and open source blogger at CNet. “The UK tends to be a laggard compared to just about every other country on the planet.”
The UK government’s decision to promote open source in public sector IT won kudos, but was behind countries like the Netherlands, which has had a strong public sector IT policy for two years now, according to Jan Wildeboer, open source evangelist at Red Hat.
More information on the situation in the UK may be found in previous posts that include:
With increased awareness comes increased public support. People stand up and demand software that respects their wallets, if not their freedom and regional independence too. Fewer people are made conscious of that latter factor. The BBC has a decent documentary (a 3-hour show titled “The Trap”) about people’s inability to grasp the real meaning of freedom. Without losing it, people cannot properly understand it and instead they are told about freedom of choice (limited choice) or freedom as in “no cost”. █
“Open source is an intellectual-property destroyer [...] I can’t imagine something that could be worse than this for the software business and the intellectual-property business. I’m an American; I believe in the American way, I worry if the government encourages open source, and I don’t think we’ve done enough education of policymakers to understand the threat.”
–Jim Allchin, President of Platforms & Services Division at Microsoft
I’m not a .net developer, I don’t need this. The second statement I though was very presumptuous (to say the least). Mono is their “gift to the world” and positioned to be the leading choice for Linux application developers? I’m not a developer, and (laughing) I’m not a gift to planet earth (although I like to think I am at times), but I suspect these statements are somewhat boasting in nature? However, personal thought aside. Score 1 for the “Nos”, I’m not a .net developer, nor a Linux developer, so I don’t need this.
The force which pushes the hardest for more and more of Mono in Ubuntu is currently a Ubuntu MOTU and Debian packager. The argument here is not over the inclusion of Mono; it’s its inclusion by default. What is this urge to spread Mono further and more widely? Mono helps Microsoft because there is factual evidence to show this [1, 2, 3]. As Oiaohm puts it, “Mono cannot run all .NET applications due to native .NET applications able to do native calls. So Mono has to run in Wine to support some applications. Nice way to create something you can demo as failing on Linux really.” █
“As many of you may know, we’ve actually kind of broadened the product portfolio of Visual Studio, targeting all the way from the low end with students and hobbyists, kind of competitive in that Linux space, making sure that every developer has a copy of .NET and is trained in writing .NET solutions. [...] I think it will really help us in our competition with open source.”
“Analysts sell out – that’s their business model… But they are very concerned that they never look like they are selling out, so that makes them very prickly to work with.”
Summary: Forrester’s FOSS-hostile survey leaves many questions unanswered
LIKE ALL businesses, Forrester is being paid by clients for a service, e.g. in order to support some of their claims. It’s better if an argument comes from a supposedly “expert” and/or “independent” source, according to Microsoft[PDF]. As we mentioned some days ago, Forrester was previously paid by Microsoft to publicly smear GNU/Linux. Forrester analysts make a living this way. Right now they are attacking Free software using the “security” myth and Jack Wallen rightly doesn’t buy it. He raises some of the typical concerns — loopholes for well-designed deception. These are textbook examples.
Let me break it down for you. In two reports done by Forrester (”The State of SMB Software: 2009 and “The State of Enterprise Software: 2009.”) of the 2,227 people polled…
[....]
I would like to ask both Forrester and those polled a few questions myself. To Forrester I would ask you:
1. “Who is funding these surveys?”
2. “Do you know anything enough about open source yourself to actually create a fair poll?
3. What’s with the large change between enterprise and SMB in the “very concerned” category?
To those polled I would like to ask:
1. “Have you ever tried open source software?”
2. “How’s the security of your closed-source apps working out for you?”
Another concern, which Wallen leaves out unfortunately, is the bias of the studied population. It is being selected rather than voluntarily invited. Microsoft was previously caught commissioning IDC to ask Microsoft customers about GNU/Linux and then pretend that their views are representative of the population as a whole (see the 5-part Analysts Cartel series [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] as well as some other examples of corrupted analysts like IDC and Gartner getting exposed [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]). Wallen shrewdly points out that push-polling could easily be applied here. Microsoft does this all the time, e.g. against Google and in favour of the patent deal with Novell. The Microsoft-corrupted ISO did the same thing after verysheercorruption had led to formal complaints from several national bodies.
Whether Microsoft directly sponsored this latest survey from Forrester, it may be extremely hard to tell. Microsoft need not even pay for it directly if it is treated as a favour for which a reward will be granted at a later date. We have concrete examples of that. These are different degrees of bribery and the level of depth makes it profoundly harder to find the culprit. It’s analogous to money laundering and it may related to the previous post about SCO receiving funds despite having no business prospects.
Citrix, which also owns Xen, the virtualization company, has long-standing links with Microsoft such that open source advocates routinely think of it as being in Microsoft’s orbit. (The illustration above, from Bob Warfield’s Smoothspan blog, illustrates this keiretsu concept in terms of cloud computing.)
The Citrix-Vyatta link, discussed here by Dan Kusnetsky (who also has the good sense to partner with our own Paula Rooney) is a second-order link. That is, Microsoft links to Citrix links to Vyatta. (A litle like Bacon’s own relation to Hitler, as seen on The Daily Show.)
This time, as always, it is highly important to follow the money. █
“They [Microsoft] have the deepest of pockets, unlimited ambition, and they are willing to lose money for years and years just to make sure that you don’t make any money, either. And they are mean, REALLY mean.”
Summary: The SCO saga is not over yet, as further delays are caused by mysterious funding
A few days ago we warned that groups with connections to Microsoft were getting close to SCO just before liquidation seemed unstoppable and imminent. Some time yesterday we began finding articles which confirm not a transaction being made but a deal being signed in the 90th minute. SJVN writes:
We don’t know who’s behind this latest SCO buyout craziness, but it seems a safe bet that at the bottom of it all we’ll find friends of Microsoft. There’s simply no sane business reason to keep SCO’s anti-Linux litigation in play except to spread a little anti-Linux FUD, and Microsoft is the only company that has any real interest in seeing that happen.
Immediately before the crucial liquidation hearing in the bankruptcy court, SCO CEO Darl McBride signed an agreement with a company by the name of Gulf Capital Partners, backed by well-known investor Stephen Norris. Caught out by the surprise development, all parties have agreed to postpone the liquidation hearing until the 16th or the 27th of July.
So, the bottom line of the day is that the proposed sale to Gulf-Cap-whatever-their-name-really-turns-out-to-be (see previous article) will have a hearing on July 16, as Webster earlier reported. So we will no doubt get to see the proposed agreement filed, and then objections, the usual song and dance. So, bottom line? Delay, delay, delay. It’s too bad SCO can’t package it up and sell delay. They’d make a fortune. It is what they are best at, I’d say.
As it stands, everything remains up in the air — the proposed sale is by no means final, and if it is like any of the others, is likely nothing more than a delaying tactic. If the judge has any sense about him, when and if this deal falls through like all the rest, he’ll wake up and finally start sanctioning SCO for treating the Bankruptcy Code like kindling. If it falls through by next month’s hearing, SCO will need a miracle even Satan couldn’t help them get to avoid conversion into a Chapter 7 — once the Chapter 7 trustee gets his hands on them, they’ll find themselves sold off faster than $5 Ferraris. By the time it finally happens, that champagne we all put away in 2002 will be just about right.
According to this, SCO is not guaranteed an extended lifetime. Better answers will have arrived by the end of this month however. █
“[Microsoft's] Mr. Emerson and I discussed a variety of investment structures wherein Microsoft would ‘backstop,’ or guarantee in some way, BayStar’s investment…. Microsoft assured me that it would in some way guarantee BayStar’s investment in SCO.”
“Now [Novell is] little better than a branch of Microsoft”
–LinuxToday Managing Editor
Summary: Novell is poaching Free GNU/Linux users, not Windows users
NOVELL’S actions speak louder than its words, which are pretty clear too. Novell tries to replace GNU/Linux with Microsoft patent coupons and here is the latest evidence.
Arrow Enterprise Computing Solutions is now a Novell Authorized Training Partner in North America. The move comes as Novell strives to migrate Red Hat Enterprise Linux customers to Novell SUSE Linux.
This article is about Novell trying to steal Red Hat customers rather than Microsoft customers. The methods are nasty. “People that use Red Hat, at least with respect to our intellectual property, in a sense have an obligation to compensate us,” said Steve Ballmer. Since when is Mr. Ballmer Novell’s spokesperson? Prior to this remark he praised Novell. See the video at the bottom. █
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