Category Archives: [FOS]

On (some of) the press coverage of the MS alliance

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(1) Free Software Foundation Attorney Says Microsoft-Novell Deal Won’t Last

Eben Moglen (who, I just found out, clerked for Thurgood Marshall) says that the patent parts of the deal ‘will be “dead” before April.’ That’s because Moglen is chairing the GPL v3 revision process and will try to make sure that they cover the patent provisions in the alliance.

(2) Ballmer: “Linux infringes on Microsoft’s intellectual property”

To quote from the Computerworld article:

In a question-and-answer session after his keynote speech at the Professional Association for SQL Server (PASS) conference in Seattle, Ballmer said Microsoft was motivated to sign a deal with SUSE Linux distributor Novell Inc. earlier this month because Linux “uses our intellectual property” and Microsoft wanted to “get the appropriate economic return for our shareholders from our innovation.”

(3) Bill Hilf Interview

Very good video interview with Bill Hilf, who runs Microsoft’s interoperability initiatives (his title is “general manager for competitive strategy.”) This was filmed before the alliance deal, but it gives good insight into Microsoft’s public positioning vis a vis open source: namely, that they need to interoperate.

Oracle’s Unbreakable Linux Annoucement

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So Oracle is going to support Red Hat, not Ubuntu as the gossip had been.  It doesn’t seem like they’re going to offer a packaged solution, at least not yet, one that includes the operating system with the database, so you still have to get the distribution from Red Hat (without the support) and install it as usual.  Except now patches and support come from Oracle.  Matt Asay points to a good analysis by Dave Dargo, formerly of Oracle, now at Ingres.

Dargo writes, “My contention has been that this is more of an emotional reaction to the market capitalization of Red Hat than a sound business decision that delivers any added value to the industry or to the end customers.”  And later he adds, “If Oracle is tremendously successful in taking Red Hat’s business then, ultimately, Red Hat won’t be around. Oracle will then either need to acquire Red Hat or staff up to include the same resources that Red Hat has in building, distributing and supporting their product. Is this their plan, to get Red Hat’s valuation low enough to acquire them?”

Essentially Dargo is arguing that Oracle is solving the wrong problem and won’t do a good job of it either.  If you’re paying $200,000/yr. for your Oracle license, saving five hundred bucks on the support for the operating system isn’t going to matter to you.  And Oracle doesn’t do a good job of support now, and Red Hat does.

Ethan! Oracle and Sun news

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More rumors about Oracle releasing a Linux distribution, this time from a Jefferies analyst:

“We have heard that Ubuntu is currently working to certify its recently introduced server OS to all Oracle’s major products, including databases and middleware,” she wrote.

“The relationship between Oracle and Ubuntu seems to have come together rather quickly, and is perhaps the fallout from an attempt by Red Hat and Oracle to work more closely together.”

Egbert said she thinks Oracle could introduce a dedicated hardware appliance running Ubuntu and its own software, which would see the company returning Larry Ellison’s “Raw Iron” idea, or a software appliance, much like Ingres Corp’s Icebreaker project.

According to Egbert, the most likely opportunity to announce this project will be the October 22-26 OpenWorld customer event, and its October 26 investor day.

In separate news, Sun announces a data center in a shipping container, which is cool. Here‘s Jonathan Schwartz on the issues around it. (Note “The Searchers” DVD in the photo; I can’t think of a better way to establish credibility than to accidentally put that in the background. Nice going.) And the Schwartz links to a good post by Greg Matter on data centers of the future.

On the differences between Red Hat and Novell

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Neil Macallister on the differences between Red Hat and Novell:

Consider LinuxWorld Expo, last week. Novell had a large booth near the entrance of the show floor, where it played host to various partners. Novell representatives were in abundance, sitting on conference panels and offering hands-on tutorial sessions. Special sessions recapped the best content from Novell’s own BrainShare conference.

Red Hat, on the other hand, was a no-show. A cocktail party it sponsored at a nearby hotel was well-attended, but there was little in terms of company messaging or media, customer or investor outreach; not even a promotional flyer.

Likewise, as a member of the technology press, barely a week goes by that I don’t receive some kind of e-mail release or contact from Novell or its representatives. By comparison, I hear from Red Hat maybe once every six months.

In short, Novell is well-aware that it is the New Novell. New Novell’s success depends on engaging the market, getting its message out to customers, winning developer support, and building community — and it knows it. It may not be the market leader today, but it wants to go where its customers lead it.

Increasingly, however, Red Hat is aware of the fact that it is The One and Only Red Hat. Red Hat is holding the cards, and the customers will come to Red Hat.

Old Novell used to think that way.

Dave Rosenberg’s response, and a good dialogue with our Scott Lewis.

And a short positive piece about how Novell has stepped up:

There has been a feeling since Novell acquired SUSE that it needed to up its game in competing with Red Hat and so far this year it seems to be doing so. Without wishing to give with one hand and take away with the other, I can’t help feeling that Novell is currently preaching to the converted, however.That’s a good place to start, but there’s a much bigger market out there that has never heard of Linux, let alone taken a look at it. This is the market Novell somehow needs to crack if it is to seriously dent Red Hat’s market share – let alone Microsoft’s.

More on Xen: Markus Rex tells ZDNet it’s ready for the enterprise

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From ZDNet:

At Novell’s Sydney office on Thursday, Rex responded to claims by Linux competitor Red Hat that Xen was not stable enough to be deployed in enterprise environments. Novell has claimed to be the first vendor to include Xen in its Linux distribution, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.

Xen, primarily developed by US-based start-up XenSource, allows users to run multiple operating systems as guest virtual machines on the same hardware.

“If you look at the Xen open source project, we have been the number two contributor during the past 10 months or so to that project. So we’ve kind of contributed most of the enterprise readiness for the Xen platform,” Rex said.

Red Hat only had to look at Novell’s launch of its new server for testimony that Xen was enterprise ready, according to Rex.

“We had all the major hardware partners that had virtualisation hardware like IBM, Intel and AMD. They all stood up and said ‘Yes, this technology’s ready, and we fully support deployments based on Xen and in combination with SUSE Linux Enterprise 10’.”

“So I guess the other vendors would not do that if it weren’t ready.”