RSSNovell, Microsoft Ink Linux Partnership
By Nate Mook | Published November 2, 2006, 6:27 PM
In a surprise move that left many jaws on the floor, Microsoft and Novell held a joint press conference Thursday afternoon announcing a broad partnership to make sure Windows interoperates with SUSE Linux, and includes promises not to sue over patents.
The agreement endures until 2012 and includes joint development, marketing and support of solutions to make Windows and Linux work better together. Essentially, Novell's SUSE Linux will become the Linux distribution recommended by Microsoft to seamlessly work with Windows and not be subject to any patent claims from the Redmond company.
"I recognize that Linux plays an important role in the IT infrastructure for a number of our customers, and will continue to play an important role," Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told members of the press in San Francisco. "The technical aspects of this agreement will result in higher levels of interop between Microsoft Windows and Novell's SUSE Linux."
The two companies are focusing on three technical areas for collaboration: virtualization, Web services for managing physical and virtual servers, and document format compatibility. Novell and Microsoft will jointly develop a virtualization solution for both platforms, as well as federating Microsoft Active Directory with Novell eDirectory.
OpenOffice will also play a role in the agreement. Microsoft and Novell will work to ensure documents created in the free productivity suite can seamlessly work in Office 2007, and vice versa. Translators will be made available to improve interoperability between Open XML and OpenDocument formats.
Intellectual property has become a major point of contention in the open source world, and a concern for enterprises looking to adopt the software. Because it has millions of different contributors and evolved over decades, Linux has come under scrutiny by companies such as SCO for utilizing code without a proper license.
In turn, as part of the agreement, Microsoft is providing a covenant not to assert its patent rights against customers of SUSE Linux, and Novell will do the same for customers of Windows. However, Novell's pledge is largely symbolic, as Microsoft already protects its customers from such claims.
Microsoft will also purchase 70,000 "coupons" from Novell that offer the recipient a one-year subscription for maintenance and updates to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server. The company will distribute the coupons to customers as a way to convince them to choose Novell's Linux rather than that offered by a rival such as Red Hat.
So why was Microsoft so receptive when Novell approached it about such a deal in April of this year, and when the two companies sat down to discuss options in May? The answer may lie in a point quietly announced at the end of the press conference: Novell will make ongoing royalty payments to Microsoft for all open source products it ships.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Microsoft did say that because it ships more products than Novell, the open source firm will be on the receiving end of the net balance payment. In turn, Novell will pay royalties based on the revenue it earns from the sale of open source software and solutions.
Even with the newfound partnership and planned collaboration, both Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Novell CEO Ron Hovsepian emphasized the companies remained fierce competitors. Ballmer said he will continue trying to convince customers to switch entirely to Microsoft products, but acknowledges they may not always listen when he yells, "Windows, Windows, Windows!"
Guess Ms isn't so stupid after all
they want to make as much $$$$$$$$ as they can, so here's a way into the Linux world.
They "Partner" with another company, in this case Novell, because they think it's the best product.
(IMHO it's RedHat/Fedora)
With MS on Novell's side, Novell can get more Win Apps running with Wine or natively.
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|is this move to kill Red Hat
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|This is the partnership between the lion and the sheep.
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|The only reason why Linux does NOT make it mainstream is because it does NOT come with nor include DVD-ROM playback. Just take Ubuntu for example. Trying to make it play my DVD movies is a pain. Also it cannot successfully utilize TV tuners.
It is OPEN SOURCE, what are they talking about DVD LICENSING. What is the point then?
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|I doubt that is the ONLY reason, but we'll have to see. Technically, there is no open-source software in mainstream yet. Now, before you flame me, understand what mainstream is--one way to think about it is that almost everyone knows of Windows and heck even MacOS, but how many know of Linux? Many do, but not even close to the number that have heard of Windows.
Firefox in that respect has become closer to mainstream than any other open source project, IMO, in that many people know of it. Even the old callers sometimes mention firefox as their friend or grandson recommended it for them, so even if it isn't neck-in-neck with IE, it is more mainstream than Linux IMO.
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|The only one that is worth it is Mandriva (the one you need to buy). That one comes with DVD playback. But why wouldn't that be included in the free Mandriva ISO download. This is the only distribution that comes close to being a Multimedia OS, and that is what the public wants.
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|Yep, FF is pretty much mainstream anymore. Been using it since Firebird 0.3 and converted many friends and colleges over to it.
There is MacOS all over ads and tv shows/movies while Windows is just..well Windows everyone knows of it. People refer to MS-DOS just DOS. MS knows how to market. But in the IT world Linux is very mainstream as it's the child of Unix which was the heavy weight back int he day for IT.
I honestly thing Mac, Linux, BSD, Windows, UNIX, etc. all have there place and always will.
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|Windows XP can't play DVD movies out of the box either.
http://www.mvps.org/mark...layback/dvdplayback.php
I use Ubuntu and it was a piece of cake to get DVD playback installed. Everything I needed was on Google and was easy to locate. I'm no ubergeek either - I learned from scratch without any help, just by reading other people's pages.
As for the point about TV tuners. This isn't my area of expertise, but I know of a number that run fine under Linux. The issue here is that hardware developers don't want to develop for Linux as they still consider it a small market. Most hardware developers also are reluctant to open their software, probably because there's stuff in there they don't want anyone else seeing.
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|where's Zune?
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|Don't forget:
they tell us only what they want us to know.
So you may wonder, what they are NOT telling here...
It's ALL about money and power. You can be sure of that, anyway.
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|Novell will die in the hands of MS in a short term.
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|Didnt novell die years ago?
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|Novell never has died. They were in a rough place as they stood to there proprietary standard for too long and got beat up by Linux in places that Novell services a lot. But once Novell went open source(ish) and then bought SUSE they found much better footing to contend with the IT world - you can kinda think of Novell as Sun (in the way they were forced to go Open Source and change a lot of plans or die).
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|I never imagined Novell would become this pathetically desperate. So their basically selling out the entire Linux community in exchange for being eaten last. Nice.
Linux Services for Windows Server 2010, anyone?
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|After reading this, I figured I must be having some kind of weird dream so I went to take a cold shower and wake up... blood came out of the shower head! Just then I heard screams from outside and brimstone was raining down from the heavens. I'm going back to bed and hide under the covers.
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|lol
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|"I recognize that Linux plays an important role in the IT infrastructure for a number of our customers, and will continue to play an important role," Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told members of the press.
In related news today, Hell froze over!
Great to see a commitment to interoperability, something the world needs more of.
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|maybe if microsoft did a better job buiding o/s
in the first place we wouldnt be running programs like firefox,opera,open office,media player classic.Besides MS have been running linux for a long time on the servers for scurity reasons and yet they turn and want every1 to buy windows products which are flawed anyway im glad there not a car maker.
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|What you fail to realize is that each OS has its strengths. Linux is designed for a different purpose than windows is. With windows, you can run a directory structure a lot easier than you can with linux. You get easier group rights, easier policy management, and an overall easier administration. With linux, you get a powerful solution for security on dns servers, file servers, and various other situation specific server solutions.
Plus, if Microsoft isnt doing a good job with building an OS, why is it they continue to dominate the market? Why hasnt linux made its move and tried to take market share? Why? because the learning curve required to use linux is still far too steep for the average home user. If you want the average mom and pop home user to switch, you have to make the programs that they use work, you have to make a familiar interface that doesnt require relearning everything.
Plus, if you really want to get into security, I just did an install of ubuntu and fedora core about 2 weeks ago. After installing, I had to download almost 350MB per installation in security updates. On a windows 2003 server product, I had 120MB and on Windows XP Pro I had 140MB. The linux installs were default configurations for a server on both distro's.
Linux isnt as "perfect" as the fanboys would have you believe.
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|But with linux, you download updates for almost every separate application the package managers support, unlike windows, where its just what the OS itself has, and maybe a few other MS products (such as office)..
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|And? You still have to update them or they can be exploited, just like in windows.
Only difference with the ones in Windows compared to Linux is that the included apps in windows typically dont cause security exploits (with the exception of IE, WMP, OE, and MSN Messenger). How many of the "included apps" in Linux cause exploits out of the box from a stable release?
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|LAWL!!!! I can't believe I didn't see this coming. Lest we forget Novell used to run on MS-DOS.
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|Is MS changing?
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|Well, they probably got nothing else to do.
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|Okay.
Now I *know* Armageddon is nigh.
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|But didn't microsoft say LINUX & OpenSource is evil?
Well I for one do not wish to go to Hell.
I am going to have to switch to the MAC.
MS never said they were evil (did they?) :-)
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|And they said it was like a cancer too- I'm insulted!
Well, I guess they're going to find out... ;-)
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