RSSWhat Microsoft + Novell Means Going Forward
By Scott M. Fulton, III | Published November 3, 2006, 6:14 PM
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The chief concern in the open source community today appears to be the possibility that Microsoft is working to make Linux less desirable to customers - in effect, by planting a sort of poison pill, perhaps on the part of its own participation.
BetaNews showed the published portions of the Microsoft / Novell agreement to Pamela Jones, the editor of Groklaw and one of the most knowledgeable and legally minded Linux proponents on the Web today. There's too little of the agreement published today, she told us, to conclude whether Novell has violated the terms of the GPL at this point.
But Jones believes Microsoft achieved two aims yesterday: first, to get paid for commercial distributions of Linux - something the SCO Group tried to achieve by suing IBM, and has largely failed to accomplish. Secondly, she said, "It's about making Linux less desirable in the marketplace, in my view, by making it more expensive and by creating the illusion that it somehow violates somebody's IP something somewhere. I see no difference."
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer did make it clear yesterday that customers who choose a brand of enterprise Linux other than Novell, may be susceptible to the types of individual lawsuits from Microsoft that SUSE Linux customers will now be protected against. But Jones goes on to state that Microsoft's protection guarantees are suspect, based on their clever wording.
"As for the promise not to sue individual developers, I consider it a sham," Jones remarked. "It's personal to the developer, not to use of his work by others or distribution even by him or her. If it ends up in a paid distro, Microsoft can still sue over the code." She cited this sentence from the patent covenant: "This pledge is personal to You and does not apply to the use of Your Original Work by others or to the distribution of Your Original Work by You or others."
"Could there be a more empty promise in a FOSS context?" Jones asked.
NPD's Chris Swenson disagrees. "At the end of the day, [this agreement] allows customers to run virtualized Windows on Linux, or run virtualized Linux on Windows," he told us. "Yes, these guys are going to have a lab, they're going to work together on compatibility, but the whole issue of the GPL to me is such a minor part of the announcement. These companies are going to work together to make sure their products interoperate. I don't think they're doing it to circumvent the open source movement."
Info-Tech's Carmi Levy, meanwhile, sees the agreement as the beginning of a complete redefinition of Linux, and perhaps also of Windows, as we have come to know them.
"This will be a significant turning point in the evolution of Linux as a truly enterprise-ready solution," he said. "Either the entire community will need to address indemnification under the GPL, or individual vendors of each distribution will need to take it on themselves. Either way, developers not covered by patent covenants and other forms of intellectual property protections will ultimately migrate toward environments that provide such protections, and distributions that fail to get under the protective umbrella will slowly die."
Pamela Jones would agree insofar as the agreement creates a new and undeniably influential element designed to persuade enterprise customers to pursue a specific route. "What is clear is that the patent pledge is only for paid Novell customers," she said. "And only if they pay for upgrades or a new version is the upgrade or new version covered. It's tied to payment. And it purports to cover 'use' of code while in development, whereas use is something the GPL specifically does not limit."
"My understanding of that is that Microsoft wishes to be paid for all paid-for Linux and all related services, including indemnification," Jones continued. "That is what SCO wanted too, to be able to tax Linux - and likely for the same reason, so it would be easier to compete with a more expensive competitor. SCO failed, so here comes Microsoft, with the same offer: We won't sue you if you pay to use Linux commercially. I really see no difference from SCO's offer, except Microsoft has the antitrust factor to consider, hanging over it. But what Novell has done is make that threat smaller for Microsoft."
Suppose Novell truly did violate the terms of the GPL, into which it entered when it began distributing SUSE Linux. Is there anybody who would be willing to take on the job of challenging Novell -- and probably also Microsoft -- in court?
"The truth of the matter is, there's a wide gulf between legal ideal and economic reality," answered Carmi Levy. "The economic reality of the GPL is that there is no one entity that is able to fund and take on a legal challenge of this type. In fact, the GPL specifically, and Linux in general, have needed an advocate in the enterprise space for a very long time. In fact, in this deal, they might very well have it. The legal ideal is, sure, this might run smack into where the GPL wanted to go, and this might violate some of the basic tenets of the GPL, but the truth of the matter is, if the GPL had stayed as it was, Linux would've forever languished on the fringes of the enterprise data center. Now it actually has a chance to solidify its position right in the center of the data center."
In other words, like it or not, Novell may not only have become the "proxy" for its customers, as Steve Ballmer described it, but also its de facto champion.
Next: Sharing the spoils with Microsoft
I beleive this discussion invokes the North Carolina Equine Paradox, which states:"Vyaretherezomanymorehorzesazzesthantherearehorzes."
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|good work MS, like what's happeneing in the world of microsoft at the moment, they started listening to customers, wise move! this is all blatently a move to bury the hatchet, in Apple's face! score! apple sucks!
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|Hi, im a windows user, have been for 15 years. I want to go to a flavor of linux shall i choose? :P
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|What most posters are missing here is the perspective of the "Joe Business" end user. They THINK that if they run MS office on the desktop they NEED Windows server as a server. Right or wrong (and until the most recent versions of MS Office mostly wrong) that is their perception and that is what drives sales. MS office and Windows also represent security, not technological security but warm fuzzy I-made-the-right-choice for my business security. End users want that feeling. The old adage decades ago was "No one ever got fired for buying or recommending IBM"; today that is virtually true of MS.
Don't get me wrong I am a Linux/FOSS supporter and have it installed at some clients. But ask "Mary Small Business Owner" or even "Jack CIO/CEO" about using "free software" to run their business critical functions and they are skeptical. After all what do we tell consumers? "If it sounds to good to be true, it usually is." What this agreement ultimately does is legitimize Linux (at least SUSE Linux) for businesses of all sizes. I can go to a client who is wavering and say "look MS says if Linux meets your needs they recommend SUSE Linux. Oh and here is a voucher for a free year of technical support" That is a compelling sales argument and that is what it is about in the end, for us small IT services firms and Novell and MS.
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|Microsoft is going down in flames in terms of innovation. It's no wonder they are turning to some flavour of Linux for security and innovative ideas. As a technician, I have freely advised 1000's of customers to use the free Open Office suite instead of any version of Microsoft Office. And after they found out they were saving a whopping $349.00 do you know what they said? They said, "Oh my god, why would you pay for Microsoft Office knowing that this Open Office is soo good and sooooo free....". I know, I know... It's awesome..! The right to free travel, freedom of speech, and Open Source, are practically synonymous.
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|INNOVATION???? What innovation? MS has NEVER been a company capitalizing upon innovation! I agree with that observation!
MS is a MARKETING company straddled with trying to develop and maintain a legacy Windows product designed for a standalone (non-networked) work environment strapped with maintaining legacy compatibility and yet closing fundamentally fatally flawed collaborative security holes such as ActiveX! First last and always. But it seems most here fail to realise that MS is a BIDNESS(sic).
MS's strategic positioning to take advantage of a quality Linux niche - especially one that has the potential to capitalize upon the Novell integrated legacy network directory structure within Linux is a great move.
For all of those who think MS must live or die with Windows, all I have to say is that you folks are - with all due respect- short-sighted at best and fools at worst. It is MS' responsibility to analyze the marketplace and to position itself so that it can most effectively leverage the maximum return on all viable markets. And this is a brilliant market positioning - especially in light of Novell's recent (mis)management problems despite having a Very strong product offering - as both SUSE Linux (as they OWN the 64 bit Linux market and have for over 10 years!) and the legacy Network Directory structure are both best of breed products - and a great alternative to RedHat and Oracle - a choice which is a poison pill regardless of which one might opt for!
I am not a MS fan, but I have to take my hat off to the astute MS business strategists responsible for this decision! Kudos MS! Seldom am I compelled to acknowledge such a smart strategic business strategy while at the same time dreading a decision that would lead me to actually subscribe to their 'solution' given MS's***ory of kludgy solutions!
MS has covered the bases. Let Oracle and RedHat fight it out.
The 100 ton elephant continues to be IBM - the world's leading developer of Linux solutions who has been the main supplier to all of the various Linux variants. With their support systems and potential to market their own version of Linux while simultaneously porting much of the Much higher level AIX technology to the architecturally constrained Linux (Linux is fundamentally limited from scaling to an AIX level product), IBM is the sleeping giant whose time is quickly approaching. I would expect them to move into this arena during the next year or so.
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|Apparently, your thousands of customers (gosh your a busy man) all live in their own little bubble. In 15 years with a desktop on my desk, I have never opened any office related document attachment other than one from a current version of Microsoft Office as A) it would not likely make it past IT security and B) as garbled plain text, I would ask the sender to resend in a current MS Office format that I could use (and they would).
Simple and to the point, $349 is squat for productivity. Squat. Please study the true costs associated with giving todays high paid profesionals poor tools before you spread this blather anymore.
Real people in real businesses laugh quite loudly at all these comments. They have no factual foundation in the real world. Businesses today share information in a common manner or they are doomed and that format is MS Office.
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|I have to agree with dwall72 on the whole Office thing. Office may be a big reason why Windows is on the desktop but it has pretty much NOTHING to do with Windows on Servers.
The whole "Windows to be compatible... Linux to be efficient" statement is also a pretty biased statement subject at least to strong debate.
I don't think I buy Levy's theory on the kernel as a commodity either. The superiority of the Linux kernel of the NT based kernel is NOT a given as he seems to imply.
This whole article looks like something you'd find by a random poster on Slash Dot, not what I'd expect from BetaNews.
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|If you think Office resides only on the desktop, you are greatly misinformed.
Office is a collaborative product. Microsoft Outlook and its parent application Exchange Server require a Windows Server setup. From a business perspective, Office is a server oriented product, which is why Microsoft sells it that way.
Access, InfoPath, Excel -- these all have server components now. Groove, which is in Office 2007, is a server-based collaborative application.
Do you not know what SharePoint is? Yep, it's a server product that is part of Office.
How about checking your facts before flaming.
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|Access is pretty much the only application from Office which runs on a server, and even then it is usually a backend database. Excel, Word, etc are not designed to work on server archicture. I'm a .NET programmer and it is a big no no to attempt to run Word (Excel) from a server machine (this is well documented in white papers from MS). SharePoint until 2007 was not even part of Office. Sharepoint services is on a standard install of Server 2003 (SharePoint Portal Server is also a separate product).
Where do you get that "Office is a server oriented product, which is why Microsoft sells it that way."?
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|Exchange and Sharepoint are not traditionally considered parts of Office. Only recently has Sharepoint been branded as part of Office and that's more of a Marketing thing then anything else. It's a CMS system and it's content could just as easily be non-MS oriented files. I don't believe even now Exchange is branded as an Office component.
I'll give you the 2007 versions of Office are much more server oriented. This does nothing to help the artiles author's claim that business uses Windows Servers because of Office. They were using Windows Servers far before there were Server components to Office. His claim is frankly absurd and your attempt at a defense depends heavily on only the newest and upcoming versions of the software.
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|A little bit behind the times are we? SharePoint was pitched as an Office product starting in 2000 when it first came out. In fact, it was demoed heavily at the Office 2000 launch events.
And yes, Excel is designed to work in a server architecture:
http://msdn2.microsoft.c...s/library/ms582023.aspx
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|Most businesses that run Outlook company-wide also run Exchange. Exchange is sold primarily for this purpose. SharePoint has been included with and demoed alongside Office since 2000.
This has nothing to do with the "newest versions" of Office. Outlook/Exchange, SharePoint and other Office Web services have existed for over half a decade.
Microsoft wants businesses to be part of the Windows ecosystem, plain and simple. And the best way to do that is to tie server products to desktop applications such as Office.
Here's some good reading:
http://www.microsoft.com...mpare/market_share.mspx
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|Just because most companies that run Outlook also run Exchange doesn't make Exchange part of Office. Nor does demoing a product (Sharepoint) alongside Office. Exchange, SQL Server, etc. are NOT what is typically considered Office. Sharepoint in 2000 was also not considered part of Office, only recently has it been inculded in Office branding. There are increasingly more server components included in Office branding but these can hardly be claimed as THE reason companies are running Windows on their servers. These Office server components are relatively new (in relation to when companies started adopting Windows systems as servers.)
We can continue to debate back and forth what is and is not part of Office but at the very least when posting a public article such as this if you're reaching to the level that you are by calling Exchange and I guess SQL Server and heck even the OS part of Office (they're demo'd together too and most people who run exchange run the Windows OS so that makes it Office by your definition right?) then you should probably explain that to some degree so people have some idea how wide you are casting the net. I have no doubt that the vast majority of people, right or wrong, when seeing the name Office think of the desktop applications like Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, etc. They do not automatically think of server OS's, SQL Server, Exchange, etc.
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|Yes, SharePoint really was considered "part of Office" back then. From a PC World article in 2001:
"For a service that's touted as an integral part of Office XP, SharePoint also misses some obvious opportunities for integration with the suite's apps."
http://www.pcworld.com/a...047-page,1/article.html
But the article above never does claim Office is the only reason businesses run Windows Servers -- read it again. It only notes that businesses say they need at least one Windows Server because of their Office infrastructure.
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|Umm, the link you provided is for Office 2007...
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|Dude, read your own article.
"First, a definition: SharePoint isn't an Office application. Rather, it's a set of Web-based services you use in conjunction with the regular applications in Office."
Second paragraph.
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|You are debating different issues!
You can treat Office as a standalone package, or you can look at Office as a collabortative tool!
Debating which it is, is - well, it simply illustrates a myopic point of view ignorant of the other legitimate market niches for which Office is being targeted!
In an enterprise environment MS is up against Lotus Notes (and I don't care if you like it or not!) - where they must compete with the collaborative functionality of Lotus.
If you are running a home office or if you are a student where collaborating is either impractical due to lack of infrastructure or it is considered cheating, you will not be using it as a collaborative tool!
So the various pieces and parts are appropriate and necessary depending upon your environment and use! DUH!
And this "it is - it isn't' debate is insane. And it simply displays an ignorance which renders any opinion expressed just a little less worthwhile...
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|As jshurst quotes from your own reference SharePoint was NOT "part of Office." 2001 wasn't exactly the beginning of the Windows Server adoption by business either.
As for what this article states, and I quote:
"For years, THE REASON businesses have said they install Windows anyway, even on just some of their servers if not the entire domain (or forest), is because they MUST run Microsoft Office." (emphasis added)
You'll note it says THE REASON, not A reason, not ONE reason, THE REASON. Seems pretty clear to me. It doesn't say anything about infrastructure as you have. It simply says "MUST run Microsoft Office" and then goes on to talk about the importance of the documents.
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|First of all, I can argue anything I want to. Who are you, the betanews moderator?
Second, I'm mainly arguing about the differences in Office 2003 versus Office 2007. According to the SharePoint seminar I went to last month at Microsoft (http://www.developersgui...g/Default.aspx?tabid=40) it is now part of Office, where as before it was not.
My point is that Office applications (like Excel, Word, etc) were, before 2007 desktop applications, not meant for installations on a server. Document exchange could be handled by a separate piece, not included with Office, called SharePoint.
Office 2007 has a different architecture - out of the box.
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|In the statement "You are debating different issues", the word 'you" is used in plural! It is not just about YOU - but everyone debating the issue.
And who cares about Office 2003 vs 2007. The distinctions you mention almost miss the point of the differences in architecture, as both could absolutely be server based! That is not a defining distinction!
But with your aptly demonstrated inability to interpret the English language, one wonders what use you would even have for Office - let alone a collaborative version of the Suite.
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|I almost stopped at "many reputable sources say it's actually more expensive for businesses to own and maintain than Windows." because those reports are generally commissioned by Microsoft, and are a very specific configuration and workload. They also generally do not calculate downtime due to patches and virus outbreaks, or additional software and administrative costs to properly protect Windows servers. Since this is all arguable, I kept reading.
I stopped at "For decades, the reason businesses have said they install Windows anyway, even on just some of their servers if not the entire domain (or forest), is because they must run Microsoft Office."
How long do you think Microsoft Office has been dominant, and what does it have to do with servers? Microsoft Office is a desktop product. You obviously do not know the industry, or what you are talking about, so stop submitting articles with a bunch of inaccurate information, leading others to believe your misinformed views.
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|Office is a collaborative product. Microsoft Outlook and its parent application Exchange Server require a Windows Server setup. From a business perspective, Office is a server oriented product, which is why Microsoft sells it that way.
Access, InfoPath, Excel -- these all have server components now. Groove, which is in Office 2007, is a server-based collaborative application. These are the features designed for enterprises and what brings Microsoft the big bucks. The desktop user running Word from Office Student and Teacher Edition is not where the revenue lies.
Do you not know what SharePoint is? Yep, it's a server product that is part of Office.
How about checking your facts before flaming.
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|Microsoft + Novell Means Going Forward...ONE OF THEM, and backward everybody else.
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