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● 10.25.07

●● Microsoft and Novell Work in Isolation to Weed Out Common Threat (Free Linux)

Posted in Boycott Novell, Europe, GNU/Linux, Intellectual Monopoly, Interoperability, Microsoft, Novell, Patents, Protocol, Red Hat, Servers, Virtualisation at 8:48 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Not much is new under the sun. Microsoft has a plan and Novell plays along happily, so long as it is rewarded financially and offered exclusive rights, at the expense of all other Linux distributions.

=> rewarded financially | exclusive rights | at the expense of all other Linux distributions

Here is what Novell had to say about Microsoft’s latest attempt to pretend to have ‘opened up’.

=> ↺ ‘opened up’

“The majority of our customers have mixed-source environments, and they want their platform vendors to make things work together,” said Roger Levy, senior vice president and general manager, Open Platform Solutions at Novell. “That’s why we entered into a technical collaboration agreement with Microsoft. As a result, Novell is the first vendor to develop and ship technology that will allow a paravirtualized Windows Server 2008 to be hosted as a guest on the Xen hypervisor. Microsoft’s decision to put the hypercall API under their Open Specifications Promise will make it even easier for Novell, our customers and partners, and the entire open source community to develop high-quality virtualization solutions that deliver true interoperability between Windows and Linux.”

Did you spot that bit about “hypercall API” and “Open Specifications”? Guess what? As usual, it contains anti-GPL poison. It is the old trick that involved licensing, which is part of the plan to block those that do not comply with Microsoft’s rules and assimilate.

This one particular issue was not entirely overlooked by Joe Wilcox over at Microsoft Watch.

=> ↺ Joe Wilcox

Microsoft’s decision to license the hypercall API is the right call, although some pundits and competitors might balk at the licensing scheme.

If you think it’s just this hypercall, then think again. Reuters has just published a detailed list of Microsoft patented protocols, which brings back to mind the terms of the agreement in Europe [1, 2].

=> ↺ detailed list | 1 | 2

Microsoft will release interconnection information — called protocols — which rival servers need in order to work smoothly with Microsoft Windows desktops.

It is worth repeating the key argument that Microsoft wants to charge money for standard protocols which is deliberately ‘extended’ with the sole intention of breaking compatibility. It wishes to be rewarded for abuse of standards and sabotage of intercommunication among servers.

Red Hat, which is watching this type of worrisome developments from afar, responds with understandable concern.

=> ↺ responds with understandable concern

While Red Hat welcomed Microsoft’s recent decision to comply with the European Court of First Instance’s antitrust ruling, Michael Cunningham, general counsel for Red Hat, stated that the company was still concerned about Microsoft’s patent model.

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