[nylug-talk] Microsoft Linux

[Tom Moran]

On Thursday night, I asked Jeff Jaffe, Novell's chief technology officer, if
he could think of a company that had partnered with Microsoft and done
really well as a result. Which Microsoft alliance, I asked him, would he
cite as the model that he'd like to emulate?

His response: "I think this partnership is breaking new ground."

Um, right. Unfortunately, the new ground they're breaking is probably
Novell's gravesite.





http://www.forbes.com/2006/11/03/linux-microsoft-novell-tech-cz_dl_1103linux
.html?partner=msn










-----Original Message-----
From: nylug-talk-bounces at nylug.org [mailto:nylug-talk-bounces at nylug.org] On
Behalf Of Gary Mort
Sent: Saturday, November 04, 2006 12:30 PM
To: NYLUG Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: [nylug-talk] Microsoft Linux

mylar wrote:
> On Fri, 2006-11-03 at 15:10, Dale Harris wrote:
>   
>> On 2006-11-03 at 13:22, Sunny Dubey <sunny at opencurve.org> elucidated:
>>     
>>> On Friday 03 November 2006 12:14, alex khalil wrote:
>>>
>>>       
>>>>   Well, almost: Microsoft will support Novell's SUSE Linux
>>>>         
>>> maybe its an attempt to belittle Redhat ??
>>>
>>> 1) Oracle and MSFT/Novell can claim some sort of IP protection, Redhat
can't
>>>
>>>       
>> Is this perhaps motivated more by Oracle's move?  Microsoft is just
>> trying to trump them, rather than any real concern about Linux?  Or
>> trying to kill two birds with one stone.  Steal Oracle's thunder and
>> co-opt Linux, too?
>>
>>     
>
> Those same thoughts have crossed my mind. But I'm not a sys admin so I
> don't fully appreciate/understand the implications and/or benefits of
> this move. Much of what I read has left me in a  fog.
>
>   


I presume that Microsoft's plan is to brandish money at Novell to 
convince them to work jointly with them, much as Microsoft and IBM did 
back when they worked on OS/2.  After the 5 year joint partnership is 
up, Microsoft can then take all that joint research and roll it into 
their own products, leaving behind any joint projects they worked on.

At the same time, Novell's plan is to milk the cash cow(notice that 
neither party admits to any patent liability, their just paying for 
'potential' liability and Novell is the one that comes out ahead 
currently.  If they use the same model for future sales, Novell 
basically sets up a cash cow for the next 5 years - only if Microsoft 
tanks in the marketplace does Novell end up owing anything).

Plus Novell will get access to some of the hidden secrets of Microsoft.  
For example, it might be possible now to get the encryption routines 
Microsoft uses for passwords for their file sharing, so that Samba 
servers can be completely interoperable(sure it's not a big deal to 
simply change your password if you pick one of the unlucky combinations, 
but why should users have to put up with that?)

The only way Novell loses is if they trust Microsoft in the joint 
partnership and actually develope new technology for them.
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