Skip to content

Dell Joins Novell/Microsoft Alliance

It looks like Dell isn’t done with Microsoft yet. They’ve joined the Novell/Microsoft alliance, giving it “industry” validity. I don’t know how much I like this and it’s hard to say were the future of operating systems is going. Microsoft’s got their foot in the door with the Novell alliance but now that a big hardware player has taken interest, it’s given Microsoft the authority it was looking for. Now Microsoft is selling “licenses” to SUSE Linux. I’m not sure what those are but it doesn’t sound good.

Before this, Linux was almost completely untainted by corporations. Now, Microsoft’s marketing team is proving themselves unbeaten yet. One good thing that’s come out of this is that Microsoft agreed not to file any lawsuits against Linux areas which Novell is using. Microsoft has officially put up the white flag on their monopoly of the OS world but the business tactic has made them more dangerous than before. We’ll have to wait and see what happens. One thing is for sure: Dell is in the think of things – offering Windows XP, Vista, Ubuntu, Red Hat, SUSE.

    None Found
  • http://agoln.net Logan Buesching

    Microsoft takes on the free world

    Is a good article on the subject between Microsoft, Novell and the whole deal, GPL v3 and so on.

  • http://agoln.net Logan Buesching

    Microsoft takes on the free world

    Is a good article on the subject between Microsoft, Novell and the whole deal, GPL v3 and so on.

  • http://lukehoersten.com/ Luke Hoersten

    This is a great article. It talks a lot about the “patent cold war” between FOSS and Microsoft. The article fails to mention, however, what “free open source software” they are referring to. Assuming the article means the Linux kernel, there is another huge problem for MS.

    If MS sues over these 235 alleged paten violations, they have to sue a company. The article gives the example of Red Hat. Suppose that MS took down all Linux related corporations with the paten infringement cases. Those companies would be gone but another company(s) would pick up the code, remove the bad code and continue using Linux.

    Also, MS has been throwing these paten infringement claims around for years and has done absolutely nothing. I think the Andrew Morton video I posed earlier said that something like 2/3 of the Linux code has been rewritten just between the 2.4 and 2.6 kernel. That’s like a two year time span. A moving target like that is quite hard to hit with paten infringement.

  • http://lukehoersten.com/ Luke Hoersten

    <abbr title=”Free Open Source Software”>FOSS</abbr> and Microsoft. The article fails to mention, however, what “free open source software” they are referring to. Assuming the article means the Linux kernel, there is another huge problem for <abbr title=”Microsoft”>MS</abbr>.

    If MS sues over these 235 alleged paten violations, they have to sue a company. The article gives the example of Red Hat. Suppose that MS took down all Linux related corporations with the paten infringement cases. Those companies would be gone but another company(s) would pick up the code, remove the bad code and continue using Linux.

    Also, MS has been throwing these paten infringement claims around for years and has done absolutely nothing. I think the Andrew Morton video I posed earlier said that something like 2/3 of the Linux code has been rewritten just between the 2.4 and 2.6 kernel. That’s like a two year time span. A moving target like that is quite hard to hit with paten infringement.