stressfree - microsoft

At what point is it cheaper for MS to just buy Novell?

David — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 03:27:02 +0000

The U.S. Supreme Court has cleared the way for Novell to continue their Wordperfect anti-trust suit against Microsoft. Novell's argument is that anti-competitive operating system issues caused their once mighty Wordperfect suite to come tumbling down. This turn of fortune cost Novell to the tune of $1 billion. The lawsuit Novell has filed against Microsoft is for damages potentially in the order of $3 billion.

Whilst everyone agrees Microsoft is no saint the fact of the matter is Novell and Wordperfect got beaten by aggressive pricing and marketing rather than significant operating system level anti-competitive action. Microsoft gained market share by aggressively dropping the price of Office to the point that it was less than half that of its competitors. Rather than following suit and matching dollar for dollar these moves Novell blindly followed their original pricing structures inherited from when they purchased Wordperfect.

Novell's past business blunders aside, given Microsoft's recent showing in the courts you would have to say its an even money bet that some financial compensation arises from this case. Whether it is in the order of $3 billion is unlikely but even a quarter of that amount is still a hefty sum. Does there come a time when Microsoft executives look at Novell and decide it is cheaper to buy them outright than cough up massive legal fees and reparations?

A few years ago the idea of Microsoft buying Novell would be dismissed on anti-competitive grounds, but these days Microsoft faces stiff competition from the likes of Red Hat, IBM, Sun, Oracle and of course Google. Even in recent years the two companies have hardly been competing against each other. The controversial agreement struck a few years ago between the two has seen them in coopetition rather than competition without so much as a mumble from regulatory bodies.

Given Novell's current financial position if a $3 billion payout were on the cards it is not a huge leap to suggest that Microsoft simply buy them out rather than buy their forgiveness. Whilst it would take more than $3 billion to buy the company it would not take much more (relatively speaking) considering Novell has a current market cap of $2.1 billion. Also from a shareholder's perspective an acquisition is much better than a payout as their investment is preserved and built upon instead of going to lawyers and the opposition.

From a technology perspective Novell have two things to offer Microsoft - SUSE and Identity Management. Microsoft currently resell SUSE and have a comparatively weak Identity Management business so both assets could be put to good use. Netware, Novell's other technology is at end of life but this customer base is currently having to weigh up a tricky migration to SUSE or Windows Server. As a consequence owning both end points of this decision would not be such a bad thing from a sales point of view.

Perhaps the biggest hurdle to get over is the general idea that Microsoft cannot sell Linux because it invented Windows. Given the recent announcements at Mix'08 in cloud computing and advertising it would seem that Microsoft no longer sees itself as simply a Windows company. Arguably another indication of this is their determination to buy the LAMP-centric (Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP) Yahoo. Instead of migrating all the tried and tested Yahoo services over to a Windows server infrastructure, wouldn't it be simpler to establish Microsoft Linux through the acquisition of Novell?

Eben Moglen on the threat of patent agreements

admin — Tue, 15 May 2007 22:37:34 +0000

Eben Moglen of the Software Freedom Law Centre is a great public speaker and he demonstrates this skill exceptionally well in his ability to answer what the risk to the Free Software community is when deals such as last years Novell - Microsoft agreement take place.

If you like his response to this quesiton then I believe you will find his interview on FLOSS Weekly about Free Software and the GPL not only good to listen to but educational at the same time.

Mount Microsoft makes more patent rumblings

admin — Mon, 14 May 2007 11:05:29 +0000

Microsoft's General Counsel Brad Smith placed the number of patent violations by Free & Open Source Software (FOSS) at 235 in an interview with Fortune magazine this week. Considering these suposed violoations cover everything from the kernel through to office applications I am somewhat surprised that the theoretical total is not more considering the huge number of patents Microsoft has recently aquired. Tim Bray of Sun's response in his blog was short but to the point, 'litigate or shut up'.

Unfortunately the chances of Microsoft actually litigating are slim to none considering the damage it would do to their image and the potential problems it would cause from counter-suits from the likes of IBM. Instead the threat of legal action looks like it will continue to remain just that in the vain belief that by simply placing a cloud over Free software's head it will deter existing Microsoft customers from jumping ship. Whether or not such a strategy will be successful only time will tell, but forcing potential customers to buy your product through fear of what would happen if they did not does not seem like the kind of image one would want to portray.

OpenID gains support from Microsoft and AOL

David — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 11:40:23 +0000

On the 6th February Bill Gates announced that Microsoft was going to support OpenID within its CardSpace set of technologies. Given this massive vote of confidence from the world's leading desktop supplier it would seem there is very little in the way of OpenID becoming a highly influential, Web-based identity system. After this announcement it also comes as no surprise that other large, Web-centric companies like AOL.com have announced their intention to support OpenID as well.

OpenID became a successful identity solution because it is not centralised around a single, all powerful source and at its heart is relatively straightforward when compared to many of its contempories. Like other influential technologies such as RSS and podcasting it was created by a small team (Brad Fitzpartrick) and was released to the world as an open standard. These factors have made it relatively easy for large companies like Microsoft and AOL to adopt whilst other more complex, 'big business' alternatives have failed to gain momentum.

OpenID's limited scope means it is not going to solve all the world's identity problems but in the near future we should find maintaining our identity on the Web becomes just a little easier. What still remains to be seen is whether Google and Yahoo will support OpenID in their product lines. Given their operating models I do not believe either will support OpenID directly in their services but they both will provide their users with OpenID-enabled accounts. Nick Manley provides a good case for this in his post 'Why Google will support OpenID'. The bottom line is anything that makes people use their Google/Yahoo accounts more frequently is good for business, especially now that will be supported within Windows.

UPDATE: (21/2/2007) Kevin Rose has recently announced that digg.com will be supporting OpenID sometime next year.

Jeremy Allison speaks out on Novell

David — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 22:22:41 +0000

On December 29th Jeremy Allison officially left Novell and was able to speak openly about the Novell-Microsoft deal. He provided answers to questions posed Mary Jo Foley of ZDNet and Boycott Novell although it would appear that his answers to the later source were for the most part copied and pasted from his ZDNet interview. What is interesting from the interviews is that the controversial patent deal was included by Microsoft at the last minute (5 days before the announcement). This would suggest Novell was setup by Microsoft, or even worse intentionally withheld information from people within their own company that understood the most about the issues at hand. Whichever was the cause it does not bode well for Novell as it was a lot of negative publicity they could have seriously done without and even avoided if managed more effectively.

Adobe ready to launch Apollo rocket at Microsoft

David — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 20:02:00 +0000

For over a year and a half Adobe has been making some interesting moves that could bridge the gap between the Web and traditional desktop applications. Adobe's first move in this strategy was to purchase Macromedia, the company behind Flash and a range of Web development tools. With these technologies in stock they are now actively developing Apollo, a cross-platform desktop framework which draws together HTML, PDF and Flash to create a Web/desktop hybrid environment (refer to this technical article for details).

TechCrunch has an excellent article about Apollo and posted a podcast with Adobe's chief software architect Kevin Lynch on the subject. With Apollo Adobe will be put on a direct collision course with Microsoft in the emerging Rich-Web application arena. Alongside Vista, Microsoft are releasing their new Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and XML Paper Specification (XPS) technologies. WPF and XPS are Microsoft's response to the two formats that have successfully defied their monopoly on desktop file standards: HTML and PDF. WPF is part of the .Net 3.0 framework and whilst intended to replace the aging Windows graphical API a large part of it is devoted to facilitating Rich-Web applications through XAML markup (an incompatible derivative of HTML). XPS on the other hand is a direct PDF competitor and is not intended to replace any existing Windows technology rather destroy the incumbent. Usurping these entrenched standards is important to Microsoft because as history has shown controlling a standard is equivalent to holding the high ground on a battlefield; it does not automatically win you the war but it goes a long way.

An Apollo application running on Windows

What is a Rich-Web application?

Standard Web applications as we know them today do not integrate with the user's desktop and do not perform local caching (without seriously tricky hacks). These shortcomings limit what tasks Web applications can undertake, hinder the user experience when compared to their desktop-based equivalents and most importantly result in the application ceasing to exist when Internet connectivity is lost. A Rich-Web application however exists in the grey area between the Internet and your desktop. It is designed like a traditional Web application but rather than running solely on the server it is capable of integrating with the desktop (for example searching your address book) and is capable of running locally when the Internet connection goes down and can sync itself back to the server when reconnected.

Widgets and Gadgets on the OSX and Vista desktop and applications like iFolder and the iTunes Music store are conventional examples of how a Rich-Web application would perform. None of these examples are true Rich-Web applications as they follow conventional programming idioms, but they do illustrate what is possible when the grey area between Internet and desktop is utilised to the benefit of the user. Whilst no Rich-Web applications exist on our desktops just yet the platform for running them will arrive next year in the form of Adobe's Apollo and Microsoft's .Net 3.0 frameworks.

What makes Rich-Web applications important?

Rich-Web applications are important because they simultaneously reinforce the role of the desktop and exploit the potential of the Web. Whilst some have heralded the arrival of the Web as the death knell for the Microsoft dominated desktop the majority still require functionality that is beyond the capability of even the most advanced HTML/AJAX developer. For Microsoft embracing the Rich-Web is a means of protecting the vulnerable flanks of their Office and Windows cash cows. For Adobe moving on the Rich-Web front maybe their last and best chance of becoming the dominate platform, effectively pushing Microsoft into the back seat when it comes to innovation and control of the user experience.

From a user perspective Rich-Web applications are exciting because they will bring all the benefits of the Web such as connectivity and portability without loosing those creature comforts of the desktop we've grown accustomed to. As Rich-Web applications will harness the power of the native operating system they will also be able to undertake very complicated tasks such as a fully functional Office suite or even CAD application. Their Web heritage will mean they are easy to deploy whilst their roots in the desktop will enable users to seamlessly move between the online and offline worlds without any visible change.

An Apollo application running within OSX

The effect on the Architecture, Engineering and Construction industry

Adobe and AutoDesk are actively competing for the hearts and minds of AEC industry professionals as can be witnessed in the PDF vs DWF battle being raged today. What is interesting to note is that Microsoft will be actively supporting AutoDesk's DWF standard within their XPS file format and .Net framework. When I first heard this news I could not quite understand why Microsoft would even care about such a technology but in light of Apollo this move makes a lot of sense. Through their support of DWF Microsoft ensures their Rich-Web platform maintains feature parity with Adobe's.

With Microsoft throwing their support behind DWF I would not be surprised if they use their influence to get AutoDesk to produce some very interesting Rich-Web applications for the .Net platform. These will be used to demonstrate its capabilities and encourage further developers and users to adopt .Net 3.0. Whether or not Adobe reacts to this is uncertain but it would be great for the industry if they courted a competing AEC software vendor (or vendors) to utilise the Apollo platform. The power and utility of Rich-Web collaboration tools would far surpass that available today and ultimately it would be amazing but not unreasonable to suggest that even 3D modeling tools will be delivered as a Rich-Web applications (my money is on Google Sketchup to be first).

Conclusion

With Apollo the future or Web applications look very bright. Given its roots in the dominant Web technologies (HTML, PDF, Flash) it should not struggle getting developer support. Whether it can become the dominant desktop environment and wipe the floor with .Net 3.0 is another question entirely. Given Microsoft's install base there is no doubt that .Net 3.0 will be widely deployed but whether developers choose to use it over Apollo will hinge on the polish of both platforms and the ability of the respective companies to produce excellent developer tools within a highly competitive time-frame. Perhaps the telling factor in all this is where and how Google and Yahoo align themselves to these technologies. Apollo seems a natural fit for Google and an Apollo-based GMail/Google Calendar application may just tip support in Adobe's favour. However I would not put it past Google to stay neutral or even launch their own equivalent to Apollo just to make things really interesting.

Getting Vista working with Samba

David — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 12:29:20 +0000

In their efforts to 'innovate' (a.k.a. make it harder for people to use non-Microsoft products) it would appear that connecting to a Samba file server in Vista is not as easy as in prior versions of Windows. This BuilderAu post describes how to enable LM and NTLM authentication methods supported by Samba but disabled in Vista by default. It sounds like the Samba team are moving fast on getting Samba fully Vista compatible, unfortunately issues like this will effect NAS devices and servers not running the latest versions of Samba for a long time to come.

Microsoft rattling the patent case cage

David — Sat, 18 Nov 2006 08:34:29 +0000

Microsoft's silent threat of patent lawsuits against Linux users is beginning to solidify in the last couple of days. Since the announcement with Novell, Microsoft have been busy trying to establish similar patent protection deals with other Linux vendors. However their attempts have not been greeted warmly by Red Hat who's deputy general counsel ruled out any need for such an agreement on the grounds that "we do not believe there is a need for or basis for the type of relationship".

Fortunately for Microsoft they are not easily deterred by such confidence with CEO Steve Ballmer (in the words of Boing Boing) painting Linux users as patent crooks during a Q&A session on Friday. Although Ballmer did not say it so bluntly he did openly threaten businesses running Linux by stating that the Novell patent protection is crucial otherwise:

"We (Microsoft) believe every Linux customer basically has an undisclosed balance-sheet liability."

Source LinuxWorld - Linux Users Owe Microsoft

These are definitely fighting words but at some stage they are going to have to do more than just rattle their hypothetical sabres and actually sue. If (when) that day comes it will be a very interesting moment in open source history and be a pivotal moment in the future of Microsoft.

A clever site worth checking out

David — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 23:59:01 +0000

This site is very clever, it is called Microsoft Firefox and promotes/pulls fun out of Internet Explorer 7. It is all very professionally done with some very clever video, subtle jokes and links to other funny sites. No doubt the site will be taken down by Microsoft legal given its look and feel and abuse of the Microsoft copyright/trademark.

How things are shaping up with the Novell/Microsoft deal

David — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 23:01:29 +0000

If you are part of the Linux/Novell community last week you would have no doubt heard of the Microsoft - Novell agreement. When it was first announced it looked materially very boring on the surface comprising of a couple of virtualisation developments and a promise by the two companies to work on OfficeXML and directory system interoperability. All this is fairly trivial but what made the deal controversial was the promise from Microsoft not to sue Novell customers for using Linux.

The two 'problem' technologies that fall under this legal cloud is Mono, an implementation of Microsoft's .Net runtime for Linux and Samba, a SMB compatible client/server capable of mimicking the network functionality within Microsoft products. Whether or not there is any real legal grounds for patent infringement is a matter for debate. Neither break copyright laws and the extent of patent infringement by either project has never been described by any party. Nonetheless Microsoft has successfully created and maintained a cloud of uncertainty over these products, a feat helped in no small part by their support of the long running SCO vs IBM/Novell lawsuit (which boils down to the copyright status of some Linux code).

This agreement between Microsoft and Novell whilst not affirming any patent infringement claims does imply there are legitimate grounds. Both parties benefit from the Fear Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD) created from this agreement. Microsoft clouds the Linux legal waters forcing CEO's and CIO's to hesistate on purchases whilst Novell benefits financially and increases Linux sales thanks to the official support of Microsoft and their ability to preach that they are legally the safest Linux option. Unfortunately with a scenario like this there are always losers, the biggest in this case being Red Hat which was already staggering after Oracle's Unbreakable Linux moves a week earlier. There is also a question mark hanging over how this will effect the Linux community as a whole. The issue of patents is very significant yet up until this agreement the community, along with companies like IBM, Sun and Novell, have been able to present a united front against Microsoft threats.

Just to add fuel to the fire is the effect of the agreement on the GPL and Novell's ongoing ability to distribute GPL licensed software (e.g. Linux) as pointed out by Eben Moglen. Section 7 of the GPL states that GPL software cannot be sold for patent royalties. Up until this point Novell has always 'sold' Linux support and kept the software 'free', but the agreement with Microsoft implies that some of this revenue is actually being paid to Microsoft as royalties. This would violate the terms of the GPL and stop Novell from redistributing Linux (now effectively their primary operating system).

Yesterday Novell cleared this matter up through a series of public statements. In essence the media releases established that individual Novell customers were in fact creating a separate agreement with Microsoft when purchasing Novell Linux support and that Novell had nothing whatsoever to do with this covenant except they 'assisted' their customers by paying Microsoft on their behalf. Groklaw soon pointed out there are some considerable legal issues surrounding the move that may still invalidate the terms of the GPL. Although still not legally validated this is an interesting move by Novell/Microsoft as it sidesteps section 7 of the GPL, effectively allowing royalty payments for GPL software. No doubt the Free Software Foundation (FSF) will take a very close look at this agreement and there will be a strong desire among many in the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) community to have it struck down in court.

If the terms of distribution are proven to violate the GPL then Novell will face some significant problems. They will not be able to redistribute Linux or taut their legal superiority over other distributions. In fact in such as scenario they would loose most of the reputation they have in the industry, forcing into question their very existence. If proven to be violating the GPL Novell will have no choice but to either withdraw from the Microsoft agreement (at a cost of millions) or devise a means of making money from Linux in a way that does not entail actually distributing it.

Distributing just the closed source binaries (the secret sauce) that differentiate Suse Linux Enterprise and Open Enterprise Server from the community driven OpenSUSE distribution maybe an alternative. In my opinion this would not be a bad option, the value in Novell's products have for a long time existed in the tiers above the operating system, for example eDirectory, Groupwise, the Novell Client, Zenworks and Identity Services. By forcing the company to focus on easy distribution of these valuable services across a range of distributions it would actually open up new markets and business opportunities which their current, self-contained Enterprise distributions are not allowing.

No matter what happens I am sure the next few months will be very interesting, not just for Novell but for the entire Linux and FOSS community in general....

Windows Live to host college email

David — Wed, 03 May 2006 08:32:31 +0000

I talked about Windows Live a while back and so news that 72 U.S. colleges will be using Windows Live for student email services seemed quite relevant. It makes sense financially for the colleges and from Microsoft's perspective it gets customers early before they have made a definite decision on who their email provider will be. No doubt Google and Yahoo will soon be following this same path with their mail services in an effort to build (Google) and maintain (Yahoo) their user-base.

The move is another vindication of the software as a service concept and will help bring some sanity to educational IT departments. Victoria University should adopt the same policy for student email and file storage. If not sponsored by Microsoft/Google/Yahoo they should at least scrap student email and file storage services in favour of Google/Microsoft/Yahoo email and personal USB keys. The savings whilst not huge would add up over time, plus I am in no doubt that the big players could provide a better level of service and featureset than what any over-stretched educational IT department could ever provide.

Microsoft Office Live = Low cost web collaboration?

David — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 07:33:25 +0000

Today Microsoft released a Beta of Microsoft Office Live, a set of online tools targetted primarily at small businesses. With the product Microsoft appears to be aiming its big guns at SalesForce.com rather than Google's GMail, GTalk and rumoured calendar products. It is also a push to provide extra value within the Office lineup now that free software like OpenOffice are generating serious competition in their bread and butter, writing, counting and presenting marketspace. Microsoft Monitor has a good article about what Office Live is not which is probably more helpful than the stuff that comes out of Microsoft PR.

Regardless of how it is adopted worldwide it would appear to be a very good value proposition to New Zealand businesses. Currently vanilla hosting (web/email) are relatively expensive and for decent web/email/collaboration services it is easier (and often cheaper) to host things internally. If Microsoft can introduce these services within New Zealand at the same cost as advertised in the U.S. it should hopefully cause a shakeup within the local pricing structure. $50-$60 per month for email, web and basic collaboration services is extremely good value especially if Microsoft can integrate these online services with their desktop bretherin (which they will no doubt do). Another important concern for any business will be the backup/redundancy services offered. At this point it is unclear if this data can be easily backed up locally in a relatively open format (not encrypted Office Live only files).

It wil be interesting to see more in-depth reviews appear as the Beta-test invitations get sent out. Michael Arrington from TechCrunch has been behind the scenes at Readmond and certainly liked what he saw (much to Steve Gillmor's disgust). I am certainly interested in the collaboration features that get included in Office Live but more importantly how these features are integrated into future versions of Office and Windows itself (much like Apple is doing with .Mac).

The release of this coincided with an interesting Gillmor Daily (ODBC Part I) where the participants debated the future of IT within businesses and whether or not most services (like email and databases) would eventually be hosted elsewhere on the Net. The analogy of electricity was used as an example: no business generates their own electricity or maintains an electrician on staff to deal with major breakages. Rather all of these essential services are subscribed to or contracted in, leaving the business to focus its attention and resources on core business opportunities. Whether or not this becomes a reality is unclear but definitely in New Zealand the pricing, availability and quality of Internet access will need to significantly improve before such a dream becomes a reality.

Finally, a half descent native theme for Windows

David — Mon, 03 Oct 2005 11:17:05 +0000

Microsoft released this theme a while ago with Media Center but its only now come to my attention that they have released a native version for Windows XP. It is definitely a lot nicer than the default, jumbo sized button themes in Windows XP and less hassle to setup than WindowBlinds.

Download the Media Center (Royale) Theme for Windows XP