Novel and Microsoft

[George Toft]

My $0.015 (not quite 2 cents) worth . . .

Like the article points out, virtualization is a huge trend in the IT 
industry.  Full virtualization (VMWare, MS Virtual Server) are slow 
compared to paravirtualization (Xen).  Companies are looking to 
consolidate and virtualize servers, so if Microsoft partners with a 
Linux company that already has a paravirt product, then they sell more 
OS licenses.

Red Hat states that with paravirtualization under Xen 3.0.3, near native 
speeds are achievable.  Anyone who has used VMWare knows it is nowhere 
near native-speed.  In my own Xen experiments, it is very responsive and 
snappy.  [Side note - I went to Fry's to price out a mobo/CPU/RAM combo 
that would support Xen - just $800!!!]

There are two Linux vendors that support Xen - SuSE (AKA Novell) and Red 
Hat (well, not yet, but they will next year when RHEL5 comes out).  The 
MS/Novell team will perfect running Windows under Xen and take the 
market by storm.  95% of Fortune 500 companies use Novell products (saw 
that somewhere).  100% use Microsoft.  These two companies are already 
deep inside corporate America.  Red Hat isn't.

The next few years are going to be really interesting.

George Toft, CISSP, MSIS
623-203-1760




Michael Havens wrote:
> The way I understand it, If you contribute to an open  source project the 
> project stays open source, This means MS and Novel are reeling in a red 
> herring when it states that they WON'Tassert their patents. This tells me 
> that there is an alterior motive.... now, we wait for those who have a clue 
> to comment :!)
> |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
> <quotes from article>
> As part of this agreement, Microsoft will provide a covenant not to assert its 
> patent rights against customers who have purchased SUSE Linux Enterprise 
> Server or other covered products from Novell, and Novell will provide an 
> identical covenant to customers who have a licensed version of Windows or 
> other covered products from Microsoft.
> 
>  First, Microsoft will work with Novell and actively contribute to several 
> open source software projects, including projects focused on office file 
> formats and web services management.  Second, Microsoft will not assert its 
> patents against individual non-commercial open source developers and users.  
> And third, Microsoft is promising not to assert its patents against 
> individual contributors to openSUSE.org whose code is included in the SUSE 
> Linux Enterprise platform, including SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and SUSE 
> Linux Enterprise Desktop.
> 
> ---------------------------------------------------
> PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss at lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
> To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change  you mail settings:
> http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss
> 
>