On Sunday 05 November 2006 02:34, Anders Johansson wrote:
and ONLY when there are "software solutions developed through the collaborative research effort" (but clearly ONLY if said solutions REQUIRE Linux - Which seems unlikely, and certainly these solutions wont exist for some time (likely years away).
You seem to be reading words that aren't there. There is no "only" in that quote you give, and the paranthesis is taken only from your imagination
I CAN parse the english language Anders. It IS my native tongue. It clearly says: " so customers can benefit from the use of the new software solutions developed through the collaborative research effort,". There are no such solutions. Further, the microsoft Faq on their web site is even MORE specific: http://www.microsoft.com/interop/msnovellcollab/faq.mspx " Microsoft will make these coupons available to joint customers who are interested in deploying virtualized Windows on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, or virtualized SUSE Linux Enterprise Server on Windows." So clearly the focus of this is on the virtualiztion products to be developed jointly, since neither company has any viable products that do this currently. If your friendly local Microsoft sales man (do such people exist?) walks in and you tell him you are moving your servers to Linux you will never see this coupon. Both FAQs state that the coupons are only for users of products that are created under the collaborative research effort. That is the point of my post. Such products do not exist today. Which is fine. Why would anyone expect any different? Microsoft isn't going to pay your way to SuSE. (Nor is it clear these coupons will be free...) My take on this is Novell has a couple things Microsoft wants: 1) Three or five different flavors and sizes of authentication products. (A recent edition (last summer some time) of Novell magazine had articles on all of these products, - which was written in mind numbing prose making it virtually impossible to distinguish one of these solutions from the other.) Clearly Novell is the leader in this area, although not entirely linux focused. 2) Infrastructure Management (ZenWorks) These are things that Novell can license independent of the GPL, which Microsoft needs. They are just applications, which Novell owns. (Anybody who has managed a big Microsoft Network knows that the whole Domain Controller / Active Directory lashup is a creaking behemoth, ready to collapse of its own weight. MS probably realizes this.) OpenOffice probably needs no help from Microsoft. There is no IP issues involved in converting your own documents to OpenOffice formats. Further Microsoft is eminently capable of providing what they need for their own products to be compatible with odf. They need no help from Novell for this. Microsoft has already taken a couple runs at Samba, and were not successful. There are mysteries that remain in the smb/cifs protocol that Microsoft could help with. Especially if they plan to change it in the future to lock out the Samba project. This is about the only thing I see Microsoft bringing to the table (other than a bag full of FUD-Scared customers). -- _____________________________________ John Andersen