News from Mixrosoft Linux

[viking60]

http://www.novell.com/prblogs/?p=2405

It’s pretty safe to say that most all Novell customers are also Microsoft customers

Analyze this.

[dedanna1029]

One thing that's interesting to me, is that they never did mention the patent suit against M$ for MS Office, and that M$ doesn't hold the patent on it any more... doesn't that enter into the equation at all?

[viking60]

Please elaborate.

[dedanna1029]

Well, they seem to be centered around the debate between MS Office and OpenOffice.org. I mean, look how that article is started:

It’s safe to say that Microsoft’s Office is the mostly widely used office suite in the enterprise today. There are of course excellent challengers such as OpenOffice that we at Novell champion, but the numbers tell us that Microsoft Office is the market leader.

#1. We know where that's going, and #2, they go from there later on in the article to compare MS Office 2003 with MS Office 2007, and the effect of each on the consumer.

Hello, why are we even discussing these things, when MS doesn't own MS Office any more? How is that going to impact future customers of Novell, and the goals that are being discussed in the article for the consumer? They are also unclear as to their aim with an office suite for Microsoft (as Linux is hardly mentioned at all throughout the article; it appears to be mostly MS/Windows-centric). Are they saying they want to support MS Office for their business deployment applications, or something more open, such as OpenOffice.org? What do they want?

I can see that they think ZENworks would be a good deployment for business applications, but for who/what? Microsoft applications, or Linux?

[viking60]

It sure looks like they are promoting MS-Office to me,

[dedanna1029]

If they are, then we have to ask why, given its history. I mean they give their reasons there, but still, it seems there's got to be something deeper going on than just "hrr hrr we tink it's mo' better", when they're ignoring the fact that it's not even "officially" supported any more.

[viking60]

I think Novell is directed by Microsoft. Also Novell is NOT a Linux company so it is fair to promote MS products. But "defending" opensource - while in bed with Microsoft? It does not compute.
One thing Microsoft is good at, is putting others in the front line. They are to clever to be there by themselves all the time.
Let us not forget this:

What we agreed, which is true, is we'll continue to try to grow Windows share at the expense of Linux. That's kind of our job. But to the degree that people are going to deploy Linux, we want Suse Linux to have the highest percent share of that, because only a customer who has Suse Linux actually has paid properly for the use of intellectual property from Microsoft.

Steve Ballmer Microsoft

MS is open - and that is fair - about fighting Linux. What is not fair, is fighting Linux from the inside -sailing under a false flag.
(And of course a the FUD that they have rights to some of the Linux code without wanting to specify it)

[dedanna1029]

Yeah, but then MS Office isn't Microsoft's any more... it's not a Microsoft product.

[viking60]

Yeah, but then MS Office isn't Microsoft's any more... it's not a Microsoft product.

Prove it!

[dedanna1029]

It's all over the place.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=mi ... =&gs_rfai=

They are currently banned from selling Word in the U.S., which puts the Office suite into question (what will they do now with it kind of thing).

[viking60]

Sorry I could not find anything there about MS-office not belonging to Microsoft.