Text 2827, 72 rader
Skriven 2005-07-18 14:13:02 av Paul Rogers (1:105/360.0)
Ärende: M$ vs Linux
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11 July 2005
Microsoft in hands-on Linux lab shock
*Company keen to show how Windows is more secure*

By _Matthew Broersma, Techworld_

Microsoft made Linux one of the top items on the agenda of its Worldwide
Partner Conference
<http://www.microsoft.com/partner/events/wwpartnerconference/> over the
weekend, complete with tips on how to demolish the open-source
competition and a hands-on lab letting partners try out the operating
system.

Chief executive Steve Ballmer exhorted partners to take aim at "legacy"
products such as IBM's Lotus Notes and Novell's Netware, calling IBM
Microsoft's No. 1 competitor. Sessions such as "Selling Against
Competitive Platforms" and "Winning in the mid-market vs. Linux",
however, acknowledged that Linux has emerged as the main competition for
customers looking to switch away from IBM, Novell or NT4.

A talk by Mike Nash, corporate vice president of Microsoft's Security
Business and Technology Unit, claimed Microsoft's progress on security
in the past two years has made Windows more secure than Linux. Windows
XP SP2 has had half the number of critical vulnerabilities compared with
earlier versions of Windows in the nine months since SP2's release in
August 2004, Nash said.

Microsoft even brought in Techstream <http://www.techstream.com/>, a
small IT training firm, to run a hands-on Linux lab for partners
interested in knowing more about open source. The lab allowed attendees
to try out Apache and a Linux installation with the KDE desktop
interface, according to a report in industry journal eWeek.

Techstream's Don Johnson reportedly said Linux is more flexible than
Windows, with the trade-offs being complexity and lack of integration.
While users might switch to Linux to avoid vendor lock-in, distributors
such as Red Hat and Novell's Suse Linux effectively lock users in,
Johnson said, since switching from them is "by no means easy".

The presence of Linux at a major Microsoft event is another sign of
change in Microsoft's attitude towards open source. The company once
contented itself with demonising open-source software, and particularly
the GNU General Public License that governs Linux. But in recent months
Microsoft has opened up to dialogue with top executives at Linux vendors
and has begun regularly appearing at Linux trade shows.

These moves might seem to point to a more relaxed attitude, but
open-source leaders see them as nothing more than a new tactic to help
Microsoft understand its enemy.

"If Microsoft were to really try to exist in harmony (with open source
developers) then they'd need to do something to adjust the
controller/controllee relationship with their customers," Andrew Morton,
lead maintainer for the Linux public production kernel, told Techworld.

"Open source is about giving users the freedom to understand the
software, to contribute to it, to make changes which they need, to
integrate it with other products. I expect that if (Microsoft) were to
do anything in that area it would be contrary to shareholders'
interests, so it won't be happening."



Paul Rogers, paulgrogers@yahoo.com                       -o)
http://www.angelfire.com/or/paulrogers                   /\\
Rogers' Second Law: Everything you do communicates.     _\_V

... Every hard-boiled egg is yellow inside.
___ MultiMail/MS-DOS v0.35

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