Microsoft executive Martin Taylor’s schedule is packed with meetings like the one in June when he met with representatives from French drugmaker Aventis in his Redmond, Wash. office. Aventis has tied together groups of computers running not Microsoft’s operating system but the freely available Linux. These high-performance clusters can analyze proteins at blazing speeds. “That’s great for Linux,” Taylor said cheerily, at the time.
Microsoft sings a new tune on Linux
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Eugenia Loli
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So…. you have linux up and running and it’s costing you ZERO £’s per node….. Mmmmmm How about we pay out £1000 per node to have Microsoft Super Cluster Windows Edition installed?
O, you have so say it gave you better TCO?
Ins’t Microsoft creating a version of windows to be used on high performance clusters?
So Martin Taylor is probably just going after the actual linux clusters to try to move them to Windows..
This article is full of the kind of rhetoric that makes my head spin. Just read it to get a feel. Or better yet, don’t. They really piled it on this time.
They have working clusters, why on earth would they choose to switch and lose weeks of productivity? Surely he doesn’t honestly think they’ll jump ship to something else and give up a WORKING SYSTEM.
First thing I did after configuring a cluster was a tape backup of the whole system. I don’t wanna go back through configuring it on ANY OS.
this is the same article that was posted on Forbes.com and news.yahoo.com and linked on OSNews a week ago ( http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=7894 )
“At a recent gathering of venture capitalists Ballmer went so far as to suggest Microsoft might own intellectual property in Linux and assured the audience that Microsoft would pursue any violation of its own patents. Before he spoke, a fire alarm went off. “It was eerily symbolic,” says a venture capitalist in attendance. “We all scattered.” Microsoft denies this, and says it will not litigate.”
Sounds like to me the lawyers pulled the fire alarm just in time. I can imagine as the words rolled off of Balmer’s lips their gasps as they realize Balmer’s admitting to Microsoft’s plan for a patent war against Linux. Eeek!!! He’s admitting to antitrust and monopoly tactics. Trying to force a competitor out of the market by using patents to crush their only real competition on the x86 platform.
I love Windows, but I really hate Microsoft. Now this makes me hate them even more.
Yeah, not only was the article posted on another site but it was commented on here at OSNews. Unfortunately the comments degenerated into Windows v. Linux nonsense with little reaction to the article.
“I love Windows, but I really hate Microsoft. Now this makes me hate them even more.”
I’m in the same boat. I love Windows. I like their products. For me, and in only my opinion, their operating system and software is top-notch and dead-on easy to use. Yep, it’s got it’s share of problems, but I’ve only been had once (browser hijack).
I cannot stand Microsoft.
Think that they have realized their old strategy wont work, so they are using some of their patents to get rid of a lovely system though….
I dont know if they will succeed, because linux can be copied freely of no charge…
I dont think that they will get rid of linux, because it is not the user who will pay, only people who have done some code for making some money.
They will not get rid of linux, and if they can, it will be as hard as stopping any piracy of music, movies and software.
Great article with an unusual perspective. Its also good to see that MS has finally realized that they were being just as illogical and religous as the Linux zealots, and are going to start approaching open source more reasonably.
Also, I love the part where the Microsoft guy accuses Linux of not innovating, then lists off “new” features comming in Longhorn that he claims MS “created”, like the ability to remotely power a computer on and off (nothing new), power off whith applications running (suspend-to-disk?), and of course their clone of the many years old Be file system.
Yeah, real innovators there.
This is true maybe for end users but business users will drop it like a hot potato in this case. And that is where the money is which is why companies like Novell and Redhat work on it etc etc etc.
Wonder if a code audit is required at Redmond.
“Even Intel, […] , supports Linux running on its Pentium processors.”
what? i always thought linux supports pentium processors and not the other way around.
Maybe the money-oriented linux businesses will suffer but then they’re not targeting home users anyway. Someone who wants linux can still get it off the internet and use it …
What a horrible analogy. First of all, the religion doesn’t interferes with science in any way. Only the fundamentalist believers and fundamentalist science people could say that. They exist side by side without contradicting each other. You just need have a more mature point of view about life in general. Life isn’t just two sides fighting each other e.g. linux & Microsoft, science & religion, communism & capitalism, etc. To understand religion you should have a philosophical way of thinking and only then you can understand what it’s telling you. You have to be some sort of philoshopher. So tell me how philosophy as a science can neglect let’s say computer science and the other way round. All fundamentalists suck no matter whoever they are.
I’m not a christian though I’m europeanian but I have been studying yoga for a quite long time now and you know what? I was kind of scepticist at the begining but I still haven’t found any contradictions to the modern science. The only thing I noticed that todays scientific discoveries just keep comfirming what indian philosophers have discoveried few thousand years ago. But science people in the first side of the past century were just laughing from them and inventing their own theories. They were fundamentalists. Now laugh at them. So don’t make comparisons and contradictions when you aren’t a guru at both sides. Else you are no better than Microsoft is. Have a nice day
The MS represenetive states that in the past MS just didn’t get Linux, but now that Novell, IBM, and Red Hat “represent” Linux they can fight it because now Linux is a “company” product. Looks like they still don’t get it. Linux’ diversity is it’s strength. MS can attack these companies, but that does not affect Linux. How about Debian, Slackware, Knoppix, Mepis, and all the hundreds of other non-corporate sponsored Linux. If you kill it off in one place it will just spring up in another place…literally like those weeds in your garden. It is free and well designed. It’s spread is inevitable.
Yeah!.. Now I got that idea. Open source movement borrowed the idea invented long time ago in ancient Greece by Hydra. You cut off one of it’s heads and in it’s place you have one more head. Hehe, the more heads you cut off the more harder fight will be. What a nice perspective we have… *grin*
I hightly doubt that M$ will be even a bit successful with this move. There is absolutely no place for Windows in the datacenter, it is laughable even to think that Windows can be used in high performance clusters. Windows is still a piece of crap OS from the purveyors of the crappiest software in the history of software regardless of how M$ is trying to pitch it. If you want reliable and affordable high performance solutions, look no further than good old Unix or Linux.
Thats a great point Andrew. Sure you can view Linux / GPL /GNU code but how can the coders tell if M$ isn’t blatantly ripping off Linux?
-Nx