Novell discovers what it's like to work with a "partner" like Microsoft now that Novell employees are left to make Microsoft hooks work

OpenSUSE is down for the weekend and there are no proper fallbacks

Just as Microsoft has being accused of playing dirty over sales tactics and patents, the software company has launched its first open source organization. The CodePlex Foundation aims to act as a liason between commercial enterprises and open source developers and communities while increasing open source participation, says the foundation.

Microsoft is Microsoft. The Codex Foundation claims that it 'will complement existing open source foundations and organizations, providing a forum in which best practices and shared understanding can be established by a broad group of participants, both software companies and open source communities.' I don't believe it for a minute.

Shaun Walker, chief architect and co-founder at open source vendor, DotNetNuke, defended his decision to join the interim board of directors of the Microsoft-sponsored CodePlex project.

Whenever I write about Microsoft here I usually get a few comments asking me, with varying degrees of politeness, why I am wasting electrons on this subject on a site devoted to GNU/Linux. The reason I do this – and why I am about to do it again – is that whether we like it or not, Microsoft remains probably the single most important external factor in the free software world.

In preparation for the stupendous launch of Microsoft Windows %NEXT_VERSION% in October, Microsoft is organising a detailed word-of-mouth push.

Host your own Windows 7 launch party and play the Windows 7 Drinking Game!

The Mono team brings the iPhone closer to Microsoft's turf; CodePlex Foundation analysed further