The pattern continues. What at first sight might seem like innocent news about Windows playing nice with GNU/Linux is actually more than that (or rather — less than that). As Matt Asay puts it, “Microsoft opens up to Linux for System Center, but on a very short leash.”

We warned about this a couple of weeks back, the context being Yankee Group FUD, but it’s worth repeating and presenting this alongside some more material and background, as well as new supportive stories.

During the SCO vs Novell trial, last year, it was determined that Novell owned the copyrights to AT&T UNIX' source code and derivatives. Darl McBride, CEO of SCO speaking at the Novell vs SCO countertrial disagrees. He "stated that SCO holds the copyrights over UNIX", and that "many Linux contributors were originally UNIX developers.

There's an interesting comparison on CNN Money between the Apple MacBook Air, the Everex Cloudbook, and the Sony VAIO Tz 298N. Cost wise the Sony was at the top at nearly 4 grand, while the Everex nailed the low end at $400. A nice order-of-magnitude cost spread there. I'll let the Gentle Reader find out on their on what the writer's favorite machine was, but it wasn't the Cloudbook:

Over the past few months we have shown evidence and provided actual examples of Microsoft advertisers in disguise. They occupy blogs, forums and even news sites.

The claim that .Net is a multiplatform standard is rendered false: .NET developers are further locked into a single vendor. Java, in contrast, is fully open source and has the developer community.

Preluded by the discomforting subject line “Microsoft infiltrating into open source world,” we have just received a headsup from an anonymous reader.

Microsoft’s smear campaign against OpenDocument Format continues. It’s not only a Vice President from Novell who participates in this. It’s also comes from the usual suspects.