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Linux Business Businesses Microsoft SuSE

Microsoft To Buy $100M More SUSE Support Vouchers 157

CWmike writes "Microsoft will buy and resell up to another $100 million worth of enterprise support subscriptions for Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Server operating system. Two years ago, Microsoft agreed to buy and resell $240 million worth of the vouchers. Susan Hauser, general manager of strategic partnerships and licensing at Microsoft, confirmed that some of the subscription vouchers were sold to customers for less than face value, though none were given away for free."
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Microsoft To Buy $100M More SUSE Support Vouchers

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  • by gstoddart ( 321705 ) on Wednesday August 20, 2008 @01:58PM (#24677671) Homepage

    I really have no idea what this means, or why it is news.

    I believe, though I'm not certain, that by providing these vouchers, M$ is in fact helping to support interoperablity across platforms. Or, at least, they can be seen to be trying to help this. As a side benefit, they cycle some revenue through Novell, who they currently aren't at war with.

    I think this is part of the contact they entered into with Novell that everyone initially said would be used to fragment the OSS people by saying that only Novell would be unencumbered by patent claims.

    That's probably oversimplified, but that's my quick take on it.

    Cheers

  • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 20, 2008 @02:09PM (#24677875)

    Not sure Silverlight is that big of a deal, but getting it onto the Linux desktop would win it some non-trivial mind share because of the sub par flash implementations.

    And I guess the same is true of .NET and mono in general to a lesser extent.

  • by homer_ca ( 144738 ) on Wednesday August 20, 2008 @02:29PM (#24678249)

    Microsoft is reselling Novell support.

    at a loss.

    It's pretty clear the $100M is Novell's payback for signing the patent license agreement.

  • by Enderandrew ( 866215 ) <enderandrew@gCOB ... m minus language> on Wednesday August 20, 2008 @02:41PM (#24678501) Homepage Journal

    Antitrust isn't about market share so much as how well you play with others. You can be anti-competitive without a commanding market share. For instance, Intel is in hot water for demanding retailers not carry AMD products and without shipments from retailers who did. Intel doesn't have a 90% market share, but they can be held responsible for their tactics.

    Conversely, the local utility company has no competition, yet they are a legal monopoly. In some states, these "natural" monopolies are regulated.

    Microsoft can have a 93% OS market share, and get a pass if they behave well and play nicely with the other kids in the sandbox. Interoperability is precisely what the EU called for.

  • by Enderandrew ( 866215 ) <enderandrew@gCOB ... m minus language> on Wednesday August 20, 2008 @03:58PM (#24679941) Homepage Journal

    Microsoft isn't providing the support. Novell provides the support. Microsoft is reselling Novell support.

  • by mls ( 97121 ) on Wednesday August 20, 2008 @04:13PM (#24680173)

    Microsoft needs Silverlight penetration in order to compete with Flash. Windows is not where MS makes their money, software and tools like Office and Visual Studio is where they make money. Not to mention their want to compete with Google for ad revenue.

    Silverlight gives them the ability to deploy rich web versions of Office for a subscription.
    Silverlight gives them the ability to compete and control some of the advertisement market.
    Silverlight helps them sell servers and Visual Studio.
    Silverlight helps them gain more .NET developers, as well as allowing .NET developers access to newer platforms with the skills and software they already own.
    Silverlight helps them maintain control over Internet technologies, or at least stops some of their loss of control.

    As far as Microsoft doing this because Adobe changed their policy, I think the opposite is true. Adobe changed their policy as a stop-loss against Silverlight and XPS. Adobe needs to maintain their market share in light of their new competition from Microsoft.

  • by Jeremy Allison - Sam ( 8157 ) on Wednesday August 20, 2008 @08:37PM (#24683785) Homepage

    > As for contaminated IP, I would submit that Samba/CIFS and WINE have far more IP (patent) liability than mono does

    Yes, but you would be wrong about that.

    Jeremy.

  • by fejjie ( 192392 ) on Thursday August 21, 2008 @10:46AM (#24689525)

    NBCOlympics.com uses Silverlight 2.0 BETA.

    Moonlight is so far only reliable for 1.0 sites (although 2.0 is coming along rapidly, especially since Microsoft has released their Silverlight 2.0 System.Windows.Controls source code as Free Software under the MS-PL which is basically MIT/X11 + GPLv3-like Patent Protection).

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