I recently received an email from Novell regarding an overview of the interoperability aims between Novell and Microsoft. The following link has a webinar, presentation and a virtualisation white paper.
There seems to be some momentum building behind this agreement from the customer side. Apparently 12 new customers have signed up and Dell is joining the “love in”.
I saw a news story that someone had tried to get Ubuntu to authenticate against Longhorn Server and failed. This is precisely the issue that the Novell/Microsoft agreement was designed to address.
![[This is a SBS Community blog you are reading. Are you subscribed to the Official SBS blog?]](http://www.sbslinks.com/images/sbsblogweb.jpg "This is a SBS Community Blog you are reading. Are you subscribed to the Official SBS blog?")
May 13th, 2007 at 2:51 am
Thanks for the link to my post about failing to get Ubuntu and Longhorn server to authenticate. I have had some comments for Samba people who said that the issue will be fixed in an upcoming release.
I have also done more work with features that Microsoft have taken out of Services for Unix and put into the main operating system such as NIS authenticion which I was able to get working. http://odin749.blogspot.com/2007/05/longhorn-server-nis-authentication.html
I disagree that the primary reason for the Novell and Microsoft deal was for greater cooperation between the 2 companies. It was mainly to exempt Novell customers from patent law suits.
May 13th, 2007 at 11:26 am
I understand what you’re saying. The Patent aspect of the deal is not my favourite aspect of the agreement. The SCO vs IBM case has shown that there is no IP infringement in Linux. I think Steve Ballmer’s reference to possible patent issues with other distributions of Linux is mainly wishful thinking. It would be a huge PR disaster for Microsoft and my own view is that it would not have widespread support within Microsoft (I don’t know this, but it’s just my gut feeling).
What I like to focus on is the interoperability work and what will come out of that. This is the right thing for customers and will aid Linux’s wider adoption. Microsoft has essentially accepted that Linux is here to stay and customers want greater cooperation between the vendors.