Microsoft and Novell deliver Joint Virtualization Solution [LWN.net]

Microsoft and Novell deliver Joint Virtualization Solution

Posted Sep 11, 2008 16:58 UTC (Thu) by einstein (guest, #2052) [Link] (14 responses)

I see no substance, absolutely nothing of value here.

Does novell really think that the linux community has been eagerly awaiting the opportunity to virtualize their servers under ms windows?

Of all the things that a linux user could possibly hope for from the supposed "interoperability" agreement - e.g. access to the specs for various microsoft APIs, affordable legal licensing for w32 codecs, better samba features - not even the smallest hint has appeared. No, instead they give us this kind of crap, which we never wanted and will never use.

Microsoft and Novell deliver Joint Virtualization Solution

Posted Sep 11, 2008 17:05 UTC (Thu) by epa (subscriber, #39769) [Link] (1 responses)

If you don't want it then don't buy it. Presumably they have good reason to believe someone does want it, otherwise they wouldn't try to sell it. Your particular definition of the Linux 'community' is hardly relevant here - what matters are businesses running both Linux and Windows and wanting to consolidate their servers.

That said, you could certainly do so before this announcement, so it may appeal mostly to those who insist everything be 'certified' by 'vendors' before they can run it.

Microsoft and Novell deliver Joint Virtualization Solution

Posted Sep 11, 2008 19:06 UTC (Thu) by einstein (guest, #2052) [Link]

> If you don't want it then don't buy it.

Oh, trust me, we won't.

> Your particular definition of the Linux 'community' is hardly relevant here - what matters are businesses running both Linux and Windows and wanting to consolidate their servers.

I work for a fortune 100 firm that runs linux and windows, as well as mainframe and other unix flavors. We are a big novell customer, not only sles but also edirectory. But I have to tell you, we have no use for these latest (or any other) fruits of the microsoft/novell "partnership". We have seen absolutely no benefit, only press releases promoting the supposed "interoperability" benefits.

BTW we do virtualize some servers, but with vmware.

Microsoft and Novell deliver Joint Virtualization Solution

Posted Sep 11, 2008 17:12 UTC (Thu) by epa (subscriber, #39769) [Link]

affordable legal licensing for w32 codecs

See Moonlight, the free implementation of Microsoft's Silverlight framework. Microsoft are paying for codec licensing so you can play patented audio and video formats on the web legally, even in countries like the United States which grant patents on software. It's not free software: the codecs come as binary blobs, and the patent licence only covers usage within the Moonlight browser plugin. (That is not to say Microsoft will personally sue you for patent infringement if you run the codecs outside that area, just that they haven't paid the various patent cartels for that usage, so in principle the MPEG-LA or whoever could sue you.) But it is 'affordable' in the sense of not paying any money.

This is hardly ideal - we all wish swpats would just go away - but if you want a legal solution for video playback in Linux, keeping as much as possible to free software apart from those bits that have to be binary blobs for legal reasons, then it's about as good as you can get.

Microsoft and Novell deliver Joint Virtualization Solution

Posted Sep 12, 2008 8:41 UTC (Fri) by DonDiego (guest, #24141) [Link] (9 responses)

What do you want affordable "legal" licensing of Win32 codecs for? Nowadays every Microsoft codec except for Windows Media Audio 3 and its variants as well as some rare WMV3/VC-1 variants can be played entirely with free software.

Microsoft and Novell deliver Joint Virtualization Solution

Posted Sep 16, 2008 13:39 UTC (Tue) by massimiliano (subscriber, #3048) [Link] (8 responses)

Nowadays every Microsoft codec [...] can be played entirely with free software.

Can be played, yes. And "freely", also.

But not legally (at least in some countries) due to patent issues, and even Microsoft does not own all the patents so they have to pay to license them.

In the Moonlight case, Microsoft is paying for the patent licenses, and this is one of the reasons why we get that binary blob, which you can freely replace with ffmpeg if you rebuild Moonlight from source, and if for you is legal doing so.

This comment above is really correct and informative.

Microsoft and Novell deliver Joint Virtualization Solution

Posted Sep 18, 2008 8:27 UTC (Thu) by DonDiego (guest, #24141) [Link] (7 responses)

Please explain what you mean by the term "legal". Which laws are being broken and what sanctions have people suffered due to breaking of said laws? Who has gone to jail, who has paid a fine, who has received a warning letter?

Microsoft and Novell deliver Joint Virtualization Solution

Posted Sep 18, 2008 12:17 UTC (Thu) by massimiliano (subscriber, #3048) [Link] (6 responses)

Please explain what you mean by the term "legal". Which laws are being broken and what sanctions have people suffered due to breaking of said laws?

AFAIK, patent laws, in the countries that allow software patents and recognize the patents affecting those codecs.
I am not a lawyer, but I work in the Mono team so I have seen from the inside (from a developer's perspective) some of the issues involved in the Moonlight agreement. Particularly, Novell would like to distribute codecs for all formats, but cannot without paying for the licenses herself, and we would have liked to have the Microsoft-supplied binary codec package also licensed for "regular desktop use" (and not just the browser), but, believe it or not, this would have meant higher licensing fees for Microsoft...

This legal situation is bad, and we should push to eliminate software patents. Meanwhile, these are the rules of the game.

Who has gone to jail, who has paid a fine, who has received a warning letter?

Likely, no individual user has. But a large corporation found breaking the rules would get the consequences immediately, if somebody could profit from it.

Ciao,
Massimiliano

Microsoft and Novell deliver Joint Virtualization Solution

Posted Sep 18, 2008 22:37 UTC (Thu) by DonDiego (guest, #24141) [Link] (5 responses)

So if the only problems that have ever appeared were for distributors with deep pockets, why do you claim that playback is illegal? This is a false claim that just creates a patent scare.

Nobody has ever had legal problems by using free software codecs to play content. Please do not create FUD by pretending otherwise, you are not helping anybody.

Microsoft and Novell deliver Joint Virtualization Solution

Posted Sep 19, 2008 12:55 UTC (Fri) by massimiliano (subscriber, #3048) [Link] (4 responses)

Please, let's not mix unrelated things. AFAIK, using and/or distributing Free Software codecs like ffmpeg is not legal in the USA, for anybody. Large corporations and individual users are subject to the same law.

And I'd really like to be proven wrong on this!
So, if you can demonstrate the opposite, please do, and you will make me a happier man.

That said, you know that doing something illegal does not mean you will be discovered, or punished. It just means you did it.

Since a patent cause costs lots of money, people do patent causes only when they think that in the end they will get the money back and earn more in the end. If you sue a single user, there's no way he will repay you of the cost of suing him, so nobody does it. In this sense you are right, individual users are "practically safe", nobody is likely to care about them.

But I don't think this means that using ffmpeg in the USA is legal: it just means individual users will get away with it, because suing them is not worth the money it takes.

Microsoft and Novell deliver Joint Virtualization Solution

Posted Sep 19, 2008 21:09 UTC (Fri) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (3 responses)

IANAL, especially not a US L, but I didn't think patent infringement was
actually a criminal offence, i.e. illegal. It might be a civil tort over
which the patent holder could seek to recover funds from you, but that
doesn't make it *illegal*.

Microsoft and Novell deliver Joint Virtualization Solution

Posted Sep 20, 2008 10:25 UTC (Sat) by massimiliano (subscriber, #3048) [Link] (2 responses)

IANAL, especially not a US L, but I didn't think patent infringement was actually a criminal offence, i.e. illegal.

Ok, this could explain the misunderstanting.

I live in Italy, and English is not my mother tongue. Here in Italy we have a distinction between civil and penal codes (and laws), where civil ones have as "punishment" fines and/or paying damages, while infringing a "penal law" can send you to jail.

However, we call "illegal" any act that infringes a law, be it a civil or penal matter. If English has a different word for describing the fact that infringing the civil code is against the law, and if patent laws are in the civil code (which I think is true), then sorry for defining patent infringement "illegal"...

Anyway, could we just agree that using ffmpeg and other Free Software codecs without paying royalties to the MPAA and other patent holders is "against the law" in the USA? That was the point of my original message...

Microsoft and Novell deliver Joint Virtualization Solution

Posted Sep 20, 2008 10:57 UTC (Sat) by DonDiego (guest, #24141) [Link] (1 responses)

No, we cannot agree because there is no law which says that using free software to decode video is forbidden! The original point of your message is wrong, this is what I am trying to tell you. So stop spreading FUD once and for all please.

There are some organizations that might (or might not) come to collect protection money from you, but you are not doing anything illegal if they do not come for you. This is a very important difference.

The only ones who may (or may not) have something to fear are big commercial distributions. Do not pretend that their situation is in any way related to the situation of the users of free software solutions for video decoding.

And remember that the world is bigger than the USA. You are making it sound as if a problem that exists for a few companies operating in certain markets extends to 6 billion people worldwide.

Also, the MPAA has nothing to do with this, you are confused.

Microsoft and Novell deliver Joint Virtualization Solution

Posted Sep 28, 2008 23:02 UTC (Sun) by pboddie (guest, #50784) [Link]

There are some organizations that might (or might not) come to collect protection money from you, but you are not doing anything illegal if they do not come for you. This is a very important difference.

That's like saying, "You may be chased by the police when robbing a bank, but you are not doing anything illegal if you make a quick getaway." And before anyone repeats the civil vs. criminal distinction, be aware that various agreements and directives are in place, with more to come, which seek to erase such distinctions.

Also, the MPAA has nothing to do with this, you are confused.

On the contrary, all the lobbying for criminal penalties on previously civil matters is all about punishing "the pirates", and who else is the poster boy for that particular crusade?

Microsoft and Novell deliver Joint Virtualization Solution

Posted Sep 15, 2008 19:07 UTC (Mon) by wmf (guest, #33791) [Link]

I suspect this will appeal to people in the *Windows* community who want a "comfortable" way to try out Linux.

Linux guest on a Windows host

Posted Sep 11, 2008 17:05 UTC (Thu) by abacus (guest, #49001) [Link] (5 responses)

Does anyone understand the relevance of running a Linux guest on a Windows host, instead of the other way around ? Is the only relevance of this that Microsoft is afraid of VMWare's competition (see also http://lwn.net/Articles/294812/) ?

Linux guest on a Windows host

Posted Sep 11, 2008 18:04 UTC (Thu) by einstein (guest, #2052) [Link]

The relevance is that running the guests under windows puts microsoft firmly in control, and in position to eventually levy whatever fees they want to. Want to run 20 debian instances? Sure, microsoft is fine with that, as long as they are running under their control.

Linux guest on a Windows host

Posted Sep 11, 2008 23:18 UTC (Thu) by leoc (guest, #39773) [Link]

It's obvious isn't it? You get all the performance and reliability of Windows with the ability to run all that enterprise Linux-only software you keep hearing about.

Linux guest on a Windows host

Posted Sep 12, 2008 4:26 UTC (Fri) by rahvin (guest, #16953) [Link]

The benefit is that Microsoft has named VMWare one of their number one enemies. Microsoft sees VMWare as a serious competitor who could eventually rob them of license revenue. If Microsoft can't insert itself into the virtualization space they run the risk of declines in revenue as the result of virtualized linux server instances replacing Microsoft services.

The problem is the Microsoft doesn't get it.

Linux guest on a Windows host

Posted Sep 12, 2008 9:43 UTC (Fri) by NigelK (guest, #42083) [Link]

If a company relies on Windows servers, they're not going to switch over to Linux overnight, but rather switch individual services to the guest Linux system one by one over time. From a CxO point of view, it's less risky that way.

Eventually so many services will be working so well in the guest Linux system that not only will it be easier from that point on to make the complete switch to Linux, but CxO's will realise that it's just not cost effective to stick with Windows on those servers.

Linux guest on a Windows host

Posted Sep 12, 2008 12:48 UTC (Fri) by skitching (guest, #36856) [Link]

It doesn't look to me like "running a linux guest on a windows host" is the right description. From the wikipedia on hyper-v, it looks more like Xen than kvm, ie guests run on a hypervisor (which is *not* windows). However there clearly is some windows required (this "parent partition"); I wonder if this is just for running the vm-management tools, or whether it does more..

See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyper-V

Microsoft and Novell deliver Joint Virtualization Solution

Posted Sep 15, 2008 7:35 UTC (Mon) by buchanmilne (guest, #42315) [Link] (1 responses)

Seems one would be better off buying RHEL5 Advanced, you get supported virtualisation with Xen, including support for Windows guests, unlimited RHEL guests inheriting the subscriptions of the host (aka free clustering, GFS etc.) and live migration.

I haven't seen any authoritative list of features, but AFAICR, Hyper-V has no live migration support at present.

With an 80-core (5 16-core boxes) running a Xen cluster on RHEL5, I really don't see a need for this in our environment ...

Microsoft and Novell deliver Joint Virtualization Solution

Posted Sep 15, 2008 19:10 UTC (Mon) by wmf (guest, #33791) [Link]

Until oVirt arrives, Microsoft's (and VMware's and Citrix's) management tools look much better than what's included in RHEL.

Mixed Source

Posted Sep 18, 2008 21:09 UTC (Thu) by kbob (guest, #1770) [Link]

"Mixed-source environments"? Does that mean open source and closed source?
(-: