[News] Copyleft-type Licenses Spread to Mashups, Microsoft..

Serena extends Creative Commons license to mashups

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| Serena Software is licensing its Business Mashups software under Creative
| Commons licenses and encourages other software companies to do the same,
| Serena said on Monday.
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http://www.thestandard.com/news/2008/03/11/serena-extends-creative-com...s-licen

Virtualization Real Issue For Software Licensing

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| Microsoft has captured market share in the past by integrating applications
| with its operating systems and other products, Reeves points out. He cites
| what happened with Novell's (NASDAQ:NOVL) NetWare network operating system.
|
| "The way (Microsoft) took over market share from Novell is they tied
| Exchange, SQL Server, (Web server) IIS and Active Directory to their
| operating system," he said. "How long will it be before Microsoft begins to
| tie those applications to Hyper-V?"
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http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/newstex/IBD-0001-23722430.htm


Related:

Microsoft insults our intelligence on Virtualization security

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| Microsoft has once again pulled out the security argument for its
| decision again and I must say that I find it rather insulting.  It's
| not that I think Microsoft doesn't have a right as a private business
| to set the terms of the EULA as they see fit, but don't take us for f
| ools.  If they want to restrict Virtualization, just come out and
| say it and don't make up ridiculous excuses for it.
|
| [...]
|
| Trying to stop a Hypervisor Rootkit with a EULA is like trying to
| stop Malware with a EULA.
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http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=549


Is need for control behind Microsoft's flip-flop?

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| Meanwhile, Gartner analyst Michael Silver took Microsoft to task
| for its continued restrictions.
|
| "Microsoft's policies...come off as a way to gouge customers," Silver
| said in an e-mail, noting that customers are forced to pay for higher
| priced editions, even though they don't get many of the benefits, like
|  the Aero user interface, which often won't work in a virtual machine.
|
| Silver argues that Microsoft is likely leaving money on the table.
| "Allowing use of lower priced (editions) could even be worth more
| money to Microsoft as it would likely increase the number of people
| that would legally run a Microsoft OS in a VM (like on a Mac),"
| Silver wrote. "Eventually they will have no choice but to make their
| peace with virtualization."
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http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-9733433-7.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag...47-1_3-


Vista Home Editions Won't Run On Mac, Linux Virtual Machines

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| That means Linux aficionados or users of Apple Macs will not legally
| be able to use software from vendors such as Parallels or EMC's VMWare
| to create so-called virtual machines on their desktops to run Vista
| alongside their favorite OS. Windows users wanting to run Vista in a
| virtual machine environment for security or productivity purposes
| also will need either the Business or Ultimate Edition.
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http://www.channelweb.com/sections/allnews/article.jhtml?articleId=197...013&cid
http://tinyurl.com/39xozq


Microsoft flip-flops on Vista virtualization

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| Software like Parallels Desktop for the Mac or Microsoft's own Virtual
| PC for Windows allow multiple operating systems to run simultaneously.
| When it announced licensing rules for Vista last year, Microsoft said
| that only Vista Business and Vista Ultimate could run as guest
| operating systems. The company said virtualization presents inherent
| security risks and that it hoped by limiting which versions of the OS
| could act as virtual machines, only sophisticated users and businesses
| would employ the tactic.
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http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-6191787.html


Microsoft relents: Vista consumer virtualization ban lifted

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| On the record, Microsoft said that the ban stemmed from their view that
| virtualization "is not yet mature enough from a security perspective for
| broad consumer adoption." To be frank, we never bought this excuse, because
| you could get the "maturity" needed to virtualize Vista for the $60+ premium
| that Business costs over and against Home Premium.
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http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080121-microsoft-relents-vista-...tualiza


Legacy format FUD

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| From CyberTech Rambler (and Slashdot) comes the news that the Office 2003
| Service Pack #3 disables (blocks) access to a number of legacy document
| formats. Details are in this MS support article. Formats so blocked include
| legacy Lotus 1-2-3 and Corel Quattro Pro formats. Why? According to the
| Microsoft support article, "By default, these file formats are blocked
| because they are less secure. They may pose a risk to you.".    
|
| [...]
|
| Now it may be entirely possible that these old import filters in Excel are
| poorly written and poorly maintained and that Microsoft may be trying to
| reduce the overall security exposure of MS Office by ditching old code that
| is not strategic for them. But call it that. The MS Office code has the
| problem. Don't malign the formats. Don't make up some untenable story that
| DIF format is "less secure" and "may pose a risk for you".    
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http://www.robweir.com/blog/2008/01/legacy-format-fud.html


Office 2003 Service Pack Disables Older File Formats

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| In Service Pack 3 for Office 2003, Microsoft disabled support for many older
| file formats. If you have old Word, Excel, 1-2-3, Quattro, or Corel Draw
| documents, watch out!  
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http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/01/01/137257&from=rss