The Next Round Of Microsoft Vs. Linux: Health Care
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TechWeb - Both camps are making waves in the industry, which is poised for dramatic IT growth
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Microsoft&#39;s aggressive defense of its intellectual property, which includes claims that Linux violates a number of its patents, is nothing more than &quot;a marketing thing,&quot; according to Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux kernel.&quot;They have been sued for patents by other people, but I don&#39;t think they&#39;ve -- not that I&#39;ve gone through any huge amount of law cases -- but I don&#39;t think they&#39;ve generally used patents as a weapon,&quot; Torvalds said. &quot;But they&#39;re perfectly happy to use anything at all as fear, uncertainty, and doubt in the marketplace, and patents is just one thing where they say, &#39;Hey, isn&#39;t this convenient? We can use this as a PR force.&#39;&quot;Torvalds made the comments during the second half of an interview conducted by the Linux Foundation Executive Director Jim Zemlin on Oct. 16. The foundation is expected to make the rest of the interview publicly available on its Web site Monday. The foundation released the initial portion of the interview in January.&quot;Another reason why I don&#39;t think Microsoft really seriously would go after patents is when you&#39;re a convicted monopolist in the marketplace you really should not be suing your competitors over patents,&quot; Torvalds continued. &quot;I think that most Microsoft lawyers would say, &#39;You know, let&#39;s not do that; that sounds insane&#39;.&quot;Microsoft&#39;s recent work around improving its platform&#39;s interoperability with Linux left Torvalds largely unmoved.&quot;I think there are people inside Microsoft who really want to improve interoperability and I also think there are people inside Microsoft who would much rather just try to stab their competition in the back,&quot; he said. &quot;I think the latter class of people have usually been the one[s] who won out in the end, but -- so I wouldn&#39;t exactly trust them.&quot;Microsoft spokespeople on Friday declined to comment on Torvalds&#39; remarks. The company has said it believes that Linux infringes on its intellectual property, although it has been criticized for not being more precise with its allegations.Torvalds is instead focused on improving Linux, he said. &quot;I work weekdays, I work weekends, I work 52 weeks a year. I don&#39;t want there to be any question of who&#39;s the best maintainer,&quot; he said. &quot;And at the same time, I actually also do want to encourage competition. ... So, I actually enjoy seeing all these other kernel trees happening. All the vendors have their own.&quot;However, the Linux kernel community overall could be more welcoming to new ideas, he suggested. &quot;One of the problems is we have people who have such high criteria for what is acceptable or not that it scares away people who want to do new code and do new experiments,&quot; he said. &quot;We mustn&#39;t set the bar that high. New code, new drivers, there will be problems and I&#39;d rather take them and then improve them.&quot;Even as Linux matures as a technology, it has yet to make a major impact in the mainstream desktop market. &quot;It&#39;s really hard to enter the desktop market because people are used to whatever they used before, mostly Windows ... There&#39;s just this huge inertia in that market,&quot; he said.In contrast, he said, it was much easier to sell Linux in the context of a server: &quot;There&#39;s just a few loads, they&#39;re fairly simple, they&#39;re fairly well-understood, people have much less inertia in upgrading a server than they have in upgrading their desktop.&quot;At one point, the discussion turned to Sun&#39;s work to create an open-source community around Open Solaris. Torvalds expressed deep skepticism toward the effort.&quot;It&#39;s generally hard to build a community around a commercial entity that also wants to be in control because everybody else around that commercial entity will always feel like they&#39;re at the mercy of Sun,&quot; he said.This dynamic is reflected in Open Office, &quot;where the fact that Sun wants to have copyright assignments and exclusive control over the license ends up being something that actually drives away some developers,&quot; he argued.Overall, Torvalds expressed ambivalence toward Sun, which recently has developed an image as a particularly open-source-friendly company. &quot;In many ways, Sun has done a lot of things right. At the same time, they seem to often have trouble going the full last step,&quot; he said.Ian Murdoch, vice president of Sun&#39;s Connected Developer group, defended Sun&#39;s commitment to the open-source model. &quot;An open-source project has to have coordination, it&#39;s not anarchy,&quot; said Murdoch, who earlier in his career founded the Debian version of Linux.&quot;If you look at the Linux kernel itself, Linus is firmly in control of that, and the only difference is he&#39;s an individual and Sun is a company. ... Some of the most successful open-source projects are being driven by companies, like MySQL for example,&quot; he said.Torvalds also pulled out his crystal ball, offering predictions on how technology will change in the next five years.While hardware will be &quot;hugely better,&quot; software&#39;s power and complexity will grow alongside it, he said. &quot;I suspect things will be about the same speed because the software will have grown and you&#39;ll have more &#39;bling&#39; to just slow the hardware down.&quot;Virtualization is &quot;not that big of a deal,&quot; according to Torvalds. &quot;It&#39;s been all around for decades and it&#39;s very interesting in niche markets -- I think the people who expected to change things radically are just fooling themselves.&quot;Real change will come from entirely new uses of computers, he predicted.(James Niccolai in San Francisco contributed to this report.)
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft announced plans to acquire health care search engine Medstory on Feb. 26, positioning the deal as a strategic move into the consumer health market. The Redmond, Wash.-based software maker, best known for its Windows operating system and Office productivity tools, said that the deal not only immediately widens its footprint in the health care segment, but also reflects a long-term commitment to development of a "broader consumer health strategy." Financial details of the deal were not disclosed by either company. Medstory, based in Foster City, Calif., has posted a beta version of its health care search engine online, which promises to return more intelligent results than traditional Web scanning tools. By synthesizing user search requests within the context of health care, Medstory claims it can provide people with far more relevant information than they might uncover using generalized tools, such as Microsoft's own MSN engine. While the company has focused its efforts on health care thus far and claims to have loaded its engine with related information via close work with a number of medical organizations, the firm indicates on its Web site that it may eventually branch into other search arenas. Microsoft officials offered few details about its plans for Medstory but reported that the company's employees will join its Health Solutions Group, a recently launched division that oversees its product development efforts in the health care sector. If the deal is closed, Dr. Alain Rappaport, Medstory's founder and chief executive, will take on the role of general manager of health search in Microsoft's Health Solutions Group. In further positioning the deal, Microsoft cited increasing demand among consumers for health-related information online. The company pointed specifically to a study published in Oct. 2006 by the Pew Internet and American Life Project which found that 8 million people currently turn to the Web for such health care data with 22 percent of those responding to the report stating they find existing resources to be insufficient. "We're focused on enabling people to make the best decisions," said Peter Neupert, corporate vice president for health strategy in Microsoft's Health Solutions Group. "We were impressed with the ability of Medstoryâs unique technology to organize and surface the most relevant online health content, which empowers consumers who are trying to find the right information about an important life event." The Medstory deal does not represent Microsoft's initial foray into the health care field. In July 2006, the firm bought health care software maker Washington-based Azyxxi for an undisclosed amount of money. Azyxxi's applications specifically promise to track and update changes to patients' electronic records in real time. Microsoft also maintains a research and development partnership with Medstar Health, a nonprofit health care firm that operates seven hospitals in the Mid-Atlantic region. As part of the Medstory deal announcement, Microsoft launched its Connected Health Framework Architecture and Design Blueprint, which it has tabbed as an "extensible architectural foundation" to streamline interoperability and integration between existing health care applications. The software blueprint will be offered at no charge to government and health care organizations worldwide, the company said. The software maker further identified the plan as a "real-world model" for health care companies attempting to adopt SOA technologies to help pull together disparate health care systems. In addition to the architecture, Microsoft introduced its Health Connection Engine, a set of Web services tools built around industry standards, that also promises to allow medical organizations to foster interoperability in their IT operations. As proof of its existing capabilities in the health care filed, Microsoft detailed work it has done with the Menninger Clinic, a Houston, Texas psychiatric hospital, to help the facility centralize its clinical information systems. Hospital officials claim to have cut paperwork by 25 percent already using a new internal system based on Microsoft's Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Office InfoPath 2007.
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Developers forum looks at Linux for the disabled. Also: Microsoft chided for ad campaign.
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Microsoft is not the realÂ patent threatÂ Linux and open source developers should be worried about, said Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth. In fact, the software giant will itself be fighting against the software patents system within a few years, Shuttleworth predicted.
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Vista relief is here With speculation building that Microsoft will bring Windows 7 forward by a year, ostensibly to staunch the loss of the Vista weary and Vistaphobes to alternative operating systems, now is a good time to look at the state of development tools for Linux.â¦
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Ziff Davis - The number of enterprises migrating from Windows to Linux is a growing concern for Microsoft. But it's not a one-way street. Some companies&#151;unhappy with their open-source experience&#151;are making the switch back to Windows.
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LicenseWise and Windows Vista Hardware Assessment help users navigate Microsoft offerings.
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Are you convinced that Windows environments are less expensive to own and operate than Linux computers? Martin Taylor, the manager behind Microsoftâs anti-Linux strategy, believes the companyâs Get The
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Like many, I was pretty shocked by the recent Microsoft-EU deal to settle the long-running investigation into interoperability issues.  This was not so much because of the way Microsoft has used every kind of delaying tactic it could before eventually agreeing (for the nth time) to try harder in the future.  My real dismay was provoked by the gap between appearance and reality â a chasm that I think bodes ill for the future of open source. read more
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Home PC users will never choose Linux over Windows until it is adopted in the workplace. Whether Windows is a generic term and can be subject to copyright is all very interesting, as are some of the other
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sl0wp0is0n writes &quot;Computerworld has published an interview with Microsoft&#39;s chief Linux strategist, Martin Taylor. It&#39;s interesting to find out that Microsoft thinks and predicts Novell (SuSE) will be the
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Microsoft is using a subscription-based service to combat Linux in developing markets.
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Microsoft can change.  Just give it a few more decades.
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The two second-tier Linux companies will adopt common Linux software and engineering. Alas, this idea doesn't have a great history of success.
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Growing importance of Linux in the enterprise is focus of event.
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Windows beats Linux in total cost of 'ownership.' Hold on, that's not a good thing.