Microsoft, Novell team on Linux

in the long-running cold war between proprietary software champion Microsoft and the open source community, last week seemed something like a Velvet Revolution.

In the space of a few days, Microsoft executives climbed onstage to make two significant announcements bridging gaps between Microsoft’s Windows platform and popular open source technologies. At the Zend/PHP Conference & Expo in San Jose, Calif., Microsoft said that it was working with Zend to develop APIs that would allow applications built with PHP to run faster on Windows Server. Then, on Friday, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Novell CEO Ron Hovsepian used a press conference in San Francisco to announce a deal to support Suse Linux on Windows machines.

Microsoft will offer sales support for Suse Linux and will co-develop with Novell in the areas of virtualization, Web services management, and document format compatibility between Microsoft Office and Open Office. The collaboration will make it easier for users to run both Suse Linux and Microsoft Windows on their computers.

“Microsoft wants customers who combine Windows and Linux to choose Novell, and we’re going to put our marketing behind that,” Ballmer said.

Novell was chosen because it was willing to work with Microsoft to build what Ballmer called an intellectual property bridge between Microsoft’s proprietary software and the open source community. Among other things, Microsoft will not assert patent infringement claims against individual open source developers, said Novell CTO Jeff Jaffe.

“This announcement gives our customers interoperability and peace of mind all in one,” Hovsepian said.

Microsoft has been making a show of loosening its tight hold on patents in recent months. In September, it published 35 Web services specs through a the Open Specification Promise program. Last month, the company did the same with its Virtual Hard Drive virtualization technology. Microsoft has promised not to take legal action against developers or companies who want to use the specifications.

Taken with the Zend announcement, the Novell news points to a more open attitude at Microsoft toward competing OSes such as Linux, said Jon Oltsik, an analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group.

“Microsoft’s getting realistic about the fact that they’re not going to go into everything, and that they need to make Windows compatible with what people are using,” Oltsik said.

Tight integration between Windows and Suse will be an attractive alternative to Red Hat for enterprise customers who might be considering Linux on the server but want to ensure tight integration with Windows desktops and Active Directory user directory.

Similarly, FastCGI, the new interface between PHP and Microsoft’s IIS, will put pressure on current market leader VMware, Oltsik said.

Top executive Ballmer might have been talking over the heads of his immediate audience — and directly at regulators in the European Commission, which is fining the company for noncompliance with its 2004 antitrust decision.

“They’re saying that Microsoft takes openness and cooperation seriously at the top of the company,” Oltsik said.