In this opening salvo, I will reprise the technical terms and history of DRM and thereafter I will try to keep you abreast of the issues for computer users in general and free software in particular. Hopefully, I will in fact be chronicling the death throws of DRM.

After reading a recent press release about System Center Operations Manager 2007 being able to “manage Unix/Linux”, the first thought that goes through my head is WTF? Who in their right mind would touch that product?

Do you love going to the dentist to get a filling — if it means you don’t have to get root canal? In this case, XP is the filling you learn to live with because you don’t want all the deeper pain associated with Vista migrations. But that doesn’t mean you love XP.

Microsoft PR threw down the gauntlet; “see how Windows Server 2008 stacks up versus Linux,” they say. There’s a “Get the Facts” URL being promoted with claims of direct comparisons between the two operating systems. Anyone reading the headlines alone could be fooled into thinking there’s substance to be found.

As you may or may not know, the official Boycott Microsoft Web site has been inactive for about 10 years. In the week to come we will present some of its old yet invaluable findings. We ought to share them in order to demonstrate how little the company has changed since the more brutal antitrust era (before change in administration, which has turned a blind eye to bad behavior since).

Microsoft turn to free software? That’ll be the day. Some have suggested that Microsoft might embrace free software and thus resolve the present conflict. That actually would be a terrific strategy for them, but I don’t think that Microsoft is smart enough to do it.

Yesterday as well as the day before that, some of the press reopened a jar of worms and spoke about Microsoft’s software patents minefield, but bloggers did not pay any attention to Novell’s fight against the free in “Free software”. Novell is just about as guilty as Microsoft because without its participation and pasive endorsement Microsoft’s efforts would hold no water.

There is no substantial news here other than development of discussions, which seem to spread fairly fast from one blog to another blog and soon onto the press. To repeat criticisms from yesterday about Novell’s announcement on China [1, 2], Novell and Microsoft keep spreading software patents to all parts of the world (never mind the legality), using SUSE Linux (Ballnux).