Posted by Sandy Gupta
General Manager, Open Solutions Group

I’m happy to share news today that Microsoft has formally extended the strategic Windows-Linux interoperability collaboration we previously had with Novell to SUSE.

I personally am excited by the prospect of SUSE’s newfound agility and focus as an independent business unit of The Attachmate Group, and the opportunity to evolve the interoperability work between our companies into new areas that will drive value for our joint customers.

Posted by Gregg Brown
Senior Director, Interoperability Group

I’m Gregg Brown, and I work with Craig Shank and Steve Mutkoski in the Interoperability Group at Microsoft. As my colleagues pointed out, collaboration, competition and consumer trust are important to effective standards, and transparency and a commitment to technical excellence are earmarks of a process that will lead to useful standards. Of course these are just the start, in the end the marketplace decides which standards will become widely used. It would save a lot of hard work and bad coffee if we could develop just the successful standards, but unfortunately great process doesn’t guarantee great standards. In reality, the individual implementation decisions of many developers determine in aggregate what is used and what is forgotten.