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SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) - Microsoft and Novell have announced they were expanding their alliance in making patent-protected and open-source programs interoperable into the hot China market.

The firms said on Sunday they are putting “particular emphasis” on China because increasingly sophisticated businesses rely on combinations of software based on Microsoft's Windows operating systems and non-proprietary Linux systems.

Free Linux operating systems are popular in emerging markets such as China, India and Brazil, according to Novell vice president of global strategic alliances Susan Heystee.

Microsoft and Novell believe big enterprises in China are willing to pay to have the US firms keep hybrid systems updated and running and for assurances that there is permission to use patented software involved.

The companies are marketing “supported Linux” in which they take a fee to maintain software systems blending the open-source programs with Microsoft products such as Vista, Office, Excel and Outlook.

“We recognize that our customers want to use Microsoft products in heterogeneous environments, and therefore we are pleased to offer this option to meet customer needs in one of the leading global markets,” said Ya-Qin Zang, chairman of Microsoft China.

“We are very pleased with the initial response in the Chinese market to our joint offerings for IP peace of mind and technology interoperability in such areas as virtualization and high-performance computing.”

The longtime US computer software rivals unveiled their alliance in late 2006, saying their engineers were “building a bridge” between Microsoft's proprietary software and Novell programs based on the Linux operating system.

Sunday was the first time the firms publicly targeted a specific country with their effort.

“We've really seen in the market in China the need to have a supported Linux platform due to the level of mission critical jobs and the need for interoperability” Heystee told AFP.

Statistics from industry-tracker IDC show that money spent on the type of paid Linux support being targeted in China increased 38.6 percent in the year after the Novell-Microsoft alliance.

Novell reports it has invoiced 141 million dollars in “SUSE Linux Enterprise Server subscriptions” during the collaboration with Microsoft.

“We are very pleased with the original approach by Microsoft and Novell to address our concerns about deploying and managing a complex high-performance computing infrastructure across two platforms,” said Nie Hua, vice president of Dawning Information Industry in China.

“It is essential for our future competitiveness and success that we can simplify with such solutions.”

Microsoft adamantly maintains it is not abandoning the proprietary software model on which its fortune is built.

“We still think there is a tremendous amount of value in terms of Windows and proprietary models,” Microsoft general manager of strategic partnerships Susan Hauser told AFP.

“This is a pragmatic approach to there being a mix of platforms out there. This is a bridge between proprietary and open source.”

NEW YORK - Skype, the Internet calling subsidiary of eBay Inc., is introducing its first plan for unlimited calls to overseas phones on Monday.

The plan will allow unlimited calls to land-line phones in 34 countries for $9.95 per month, said Don Albert, vice president and general manager for Skype North America.

The countries encompassed include most of Europe, plus Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Chile, China, Singapore, Taiwan, Japan, Korea and Malaysia.

Calls to domestic land lines and cell phones are included as well, as are calls to cell phones in Canada, China, Hong Kong and Singapore, but not cell phones in other countries.

Skype has already been selling unlimited calls to the U.S. and Canada for $3 a month. It is expanding that offering with another plan, for $5.95 per month, that gives free calls to Mexico City, Guadalajara and Monterrey, and a discount on calls to other places in Mexico.

Skype is generally used as a software application running on a computer equipped with a microphone and speakers or a headset. But subscribers will also have the option to call a local number from their phones and be connected to international numbers that fall under their plan, paying only local access charges or using their cell-phone airtime.

Unlimited international calling plans have been popping up in recent years from hardware-based phone services like Vonage International Holdings Corp. and cable companies, but the prices are generally higher, and the plans are add-ons to basic calling plans that cost even more.

Skype said its subscribers called phones for 1.7 billion minutes in the first three months of the year, compared with 14.2 billion minutes used in computer-to-computer sessions, which are free.

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LONDON (Reuters) - The British entrepreneur who sold a soccer Web site at the age of 17 for $40 million has switched his attention to help launch a social networking site on Sunday designed to fight malaria.

Tom Hadfield set up Soccer.net in his bedroom before selling it to U.S. sports network ESPN, but now hopes the power of sites such as Facebook can curb a disease that kills an estimated one million people a year, many of them in Africa.

“I believe in the power of friends telling friends telling friends,” self-styled part-time student and full-time entrepreneur Hadfield told Reuters in an interview.

“Our dream is tens of thousands of people will use social networking tools to build a movement that eradicates malaria.”

Now 25 and a fourth-year political science student at Harvard university, Hadfield came up with the idea for www.MalariaEngage.org after a trip to Zambia last summer that gave him a close-up look at the mosquito-born disease.

“Traveling across Africa and seeing the devastation caused by malaria made me realize there was more to life than putting up soccer scores,” said Hadfield.

“Everyone I met at an aid project making mosquito nets in Zambia had either lost a child to malaria or knew someone who had.”

Hadfield then traveled to Dar es Salaam in Tanzania where he met researchers working on malaria treatments and discovered that their efforts were being held back by a lack of resources.

“It's shocking that thousands of people are dying every day from a preventable disease,” said Hadfield, who was honored as Global Leader of Tomorrow by the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in 2001.

“When I came back from Africa last summer, a lot of people asked me what they can do to help.”

The site encourages people to donate $10 or more to help support seven different research projects in Tanzania, such as developing plants like lemongrass to repel mosquitoes. But Hadfield sees MalariaEngage.org as more than a fundraising tool.

“MalariaEngage.org increases the return on investment of donors by connecting them directly with researchers working on malaria prevention treatment,” said Hadfield.

“It's about more than about giving money — it's about creating connections. By encouraging individual participation and involvement, we will create international communities of common interest. This is the essence of social networking.”

The seven projects were recommended by Tanzania's National Institute for Medical Research and once those have been funded, MalariaEngage.org will look to support new schemes across developing countries.

Due to marry in November, Hadfield co-founded the site with health professors Peter A. Singer and Abdallah S. Daar at Canada's McLaughlin-Rotman Centre for Global Health at University Health Network as well as the University of Toronto.

“We feel young African scientists have very good ideas that end up in the dustbin,” said Singer. “This is about helping committed young researchers with good ideas to help themselves create a better future.”

(Reporting by John Joseph; Editing by Giles Elgood)

Windows remains the dominant OS in the PC world, but the largest portion of Microsoft's income actually comes from its business software division, responsible for Office and Microsoft Dynamics. For years Microsoft has struggled to maintain its revenue stream from these  products, however; Office, in particular, presents a challenge, since customers are often skeptical of an upgrade when they don't use all the features of the current version. Meanwhile, Microsoft faces growing challenges from the likes of OpenOffice.org and Google Docs.

Now comes news that Redmond is experimenting with not one, but two new business models for its productivity apps, both targeted at low-end customers. The idea is that customers won't purchase the software at all. Instead, they will subscribe to it– or, potentially, get it for free in an ad-supported model.

The subscription-based version of Microsoft Office should arrive by the end of this year, according to Microsoft reps. It will bundle Microsoft Office Home and Student Edition with Windows Live applications for e-mail, instant messaging, and photo sharing, plus the Office Live Workspace online collaboration service. No pricing has been set, but it would need to cost less than $12.50 per month to beat the list price of the Home and Student Edition of Office alone, or less than $33 per month to remain competitive with Microsoft Office Standard Edition.

If even that seems too expensive, Microsoft has begun testing another option: a free version of the low-end Microsoft Works application suite that is underwritten by advertising. The pilot project is so hush-hush that you can't get it in the U.S. yet, but if it's successful in its demo markets you may begin to see new PCs shipping with a fully-functional office application suite pre-installed, at no additional charge.

 Of course, all this implies that you desperately need office applications from Microsoft. If cost is your only concern, you can already install open source productivity applications for free, or use online services from Google, Zoho, and others. In truth, these moves might benefit Microsoft the most, because they help bring the company one step closer to its dream software model: a subscription-based business that brings in steady revenue and isn't tied to annual upgrade cycles.

What's your ideal purchasing model for business software? Are you happy with the way it works now, or do subscription, online, or ad-supported models have appeal to you? Sound off in the PC World Community Forums.

MySQL got its start as a rapid server of Web pages for emerging Internet businesses such as Amazon.com, Google, and Slashdot. While it now serves as a general-purpose database, it will still star in the role of supporting customer-facing Web applications, said Marten Mickos, senior VP of the database group at Sun Microsystems. Mickos has reason for optimism: MySQL is competing effectively not only with rival open source databases but also with IBM's DB2, Oracle, and other commercial systems.

These vendors left Web developers to rely largely on open source products, and now Mickos and Sun plan to benefit from that blunder.

“MySQL goes hand in hand with an enterprise that is shifting its business over to the Web,” he said at the MySQL Conference & Expo in Santa Clara, Calif., last week, adding that ownership by Sun will help MySQL get inside more large enterprises.

Mickos, former CEO of MySQL AB, acquired by Sun in January, acknowledged that MySQL commands a relatively small share of the $15 billion-a-year database market. MySQL AB's sales haven't been publicly reported, though Zack Urlocker, VP of products, acknowledged a “sub-$100 million” level in an interview. But MySQL is a favorite with Web developers and has been downloaded an average 50,000 times a day for the past year, a figure Urlocker said has increased since news broke of MySQL's acquisition by Sun.

Mickos said Sun's expertise in large systems has something to do with that bump. “The real value we need to provide is more scalability and performance. Sun has a lot of expertise in scalability,” he said in an interview after his keynote. Mickos said that in return, some of MySQL AB's expertise will rub off on Sun. He allowed that both have experience building active communities but added that MySQL is good “at selling small things, and a lot of them. We know how to find small customers and sell them something without incurring much sales cost.”

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