Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft/Novell Deal Could Create Two-Tier Linux Market
Rob writes writes to mention a Computer Business Review article about the recent Microsoft/Novell Linux deal. Article author Matthew Aslet warns that while some may see the announcement as a step forward, it may ultimately be very divisive for the Linux community. From the article: "Microsoft made it clear that only SUSE users and developers, as well as unsalaried Linux developers, are protected. 'Let me be clear about one thing, we don't license our intellectual property to Linux because of the way Linux licensing GPL framework works, that's not really a possibility,' said Microsoft chief executive, Steve Ballmer. 'Novell is actually just a proxy for its customers, and it's only for its customers,' he added. 'This does not apply to any forms of Linux other than Novell's SUSE Linux. And if people want to have peace and interoperability, they'll look at Novell's SUSE Linux. If they make other choices, they have all of the compliance and intellectual property issues that are associated with that.'"
Bill: I'm worried, Steve. We're losing more ground to Linux. It's on the verge of becoming a non-nerd OS.
Steve: I've got an idea. Let's buy another version of Linux.
Bill: Are you crazy? The SCO gambit didn't fool anybody.
Steve: No, not like that. Instead of trying to fool a judge, we'll try to fool our customers.
Bill: So? That's already company policy.
Steve: Yes, but we'll release our own version. We tell the public that we're joining the Linux bandwagon, and with our marketing clout, it will soon become the dominant version on the market. Then when the public is convinced that MSLinux IS Linux, we make gradual changes to turn it into an unusable bloated wreck. Linux will be finished!
Bill: No way! Remember, Steve, I used to write software. No self-respecting programmer would deliberately wreck an OS. Where are we going to get a bunch of programmers to do that?
Steve: We have all the guys who wrote Vista. I think they could do it.
Novell just bent over and let Stevie "embrace and extend." Rather than usurp Red Hat, this is going to make Microsoft-connected SuSE Linux software coda non grata in the OSS community.
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
Agreeing to licence "IP" from Microsoft just gives legitimacy to any claims they are going to pursue against other Linux vendors/developers. It sets a bad precedent, even if those claims are likely to be bogus. It is obvious MS are thinking this way, otherwise why would they pay Novell rather than the other way round?
Not sure what Novell are thinking of here. Surprised IBM hasn't had something to say...
I really liked OpenSuse. Oh well I guess Ubuntu isn't a bad choice.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I think experience shows us what happens to companies foolish enough to partner with Microsoft. Oh well. It's been nice knowing you Novell.
From T.F. summary: "If they make other choices, they have all of the compliance and intellectual property issues that are associated with that."
Rarely have I ever seen such perfect examples of FUD. This has it all; it's an unspoken threat, dropped only in order to create feelings of uncertainty in the marketplace.
I had thought for a while that Microsoft was just ignoring Linux, but now it seems they're opening up a new front, one where they're going to engage in overt psychological warfare in order to discourage adoption of competing products.
In a sick way, you have to appreciate watching Microsoft work. It's not as though this hasn't happened a dozen times before, just in the IT market, and yet it still always seems to do the trick. At a certain point, you either have to laugh or cry. I haven't decided which way to go yet.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Dear Microsoft,
How will my baby mulching machine be able to legally interoperate with your software?
This is very important to me and my colleagues, and I would appreciate it if you would address our concerns.
Microsoft has all kinds of SW patents in its portfolio. MS will sue all the other distros than Novell's for patent infringement, driving everyone to SuSE. Then it will pull the plug on Novell, exactly the way it did on NetWare, when MS folded all NetWare's features into Windows NT.
The only defense is RedHat and IBM, and possibly other corps with money to fight MS attacking their Linux distros their future OS strategies all depend upon. Maybe Oracle is bought in to Linux enough that it too will defend a Linux version. RedHat is new and bubbly enough that I'm not surprised they're vulnerable to this attack, and maybe Oracle could tell that, too. But IBM should have known that its defense from SCO, which was a defense against Microsoft's proxy, was too close an alliance with Novell. I'm surprised IBM didn't protect themselves from this Microsoft attack through Novell. But then, MS has always made all its biggest victories by attacking IBM's blind spots.
The other defense is anarchy. Tens of thousands of Linux developers, and tens of millions of users, all across the world, just ignoring MS patent attacks on their distros. If that works, it could also undermine the very patent weapon Microsoft and others wield to destroy SW progress. If they bit off more than they can chew, MS could very well be doing us all a big favor, by destroying itself and patent regime in which it makes its crooked living.
--
make install -not war
this is exactly the kind of thing that makes people call it micro$oft. just like during the DNC our startup company was frozen out of a contract because microsoft came in and "donated" hardware with the stipulation that only companies that were m$ certified and did not use linux technology could get contracts. i am sure that the open source community sees it for the load of crap it is - i only hope that the corporate world does as well.
As much as I like to bash Microsoft, this whole "Microsoft is the next SCO" is bullshit. The only possible patent infringement going on is in the Microsoft compatibility stack of Mono. This is seperate from the Mono CLI and compiler which is under the Ecma. And also different than the Linux stack which includes Gtk#.
.NET software on it.
Microsoft is basically saying "If you want to run your ASP.NET app with open source software then Novell is your only choice". Microsoft is not saying "Novell Linux is the only safe Linux distro from Microsoft lawsuits" because Linux is inherently safe as long as you don't run Microsoft's crappy
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
[A]n indiscriminate creation of exclusive privileges tends rather to obstruct
than to stimulate invention. It creates a class of speculative schemers who
make it their business to watch the advancing wave of improvement, and
gather its foam in the form of patented monopolies, which enable them to
lay a heavy tax upon the industry of the country, without contributing
anything to the real advancement of the arts. It embarrasses the honest
pursuit of business with fears and apprehensions of concealed liens and
unknown liabilities to lawsuits and vexatious accountings for profits made
in good faith. Atlantic Works v. Brady, 107 U.S. 192, 200 (1882) (Bradley, J.).
This statement clearly violates paragraph 7 of the GPL. Novell is no longer able to legally distribute linux because they cannot give royalty free copies to everyone.
All of the conspiracy and divide and conquer is all very fun, but seriously, Microsoft doesn't need to work that hard to make more money. The Novell deal is probably just what it looks like, a way for Microsoft to make some money from the Linux market. They don't need to destroy it or any such nonsense. Windows isn't going away any time soon, and sorry Linux isn't taking over either. But Microsoft does have to be careful of running afoul of the GPL in any case, so making deals with companies like Novell, may be a way to get a piece of the market without GPL or antitrust entanglements.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
There is: live in a country without software patents :)
It's a tricky business, as the other reply stated, other companies can go after BSD if they find their software in ther, or software that violates their IP.
That being said, the three main BSDs (Free/Open/Net), unlike many Linux distros, will not include closed source or commercial packages in their distros (although it does not actually violate their license, unlike Linux's)
I would say SUSE would probably be your lowest risk, but I doubt the BSD risk would be much higher, as the core isn't really taken much from Linux. I can't say as much about the packages though.
If all the at-risk stuff is closed source, than BSD is pretty safe, BSD will not auto-retrieve any closed source packages, at all. You will be warned by it asking you to manually download parts of the package yourself.
34486853790
Connection too slow for X forwarding? Try "ssh -CX user@host"
So what, exactly is Novell licensing from MS? If Novel declares that they only have the right to distribute certain GPL'ed code because of a license that they've bought, then, under the terms of the GPL, they cannot distribute that code at all.
MS and Novel know this, and that's why they don't call what they've done "licensing." Instead, as they've said, they have carefully taken the GPL into account when they made this deal (in order to work around it), and called their deal a "promise not to sue" or some such.
If MS DOES successfully sue another distributor or coder over GPL'ed code, then Novell's deal with MS would not give them any EXTRA ability to continue to distribute that code.
So what have MS and Novell done? They have created the illusion that Novell has licensed MS patents and that other Linux distributions do not have this license. The truth is:
* No court has ruled that MS holds patents on any GPL'ed code
* MS has not claimed that any specific GPL'ed code violates MS's patents
* If MS DID bring a patent suit against a prominent Free software project or it's proxy, it would be resolved:
- Many big projects would fight in court (Red Hat, FSF, IBM), and MS would lose
- MS would come under attack by other companies that have interest in GPL'ed software and that have large patent portfolios -- MS would back down
- If MS did win a suit (or if the legal battle was too much), the code would be replaced quickly
Question: how does the BSD'ed code (or Apache licensed, etc) fare in the above context?
Although I'm not an expert on RICO, I find myself wondering if Microsoft aren't tiptoeing within reach of potential racketeering charges, here.
If Microsoft are planning on threatening people with suits for using their IP, they're going to have to make damn sure that said people *are* using their IP first. If they threaten a company, the company calls their bluff, and it comes out in the courtroom that said company isn't actually infringing on their patents, an astute judge might then ask some rather awkward questions.
Methinks Ballmer needs to be very, very careful. An approach of, "Nice distribution you have there. Would be a shame to see anything happen to it," could seriously legally backfire.
IANAL, but I think these are empty threats and here is why:
Looking for the silver-lining, I hope this will lead to an officially blessed MS smb/ad client that will reveal some of the inner workings that continously stump Samba.
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
"it may ultimately be very divisive for the Linux community."
No shit?
This development signals a parting of ways for everyone I know with Suse Linux.
My phone has been ringing off the wall and everyone is asking me, "What should we switch to now?"
No one I know wants to have anything to do with this abomination.
This is nothing more than a ploy to poison the well.
Thanks Suse, it was great while it lasted, but now you've shot yourself in both feet and we don't trust you anymore.
Its simple bring all distro's under Europe wing and see if MS can be a bully then. We all know how Europe is chomping at the bit already, so lets remove the bit and let them chomp M$.
Patent Infringements I ask you they certainly know how to play their own game thats for sure.
Linux user #349545 (GNU/Linux)iD8DBQBAzWjX+MZAIjBWXGURAmflAKCntuBbuK
He hasn't ever coded anything to functional completion.
Umm, just untrue. When Microsoft was a brand new company, he wrote their first products, one of which was a version of BASIC that ran on the Altair. Not a small accomplishment. Also remember that Windows became popular because of the programming tools for it made developer's lives much easier than developing for other platforms.
DATABASE WOW WOW
IBM also has one of the largest patent portfolios ever assembled. Right now, somewhere in Redmond, a Microsoft programmer is infringing on IBM patents. If MS wants to play rough, IBM will play rough. Here's a couple articles on IBM, open source, and patents:
1 01.wsse n-source+use/2100-7344_3-5524680.html
http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/19
http://news.com.com/IBM+offers+500+patents+for+op
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Section 7 of the GPL explicitly says it's not limited to any particular thing, so equivocation about "covenant" vs. "license" doesn't get either of them out of it. If Novell can't pass on to it's customers all rights needed for them to redistribute SuSE Linux, then the GPLv2 says it doesn't have a license to distribute Linux at all. If those rights come from a convenant not to sue rather than a patent license, they're still required for SuSE's customers to redistribute SuSE Linux. GPLv3 makes the point even clearer, but GPLv2 has enough language in it to make the argument. I think all Novell's managed to do here is shoot themselves in the foot, and MS won't gain any advantage from having one "blessed" distribution when that blessing calls that distribution's copyright license into question.
So, everyone still happy with GNOME making Mono part of its base desktop?
.Net framework blows monkey chunks. You can't even call multicast delegates in a thread-safe manner. Who's bright idea was *that*?
Sure. Not so much with Mono, but I'm *way* happy with Gtk+/GNOME. Although, I have been running e17 for a while as my own desktop, GNOME is nice, and I have more faith in its openness than Qt. And GNOME is *not* Ximian/Novell. It's an independent project that Novell works on.
I'm taking a "wait and see" approach to Mono, though. I never liked C#, so never saw a real reason to use Mono. And the whole
Anyway, this isn't a rant against Mono/.Net. It's a defense of GNOME, which is a damned fine desktop environment, even though I prefer e17.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
This is a call to action for every free software loving Linux user out there. SUSE IS DEAD TO US. WE HAVE NO SUSE! I encourage all to cease and desist use of SUSE distributions as well as contribution to the SUSE projects. Ok so this is really a boycott, and yes boycotts aren't usually very successful, but there is a difference here. SUSE currently does not offer anything so uniquely different that we could not go without it, or make it difficult to go without it. I am sure all of you SUSE fans out there have very legitimate reasons for loving SUSE, but those features, benefits could easily spawn themselves in a new distro, or be integrated into another distro like *ubuntu or a member of the Red Hat family. If Novell wants to dance with the devil in the pale moonlight, then so be it, but the rest of the Linux community will not be in attendance.
FUCK YOU NOVELL! Turn your back on us and we'll walk right out the door.
"It's not whether you win or lose, it's how drunk you get." -- H. J. Simpson
This is all a bunch of sound and fury, signifying Vista.
Seriously.
When XP rolled out a few years ago, a bunch of businesses used Linux to leverage better deals on corporate licenses for XP and MS-Office. Microsoft probably "lost" hundreds of millions (meaning they didn't make hundreds of millions more) this way.
Now that Linux is much more mature, some of those threats to migrate to Linux might actually turn out to be real. Wouldn't *that* suck for Microsoft. But even if they didn't, customers would use Linux like they did last time.
Many companies might delay rollout of Vista simply to take a "wait-and-see" approach, to see if anyone else is moving to Linux. It's not a big threat, but it is a threat. Microsoft needs Vista to not look like a flop out of the gate. This is a big launch for them, and they need it to look good, to drive early sales. Yes, they have the market locked up, but it's better to get everyone's money *now*, and not later, especially for their stock price.
Anyway. To me, that seems the most reasonable explanation, what with the timing of this. The important thing isn't that Linux is in trouble (which it is not); the important thing is that there is the *appearance* that Linux is in trouble.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
You guys aren't near paranoid enough. Ballmer's reference to IP and licensing may be a future reference. Imagine what the linux world would be like if they built into Windows 2003 and Vista servers enforcement of client access licenses--and the only linux that it would work on is SUSE? Suddenly, all those Linux installations out there that rely on talking to Windows file servers, remote desktops, and what-not--all of those will have to move to Microsoft Linux.
Because *if* there are Microsoft's patents then unless Novell can extend usage rights for free to all, not just their "users", then they are in violation of the GPL. Clearly they won't be able to do this as that would effectively indemnify all Linux distros (since you could "patch" SuSE to be Fedora Core for instance). So you see that the other distro's are held in check by threats of lawsuits from Microsoft over patents and SuSe is held in check by lawsuits over copyright from GNU and/or Microsoft subsidiaries that get their GPL code included in the distro (parties with copyright to sue over).
The best response from the community is to boycott SuSE in every way as a distro. The best response from GNU and other rights holders is to immediately sue Novell over violation of GPL license (but this may require showing that there *are* patented code in Linux that SuSE aren't extending rights to use it).
better/faster than any other company in the world
Can they really be said to be "better" or "faster" when they actively discourage other people with potentially superior products from competing with them based on technical merits?
Seems to me that almost every area where Microsoft is dominant and not faced with external competition has stagnated. Look at what happened to the browser between the demise of Navigator and the rise of Firefox: basically nothing (well, except viruses and trojans; it was a great time to be a malware writer).
They are a huge brake on what ought to be an accelerating, ever-changing industry. The outcome that Microsoft would really like -- one platform, under EULA, with per-seat licensing and DRM for all, Amen -- would be nothing less than a dark age for information technology.
Microsoft only looks like a good thing when it's compared to nothing at all; if you compare it to what might exist in the absence of such a distorting influence, they've caused nothing but harm.
Microsoft didn't 'bring computers to business;' businesses would have bought computers in the absence of Microsoft; the advantages are just too great to be ignored. What Microsoft did, was effectively eliminate any choice that businesses might have had in the OS and software they wanted to buy and run, in order to be inter-operable. They injected themselves into computing and ended up in a place where they could become one of the "costs of doing business," applicable to everyone, everywhere. You aren't just paying the Microsoft Tax when you buy a new PC, you're paying it all the time, everywhere, because everyone uses their stuff. You're paying for it in the cost of your food, your electronics, your entertainment, and even your taxes, because not even our government can live without MS.
Microsoft is a plague, a parasite, that has so thoroughly infested the business world that it's basically impossible to remove. But just because it's too close to our vital bits to get rid of it now, shouldn't prohibit us from considering the nature of the infection and realizing that there could have been -- indeed, was -- a multitude of other ways that things could have gone.
Microsoft didn't "push technology all over the globe," people in all corners of the globe pulled that technology to themselves; they bought and paid for it because of the benefits it offered, despite the necessity of paying for Microsoft software in order to get anything done. Microsoft didn't create those markets, or those benefits; they would have existed anyway, because the technology really is that good. It's not good because of Microsoft -- MS didn't invent email, or CRM systems, or word processing, or spreadsheets -- and there's little that Microsoft offers that wouldn't be offered by somebody else in their stead. (Even the 'lingua franca' that Microsoft provides to the world could be easily replaced by a variety of open standards, because such a standard would be mutually beneficial in the absence of a standard piece of software.) It's good despite Microsoft.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Indeed, and that's exactly why MS is never going to actually sue anyone over patents. The aim of the exercise, as far as I can tell, is to make a lot of noise and give the impression that you might sue at any minute. As far as MS is concerned having people beleve you're about to sue is as good as actually sueing in terms of results, an it is a lot safer for them. MS is never going to sue - they might be rathere noisy about it though.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
Non-profit distributions like Debian won't be impacted much.
Wrong. The deal means that any would-be contributors to Debian having a commercial Linux background are assumed to be litigation targets.
I'm sure the EU have a committee working on it already. After all, the EU directive on cucumbers (Yes, it really does exist: EU Commission Directive 1677/88) runs to 7 pages and more words than the vast majority of significant documents (US Constitution, Magna Carta, Geneva Convention, Treaty of Versailles etc).
Amongst other things, it states that any cucumber with a curvature of more than 10mm per 10cm length cannot be sold as a Class 1 product. Microsoft must have broken something in one of the more obscure directives.
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
I'm just going to respond to a few things here, unfortunately I don't have the time to give you a more complete response to all your points; I think the majority of your criticisms were well-founded and there is certainly room for debate.
Just as an aside, I'm not sure where you got the idea that I'm an open source 'bigot' or zealot. I don't think I mentioned open source at all in my original post. Although I do think that there is a big place for open source software, I wouldn't ever argue that it is the be-all and end-all, or that every piece of software must be open source. I prefer it, but there are reasons why a company selling software wouldn't want to open its code, and reasons why a buyer of software might not care whether it's open or not. That's not really relevant to this discussion at all; you can have competition and open standards with or without open source. I wasn't really taking sides in that issue.
As to your first question, "Ok, then name one company that can push technology better/fast than [Microsoft]?" There's no way I can even respond to this, because it's a loaded question; I reject the premise of it. Microsoft, with a few very small exceptions, doesn't and hasn't "pushed" any technology. (The exceptions are mostly trivial things, like them pushing one programming language over another, etc.) I might potentially accede to a claim of them 'pushing' the deployment of the GUI on commodity hardware with Windows originally, but even then, it was something the market was ready for and they were just in the right position to provide it. It's easy -- but wrong -- to give them credit.
This isn't exactly a criticism of Microsoft per se. Very few companies "push" technology; the great majority of them simply respond to consumer demand. Microsoft is definitely in this second camp. When they saw a market for web servers (as one trivial example), they produced a web server. They didn't "push" web servers, and giving them credit is silly; the demand existed, and the market hates a vacuum. If they hadn't produced IIS, it's ridiculous to think that there would be 30% (or whatever their marketshare is) fewer webservers in the world, those servers would just be running something else.
So to answer your question, there are lots of companies that 'push' more technology than Microsoft. MS doesn't push, it gets pulled; its M.O. is to wait and watch a budding market, and then insert itself and capture the business. They "push" the market in the same way that a surfer 'pushes' a wave -- they're not driving it, they're riding on it.
Sometimes it seems as though MS is 'pushing' something, but it's rarely anything productive: they obviously pushed Windows 95, and are pushing Vista, by pulling support for older products and thereby forcing users to upgrade. But neither of these products represented great steps forward in technological development, nor did they respond to any new desires or really give any innovative solutions to existing problems. They were at most an incremental step forward, and came at great cost. Causing a lot of needless hardware replacement isn't a good thing -- at best it's a broken-window fallacy; forcing something to be "fixed" that wasn't broken, and thereby diverting resources that could have been spent elsewhere.
In terms of its actual products, Microsoft's offerings are rarely superior at any one thing. They make a word processor, but not the best word processor (a lot of people liked Word Perfect, back before it became nearly impossible to use because everyone else was using Word). Similarly, Excel was a decent spreadsheet program, but Lotus 1-2-3 was arguably superior. Windows always was a mediocre desktop OS; for years, Apple was widely accepted as having the better UI. Windows NT is a passable server; BSD is and was arguably more secure. Etc. For almost any Microsoft product, you can find some offering that's better in that particular niche. A coworker once described Microsoft as the company of "good enough." They maintain themselves at
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."