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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.
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 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."
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
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.
They're not worried about the OSS community. Not even a little.
This is about making the perception among customers that the only way to have a Linux which is free from being sued by Microsoft for IP violations is to go with Novell/Suse. They hope to make the rest of the Linux offerings 'poisoned' for businesses to use with the veiled threat that all other versions of Linux are potentially tainted.
Really, who didn't see this coming on the day they announced it?
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
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.
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
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
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?