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Microsoft Interested In More Linux Deals
eldavojohn writes "Microsoft has announced that it would be open to more deals similar to the one it just made with Novell. 'We will love to put that kind of agreement in place with anyone who distributes Linux software, Red Hat, whoever else,' Steve Ballmer told India's Economic Times. Considering the recent reactions to the Microsoft Novell deal, it would be interesting to see who else takes them up on the offer. Novell is due to receive USD $348 million in up-front payments. Will Red Hat cash out on this offer if it feels the impending pressure from Oracle's Linux? Will non-profit Linux distributions attempt to make deals with Microsoft?"
"We will love to put that kind of agreement in place with anyone [everyone] who distributes Linux software, Red Hat, whoever [everyone] else," Steve Ballmer told India's Economic Times.
Way too obvious.
"Mr Ballmer, on a visit to India, said that while he believed software would be increasingly downloaded and managed off the internet,"
As in apt-get?
""I would say we are moving to a world where there is a lot more electronic distribution. It is a new style of software, not the old-style distributed electronically.""
He's obviously not taking his meds - as in the 'raise my IQ above that of a carot' pill he must need each morning to get out the door.
"The next frontier for us is to embrace a new business model. And if we embrace it well and that business model is subscription and advertising,"
Curious that he left out 'make good software' and 'support'...
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
They can't just strike deals with everonye that distributes linux and add their 'touch' to it. You can't 'buy' Linux. You can have all the companies in your pocket that you want, but at the end of the day, it's still going to be free and maintained by developers from all over.
In a world of acronyms, the words are the real victims.
So Microsoft gives money to NOVEL. In exchange NOVEL can tell its customers hey look, not only you have the right to use that (as before), but now also we can assure you that Microsoft won't sue you (never been done anyway).... ah great. I was sure they would never sue me before any way, there's no such broken e-patent where I live. Or maybe next time I fly over to the US, the DHS will arrest me?
So what? Microsoft wants to give the deal to everyone.. ; hey i want to destribute my own distribution. Can I have a few milliion dollars too Steve? Just to make sure you won't sue me.... anyway, considered I have only $2000 in my bank account, even if you sued me, I would not even be able to cover your legal fee no?
Mmmm.. now i'm trembling. In a few seconds, I will click on a button at a bottom of this page and I will send that to slashdot... and crap, Amazon has patented the one click... Microsoft the click which does different thing if you click for a long or short time.. Ah crap. Maybe using my penis instead of a mouse is not patented, who knows.
[dons flameproof undies]
I think if you have microsofted Linuxes, then you'll have the purists jumping ship wholesale, consolidating with other distros. What doesn't kill Linux only makes Ubuntu stronger, as they say.
I'm really not worried. I won't be using Novell/Suse. I was hoping for Novell to crush MS like MS crushed Novell with NT. That's a giant monster battle over the city of Tokyo worth watching, if you ask me. But now they're partners, like Mothra and Godzilla, or whoever that was that teamed up. And they're going to have to fight King Kong, which is totally inconsistent conceptually, because King Kong doesn't have special powers. And in this case, King Kong is obviously Apple, except Apple has special powers.
Back to my main point: There are tons of wonderful distros that will not go over to the dark side for a while, like Arch, Debian, Slackware, Ubuntu, etc. The worst that will happen if MS eats both Novell/Suse and Red Hat is no more big RPM-based distros. And is that a bad thing, really?
I mean, I will pee myself when Microsoft starts touting the Red Hat Package Manager as something I should give a flying fuck about. Microsoft Windows Vista, now with dependency hell! (and for 10.99, Vi IMproved!)
Realistically Red Hat should at least go to the table with Microsoft, though presumably it will do so quietly behind the scenes. If nothing else it lets Red Hat get a much better idea of what Novell has signed on for and, through negotiations with Microsoft, a better idea of what Microsoft is willing to offer. Just testing the boundaries of what sorts of licensing and patent agreements Microsoft is willing to make could be very informative, and there's no compulsion for Red Hat to take the deal. It makes sense to at least find out what exactly is on offer.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
In the first articles I read on this, the idea I got was that people thought perhaps Microsoft set up this deal in order to legitimize the value of their patents so that they can later sue other distributors (and maybe users). The theory was that they'd be able to point to the deal where Novell paid them $40M for their patents and say "see, these are valuable, and the defendant is willfully infringing them, we deserve massive damages".
Upon further reflection, that doesn't make any sense to me. Unless he's a complete idiot, the defendant's attorney would just say "Your honor, Novell paid $40M to the plaintiff as part of a larger deal that was offered by the plaintiff and netted Novell $340M, after the $40M payment. Novell didn't pay for these patent licenses, the plaintiff paid Novell to take them specifically so that it could use that deal as evidence of their value. No, your honor, the plaintiff has not established the value of these patents with that deal, if anything the plaintiff has established their lack of value".
I think what's really going on here is that Microsoft is trying to disarm the opposition.
See, the way big corporate patent battles often play out is that no money changes hands, because the defendant just points out all of their patents that the plaintiff is infringing. There are some big companies with big patent portfolios that have a vested interest in defending Linux. Novell and IBM are the biggest. I think that Microsoft is afraid to press its own patent claims because Novell and IBM might step in on the side of the defendant and offer to countersue for Microsoft infringement of Novell and IBM patents.
BUT, if Microsoft can pre-emptively create cross-licensing agreements with the big potential Linux defenders, that problem goes away and Microsoft is then free to unleash its patent portfolio on Linux.
I'm not too worried about Novell signing up, and I wouldn't even be too worried about Red Hat, since I don't think Red Hat has a lot of patents, but if Microsoft signs (or has already signed?) a big cross-licensing deal with IBM then I think there could be a very significant risk to Linux. I'm sure there are numerous patent cross-licensing deals in place between Microsoft and IBM because of their cooperative history in the past, but only they know whether or not those deals are sufficient to allow Microsoft to attack Linux with impunity.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
They've got competition, and in order to head that off, they'll pay now. Much cheaper to pay $$$ now instead of losing $$$$$ later...
I don't, and precedent is why. After the end of the tenure of the deal with M$ and Novell, Microsoft will be able to demand real money from them. Why? Because Novell licensed something from M$ and that sets a precedent that it needed to be licensed in the first place. M$ can sue them into oblivion later if they refuse to comply because Novell has agreed that there is something to license now.
To me you sound like a fool, anyone else could threaten to sue users of SuSE for "IP" related issues, any one else could actually sue users for "IP" related issues, neither of which would be proof of "IP" related issues really existing. If there really is "IP" related issues in Linux, MS should spell them out, Novell at least should spell them out.
For you to "support" this deal because the terms are "not that bad" sounds foolish. Do you think this is a reasonable way for a company to do business, trying to sell their product not on the merits of the product itself or the service of the vendor but on some vague "promise" that a contracted partner of ours will not sue you if you pay us? What if I make up some similar promise; "My brother tells me that he will not sue you for some vague reason as long as you pay me, and you agree not to act in a way vaguely defined by him."
Hope those terms don't sound too bad for you.
I am willing to make similar deals with any others if that is the case.
"better ways of doing things eventually just replace the inferior things" - Linus Torvalds 09-08-07
I've been looking at all of the threads here -- interesting points for and against what Microsoft is doing. For any other large dominant company I might look at this as an encouraging development that could help the Linux movement. But Microsoft's history and habits lead me to different conclusions, or at least instincts about their intent.
I could list the litany of Microsoft's trespasses, not the least of which includes their DOJ conviction and subsequent Consent Decree which Microsoft seems to only loosely honor. Buy I need only look to the very recent past to find typical strong-armed and bullying Microsoft behavior, specifically their introduction of Zune and its associated music store silo.
Microsoft brought big guns, and big players (Samsung, Creative, among others) to develop and create the portable music industry of "Plays for Sure". The idea was to have players and music compatible across a wide swath of hardware with a large musical repertoire for purchase.
But Microsoft has thumbed its nose at that effort and struck out on its own with an incompatible "other" way of doing music... heck it's even incompatible with the old Microsoft Music Store! What the heck?
So, while I can't predict or summon up the specifics of Microsoft's intentions to harm the Linux community and how Microsoft would do just that, but I sure have seen enough to be pretty sure their ultimate goal is to squash Linux, or make it completely theirs to the extent and extreme it no longer looks anything like the Linux of today.
I hope the other Linux distros can withstand the Microsoft juggernaut.
Now, can any slashdoter tell me why this deal is really bad and should be avoided?
I'm not saying either of those things - but I don't have the warm and fuzzies over this. Why? Because there is no immediate answer to the most obvious question; What does Microsoft believe they are getting for their 348 million dollars?
I mean - they ponied up a third of a bill so that you'd be protected from lawsuits...from them. Wouldn't it have been cheaper to - say - not sue? I'd have to double-check my figures; but I'm pretty sure that will cost you nothing.
They're getting something out of this (or at least they believe they are), and if you've directly benefited, then it's reasonable to believe that it's costing you something as well (TNSTAAFL).
Maybe it's a good trade, maybe not, but Microsoft has earned a certain reputation among this audience.
Time, and the trust of Linux users other than myself, will tell.
Running Windows^H^H^H^H^H^H^H OSX and Linux in the home. (I don't have time for Solitaire any more.)
Can you explain the Novell deal to me? How does it hurt their customers?
I'm honestly curious. I've only heard that Novell would be supporting Microsoft virtualization under Linux as a result.
Microsoft talks about "interoperability" with Linux ... but the source code is Open. They don't need Novell to help them with that.
And certainly not at a third of a billion dollars for that "help".
What, specifically, is being purchased?
Linux companies should tell MS to piss off. Of course, money talks.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
said the Spider to the Fly.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Bascially, they plan to make what they've always _claimed_ to be reality an _actual_ reality:
They've always said that "commercial" development is impossible with open source. That's belied by the fact that many people, including myself, have been doing it for years. So Bill Gates, at the highest global levels (bilderberger group, EU Commission, with his buddy Charlie McGreevy) is pushing for software patents worldwide to CREATE THE REALITY HE WANTS: free-as-in-liberty software development relegated to "hobbyists and hippies".
You've hit it right on the head. There are quite a few things Balmer is leaving out; and what he's not saying speaks volumes. He's also deliberately not saying that Microsoft wishes to become a good citizen of the Linux community.
Or, in short, what he's telling us is that Microsoft is up to its old tricks again. One needs to ignore the smoke and mirrors, and instead read between the lines.
That's why I object to Novell's deal. What they have done is to deliberately attempt to go around the rules that everyone must play by. That's not being a good member of the community; that's telling everyone else to f*** off, they don't have to play by the normal rules. Pure sleeze, which is the unfortunate norm of the closed source world. I had expected better from Novell.
If Microsoft and Novell wish to foster respect and trust, they need to play by the GPL and not try to figure out ways to go around it.
The best way to predict the future is to create it. - Peter Drucker.
If they decide to patent it then we very much do have to care.
Burns: We're building a casino!
McAllister: Arrr. Give me 5 minutes.
What is the 'deal' anyway? Offer Linux distributor millions of dollars, and if they accept the money promise not to sue them for patent infringement?
Sign me up!
The problem with all those arguments is that Novell/SuSE, RedHat, Debian, and Ubuntu are largely just distributors and packagers of other people's software. They can't cut deals on behalf of the authors, and the original authors of that software are vigilant about software patents, as is the user community.
Furthermore, we have had several software patent claims against FOSS and they have had no teeth: by the nature of FOSS projects, wilfull infringement hardly ever occurs, and damages are hard to claim. In the end, software patents are quickly and easily disposed of by FOSS by working around them.
I think we should consider this spending mostly part of a big FUD and PR campaign on the part of Microsoft. In the end, however, it's meaningless.