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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
If you can't fight 'em, join 'em. (and then, find a chance to backstab 'em)
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.
Cringely's latest column (http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2006/pulpit_20 061110_001188.html) is all about the Microsoft/Novell deal and Balmer's statement re other deals. He thinks Balmer's statement is deliberate deception to sow discord in the Linux space
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.
There are a few comments here where people say "old news. apt-get. etc" While this style of distribution may be old news, it's not something people outside our community are aware of. Even if you hate MS, it's hard to deny how much research is done there. Somewhere around 1/4 of all computer graphics research is done there and they release papers for it too. Who knows what will come from them trying methods we hold dear. It could be good. If it's bad, then we don't have to care about their work.
Information is information regardless of where it comes from. What I'd really like to see is MS learning a lot from Linux distros and then incorporates things I happen to love about linux and oss into the system my employer forces me to use (so I can read spreadsheets... ugh). It would make my working life more fun.
The MS strategy here seems obvious to me. They bring a bunch of open source groups under their roof. The open source people who make money help MS make money as time goes by through support (not sure why MS is paying so much in advance, to be honest). The open source people embrace things like mono which work for any language (eventually) and on any system (mono). MS knows the uber geeks will probably still use Linux or Bsd or whatever, but they now can bring a LOT more open source software into the windows world. Beagle is a neat tool. Tomboy is neat. Are they neat enough for my mom to use on her windows computer? Possibly. MS could modify it and then redistribute, couldn't they? I think the gateway between free apps that are neat and their money making os is simply being opened.
If our software really is so much better, then what do we have to be afraid of. The software is GPL'd which means we're safe from anyone taking it away from us...
Reality is nothing but a collective hunch.
The same way a humpback whale is interested in plankton.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
FTA: "People point to Google because Google is the emblem for somebody who has embraced a different business model than we have," he said.
I'm guessing that that would be the "Do No Evil" part, Mr. Ballmer?
[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...
LINUX: I'm not dead!
CUSTOMER: What?
MIRCOSOFT: Nothing. Here's your money.
LINUX: I'm not dead!
CUSTOMER: He says he's not dead!
MICROSOFT: Yes, he is.
LINUX: I'm not!
CUSTOMER: He isn't?
MICROSOFT: Well, he will be soon. He's very ill.
LINUX: I'm getting better!
MICROSOFT: No, you're not. You'll be stone dead in a moment.
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
The ink on the Novell-MS deal isn't even dry yet and Ballmer is publicly announcing his intention to violate it.
In case nobody noticed, one of the clauses is that Microsoft won't cut any similar deals with Linux companies for at least three years. It's barely three days and they're already trolling for more.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
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.
*Yawn*
Wake me up when they become partners with something like Debian
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.
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.
Linux can't be buried in the same way that a proprietary piece of software can, granted, but I think that Microsoft thinks that it can be buried -- or at least made irrelevant -- through use of software patents.
Basically, you engage in Novell-like patent cross-licensing deals with all the major Linux manufacturers, and push them towards one distribution ("MSLinux"). You drop hints about possible liability if anyone uses non-licensed distributions, discouraging their adoption and funding. Plus, you create a lot of proprietary, MSLinux-only 'compatibility extensions' that let it work with Windows. In the end, once "MSLinux" has captured a significant portion of the market, you cut of its air supply and let it die. This leaves people with little choice but to migrate to Windows, since the other Linux distributions are either perceived to be dangerous (due to patent landmines) or have simply been neglected and underfunded for so long, that they can no longer compete.
It's not a total endgame against Linux, but it's a pretty significant move. The GPL prohibits Linux from ever being killed completely (particularly outside the U.S.); but if you get enough software patents, it might be basically impossible to use in any significant, competitive way, without opening oneself up to legal problems.
The real unknown variable in all this is where IBM stands. They're obviously pro-Linux, but their support is generally indirect. You don't see them buying or operating their own Linux flavor or distribution outright. I wonder if Microsoft started buying up the competition, and the field started to narrow, would IBM jump in and pick up one of the players?
IIRC, the Linux desktop that IBM was going to deploy companywide (which would have been significant in itself, they have something like 300k employees) was a RHEL derivative. I wonder if they have some relationship with RH that would make them a likely buyout, or at least patent cross-licensing target?
That would be interesting; Novell and Microsoft and their patents on one side, and Red Hat and IBM on another, with the biggest repository of patents in the U.S. That would be an interesting showdown.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I think that what Ballmer and Microsoft are up to is to take over the distribution chain. What Microsoft wants to do is to became a one stop house for all software customers. If a customer needs/wants a commercial linux with support he/she can go to Microsoft and buy it. A customer benefits because he has only a one channel to work with, one vendor how quarantines and provides all the he wants. Microsoft benefits because it can at the same sell try to persuade customer to go for Microsoft products. Also by being the first contact to the customer, Microsoft guarantees that Novell/other companies making the same deal won't try to persuade customers away from Microsoft products.
You might ask why is Microsoft changing it tactics to semi-embrace Linux? One answer is that Linux is not going away and the second is that today's and tomorrows computing environments will be multi-os and multi-vendor, because of advancements in virtualization and deeper standardization of communication between different enterprise application. In this environment for Microsoft to succeed, they need to be more closer to customers and be able to satisfy all customers need, of course at this position they have more power to bring customers to their software offerings.
Survey research tool for commercial and scientific use
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.
I think what they are after is this: they want to consolidate the business use of Linux into a few corporate hands and then control those hands. How? Like this:
* create an impression that only one (or N) Linux vendors are legitimate and that the rest carry potential patent risks
* in case the risks do not seem real enough, at the same time provide an incentive to incorporate MS-patented code into Linux (by Novel and by the "non-commercial" developers)
Or look at it like this. MS can't just take the GPLed code and run with it, like they could with BSD. But instead, they can pay Novel to develop code on their behalf that they can then redistribute via simple bundling. So far so good. Linus would say it's fine as long as we get the contributions back. But not really - those contributions will likely be tainted by MS's patents. This is because Novel has no incentive to avoid this and MS has a strong incentive to steer Novel towards their patents. So if Linus takes the code, he will risk dramatically raising risks of infringing MS patents, thus making Linux into a Novel-only property for business use. If he does not, MS has effectively stolen the GPLed code without contributing changes back. Nice work.
Sure they will be happy to strike this kind of deal with other distros. The more of them are involved, the more patented code will tend to get into Linux, and the more control MS will have. I'm hesitant to use the Tolkien analogy, but it is still true - the 9 kings no doubt also thought they were getting a good deal when they got their magical rings.