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Novell Responds To Microsoft's IP Claims
Azul writes "Ron Hovsepian, Novell's CEO, has posted an open letter to the Community, where he explicitly states Novell's disagreement with Steve Ballmer's claims of Linux infringing on Microsoft's intellectual property. From the letter: 'We disagree with the recent statements made by Microsoft on the topic of Linux and patents. Importantly, our agreement with Microsoft is in no way an acknowledgment that Linux infringes upon any Microsoft intellectual property. When we entered the patent cooperation agreement with Microsoft, Novell did not agree or admit that Linux or any other Novell offering violates Microsoft patents.'"
Driving that train, high on cocaine.
Casey Jones is ready, watch your speed.
Trouble ahead, trouble behind
And you know that notion just crossed my mind.
With a beginning like this, who knows? They got the O.J. special and book release canceled!
Goodness, if the heads of the two "agreement" corporations are on pages so far apart for this deal, how can this possibly work? Reminds me of the IBM/Microsoft marriage for work on OS/2, which Microsoft continued to claim was blissful right up until the time they got enough ideas for their own Windows replacement and unceremoniously dumped IBM. Too bad, too... OS/2 (while not my fave) was a pretty decent system for its time.
Isn't the following statement in effect confirming Ballmer's ascertation that Linux users are violating Microsoft's patents?
... The next big legal battle will be Microsoft vs. the world.
"In this agreement, Novell and Microsoft each promise not to sue the other's customers for patent infringement. The intended effect of this agreement was to give our joint customers peace of mind that they have the full support of the other company for their IT activities."
If Novell did not believe that Linux users were accountable to Microsoft for using these technologies, why would they look to protect these users? Sure, it's great to offer this indemnification clause for the largest of corporate clients (who have at least some reason to be cognizant of the risk of MS litigation), but by doing so he seems validate Ballmer's views.
I can see it now
Huh? Don't mind me, I'm just the new guy.
Novell is feeling the backlash of their decision to cozy up to Microsoft, but this is just spin, it means nothing. The business arrangements that Novell made with Microsoft are what counts, and they still stand. It's time to deal Novell out of the Open Source pie, we must not allow them to taint Linux with "Microsoft IP".
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
It does no one any good to alienate Novell. Seeing the open source community and MSFT working together is a step in the right direction.
So you signed a deal with Microsoft
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
Here's a free clue, you idiot. That last company that talked about "protecting" end users from being sued was
You might want to look at how beloved they are at the moment.
even giving them the benefit of the doubt, they should have read the fine print.
they've sold the community for 30 pices of silver.
Novel seems to be essentially saying that they agree and disagree at the same time on a topic which was part of their formal agreement. This may make sense to a lawyer or CEO, but seems highly illogical to me. Furthermore, it seems safe to say that any business agreement with Microsoft ultimately benefits only Microsoft, the people over are great at that. I may dislike many aspect of the Microsoft Corp. but they are darn skillful business men. I'm just happy that I don't use Suse.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
What matters is what Novell agreed with Microsoft, and that says it all.
Novell can say all it wants, but you can't fool everybody all the time. This makes this company look either totally naive and stupid, or blatant liars.
- sigs are for wimps.
I for one feel at least encouraged by the fact that obviously Novel is very sensitive to criticism over this. I would like to even believe that they are reading Slashdot. If nothing else, that would be a very positive development. If major players and decision makers begin reading Slashdot and become sensitive to it, that would be a very positive thing for us all. Though the first few comments to this latest news show considerable skepticism, many others in previous discussions had come to the conclusion that there is really nothing to worry about.
Microsoft licenses proprietary code.
Linux is under the GPL.
Is the "right direction" for Linux to become a little bit proprietary?
If not, Microsoft has 100% access to the source code. Microsoft can be as "interoperable" with Linux as they want to be. Any time they want to be.
Microsoft can release whatever specs it wants, whenever it wants.
Now, why don't you go listen to Ballmer talking about how Linux users owe Microsoft money before you start talking about the "right direction" and "working together"?
The bigger the corporation, the more lawyers work for it. Novell, while just a shadow of what they once were, still thinks like a big corporation. Threat or not, they knew that many of their corporate customers -- you know, the paying ones -- had their own lawyers whispering in their ear. It was worth a certain amount of money to them to not have to put the effort into figuring out if they were violating patents or not. The perception was there and that money now gives the perception of safety.
What the suits didn't understand is that while Linux is moving more and more into the corporate space, at its core it is still a community driven project. They drastically underestimated that community's dislike and distrust of Microsoft.
Good luck to them trying to serve both masters.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Microsoft has 100% access to the source code for Windows AND for Linux. If Microsoft wanted "interoperability" then Microsoft is in the best possible position to just do it.
And Microsoft can release any specs at any time so Linux could implement "interoperability" improvements.
The fact that Microsoft does not do either should tell you all you need to know about the "interoperability" bullshit.
A rule of thumb when dealing with Microsoft.
Microsoft ALWAYS shafts their partners.
I've watched it happen repeatedly with big-name and little-guy companies here in the valley, and seen news of it elsewhere.
Cutting a deal with Microsoft is an invitation to big trouble and I fail to see how companies keep falling for it. (Perhaps there IS something to the PHB stereotype.)
Cutting a deal with Microsoft for (limited) licensing of their patents is an invitation to accusations of IP infringement - and the first shoe has just dropped.
But (like reading Microsoft source code) it's also an invitation to accidentally contaminating the open-source code base with actual Microsoft IP.
I expect THAT to be the second shoe - with Microsoft first FUDding up the customers, then going after Linux ala SCO, but with their ducks correctly aligned before filing the first suit.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Although I'll give them credit for a lot of code, good old BSD is the well from whence many operating systems drink.
Given re-invention of code, or code I can 'steal', I'll look at good code and glean the best from it any time. So did Microsoft. So did IBM. So did Novell. It's the sincerest form of flattery, after all.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
That MIGHT be reasonable
But Linux has been seeing double digit growth for years now. Linux server sales are growing faster than Microsoft's server sales. Sure, Microsoft has a larger share of the market right now so it doesn't take as much for Linux to grow faster
Why would Novell want to "mitigate fear" that would hamper sales when sales are growing at a double digit rate?
SCO is the last company that tried that argument. And I'll ask you the same thing I asked back then.
What company was the last company (not SCO) that sued end users for patent violations instead of or in addition to suing the company distributing the infringing product?
Go ahead, dig as much as you can. You won't find anything. It does not happen. There was not threat. There is no "fear".
Again, Linux sales are growing at double digit rates. There doesn't seem to be much "fear" out there.
Dear Novell Executives:
How many company's have entered into collaborations, with Microsoft, that did not end up with a rectal aperture far exceeding that of goatse? How many did? So, do you actually fell that lucky? Talk about a long shot. Well, I'm sure you are all busy packing your golden parachutes, and will be long gone before the fecal matter hits the rotary device.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
So Microsoft has released the specs to allow Linux to interoperate with Windows? Tell me more
So by "interoperate" you mean
And by "you're wrong" you mean
Come back when Microsoft opens up NTFS or Active Directory, okay? Or even when Microsoft has 100% support for ODF, as a default option, out of the box.
Like I said, Microsoft has access to all of the Linux code AND all of the Microsoft code.
Microsoft can open any spec it wants, whenever it wants.
Any other talk about "interoperability" is pure bullshit.
Is there a legally binding agreement not to sue if you use them? Then it's worthless.
Having a patented spec be visible doesn't make it open, and is SURE doesn't make it free.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Watching MS over the years, they have had good moments, and bad moments, done good things and done things that make your skin crawl...
The sad part of this is the 'business' model that Ballmer and his crew use as an Ideal are at the heart of almost every failed and every skin crawling activity MS has done.
MS was a good company at various times after the past 30 years, but if you notice those fleeting moments, Ballmer and his 'ideals' were the recessive thought mechanism in the company at those times. The 'older' Gates ideals and people emulating him are a lot less likely to hae ever pulled a lot of the crap MS has done in the past 15 years.
This new Linux scare from Ballmer is just another mark in the 'oh crap he did not say that' box. I'm sure there are technologies in Linux that come from MS, even if you take distributions that read FAT32 drives, but on the same note, MS has also taken a lot from the *nix community and it would be so petty to drive the market into this type of war.
Ballmer's words remind me of Oracle's CEO (Ellison) a few years back, at every event or launch, instead of telling us how great their software was, he spent most of the time complaining about MS,and yet MS's products were slammin them in the market because they just worked better. If he or his people would have just spent more time making their products 'better' then could of actually been on stage showing us how much better they were, rather than only pitching how awful MS was.
Maybe ol' Steve is a nice guy, but he is just not helping MS. MS needs to put back in power 'idealists' that believe in 'consumers first' thought and not how they can squeeze the extra nickels out of their business models.
Even look at Vista, in a lot of ways it is a revolutionary OS if you look at the intelligence it implements and the architecture, yet marketing and the 'business' people don't get the genius from the development teams, and will have trouble selling it.
This is evident with the marketing and business people creating five freaking versions of Vista for consumers. It creates more confusion and is less profitable and could hurt the 'standard windows' base because of the differences. It would have been better for MS to have just added $20 to the cost and do only one version. In fact the Vista release like XP is in contradiction to the 'design' ideals of the NT group in having a shared code base to 'reduce confusion'. (Of course the code base is still shared, but the confusion is artificially added by the business and marketing people.)
My two cents for today...
I don't really see the problem with all this. Microsoft and Novell can say and do anything they like about patents, but it doesn't make a patent problem arise where there was none, nor does a lack of agreement make one disappear if there was one. Novell got a few hundred million bucks out of MS, and it doesn't affect anybody else one whit. Why not let em have it?
Most folks haven't realized that Novell made a deal to protect MS customers and vice versa...there's no protections implied between the companies with regards to patents, they still can either sue or not sue each other.
And to be honest, to say that Linux does or doesn't infringe on any patents out there is quite naive. It'd be the same to say that Windows doesn't infringe on any patents is equally naive. To be quite fair, there are probably quite a few (300 some odd patents) which could be infringed upon with regards to Linux and Novell has just been forthright enough to try to protect their customers from that concern.
They haven't hurt the community in the process, they haven't unGPL'd anything, etc. They have however, made a deal with the devil, and surprisingly (note the sarcasm), have seen the devil continue on with the FUD which most are falling for.
The truth is MS can't really pursue it without major retaliation and to vilify Novell is nothing but silly and naive...so please read the accurate information before spouting rhethoric and continuing the spread of FUD...you're doing nothing but helping MS with this.
Microsoft has lawyers. Lots of them. If they have IP that's infringed and they know it, they have to sue to protect it or they lose it by neglect. If they had something, the money would have gone the other way. So, they haven't got cause for a suit or they'd have to sue.
What Microsoft does have is a fat wad of cash. That is exactly what a company like Novell that backdated Waaay too many stock options needs. The bonus is Novell gets $400M to promise to not sue a company they've got no grudge against.
The sad part for us is that Novell must now and forever be a leper. They've done great deeds in the past. There was great hope for their future. They're trying to fight the FUD now but you can't unring the bell. A shame they had to get weak kneed in the end. It's also sad Ballmer gets to say things like "Gee, that's a nice linux webserver you got there. Be a shame if one of our IP lawyers had to have it admitted as evidence." Makes you wonder if he was shaking down kids for their lunch money in school. I hope Novell's development teams have litte trouble finding honest work before the end.
The upshot is that we've got $400,000,000 worth of proof that Microsoft's got nothin. Nothin, that is, except a metric ton of coupons good for one free SLED install they couldn't unload even as wrappers for free ice cream cones. Can you imagine the sales call? "Yeah, I got this coupon for a Linux install we can sell ya, but after five years if you're still running it we have to sue ya. Oh, and our BSA thugs will be around regularly to make sure you don't exceed your linux quota, k?" They'll have to paper the halls of One Microsoft Way with expired coupons. The companies that adopt Linux under Novell's indemnity will discover that Linux is rock solid, swift and sweet. When they realize Microsoft's always had nuthin, they'll migrate painlessly to a distro that's less tainted. Perhaps this is the dirty trick that convinces them to get all the way out of business with these creeps.
I blame Ransom Love for this whole mess, because he killed Unix. Him and all the chowderheads that think this indemnity nonsense has more value than six inches of used dental floss. It's a bad thing to be mugged at the point of a lawyer. It's cowardly to be blackmailed with lawyers that have nothing.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
If you threaten to sue and force other people to go out of business, you already abused software patents.
If MS has these patents, do we really believe that fear of alienating their customers is enough for them to refrain from suing people? Couldn't they sue IT companies -- linux companies, IBM, etc., without damaging their relationships with large corporate customers? And aren't those large customers so locked in that they really don't have anywhere to go if they're alienated, anyway?
. html), has more patents than any other tech company and they've been around since long before Gates was in diapers--I would hazard a guess that Windows infringes on far more IBM patents than Linux infringes on Microsoft's. I'm not saying Microsoft wouldn't have the balls (and lack of brains) to try this, but the resulting shitstorm would likely take 10+ years to resolve and could very well result in the downfall of M$ or patent law reformation... and I'd be overjoyed to see either. And even if M$ somehow prevailed, I'm willing to bet a significant portion of the EU and Asia would say "fuck you!" if asked to pay royalties on Linux.
Err, wouldn't Microsoft suing IBM over patent infringement be the legal equivalent of shooting themselves in the foot with a bazooka? IBM, according to their own website (http://www.ibm.com/news/us/en/2006/01/2006_01_10