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Microsoft Gives Xandros Users Patent Protection
DigDuality writes "Microsoft, shrugging off licensing moves to prevent it from repeating its controversial patent deal with Novell, has signed a set of broad collaboration agreements with Linux provider Xandros that include an intellectual property assurance under which Microsoft will provide patent covenants for Xandros customers."
Wow. Show me the patents or shut up.
Not exactly a new strategy.
I am of the opinion that Microsoft will continue to push the boundary as long as it is around.
I don't really know if this is 'news'. Expecting people to be too surprised at this is sort of like saying "Hey, everybody, another person was killed in the middle east today" and expecting to get responses like "Wow, I didn't see that one coming!" or "You gotta be kidding."
The new MSV alpha
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protection
Anybody care to suggest which of those articles is applicable?
With Novell, Microsoft subsidised Novell Suse licenses. With Xandros, Microsoft is doing a deal to provide "patent covenants", which means protection being sued by Microsoft for patent claims that Microsoft has not actually specified.
The game is to knock down the commercial Linux vendors, one by one, and establish them all as clients of Microsoft's "intellectual property". You can bet that the pressure on Red Hat to settle is quite intense. First, their competitors are being subsidised. Second, their clients are being blackmailed.
I've written a more detailed analysis on this. Microsoft is using software patents to try to take ownership of GNU/Linux and all free software / open source that would be distributed along with it.
Divide and conquer. At the end, the volunteer distros will be left alone to do their work, contributing to the shiny new future, while Microsoft makes sure it gets its 10%.
GPLv3 is being seen as many in the industry as the answer. I think that's wishful thinking. The real answer here is a lawsuit from the government for abuse of monopoly power, where Microsoft is using its monopoly in the desktop area to interfere in the server OS market.
On a related tangent it seems that the Redmond astro-turfing drones are out in force, insulting RMS, calling the GPLv3 all kinds of names, claiming that "freedom" includes the right to abuse other people. Well, drones, suck it. Doesn't matter how much you scream and rant, how much your managers pay you to mess with ISO and push OOXML, Microsoft is either going to learn to "do no evil", or it's going to sink like the Titanic.
My blog
Consider the difference between from and to.
Bruce Perens.
So in Brooklyn, for example, Fingers and Lucky come into your restaurant one day and demand a weekly payment in return for which nothing bad happens to your business or your cute little kids. See the Wikipedia article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racketeering,quoting definition of Racket, quoting the article: "...best-known is the protection racket, in which criminals demand money from businesses in exchange for the service of "protection" against crimes that the racketeers themselves instigate if unpaid..." So is there a *RICO case here? * RICO (from the same article) "Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (18 U.S.C. 1961-1968)...allowed law enforcement to charge a person or group with racketeering, defined as committing multiple violations of certain varieties within a 10 year period.... purpose..."the elimination of the infiltration of organized crime and racketeering into legitimate organizations operating in interstate commerce."
As others have said, this is part of Microsoft's FUD program to convince people that Linux venders believe Linux does have major patent vulnerabilities, and are bowing to Microsoft's ownership (although, I thought SCO owned Linux, why isn't Microsoft going after them?). But the real Enterprise Linux players will never fall for this. Red Hat might, but Oracle probably will not, given how much Larry hates Bill. Mandrivel and all the rest are not US based, and probably don't see much threat.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Forking isn't bad news. Unless Novell et al completely own the Copyrights on said GPLv2 software (say, a few packages?) they can't change the licensing on it. It will have to stay GPLv2 which allows the rest of us to keep seeing their sources and picking and choosing any useful patches they distribute to their software. On the other hand, they won't be able to do the same to GPLv3 software being worked on by the rest of the community. Forking is bad news for them, not us.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
March 28th was the Grandfathered cutoff date for the GPL3 as far as I know...interesting...
Got Code?
The point I'm trying to wake is that it MS makes enough shills, they'll become the "community." The GPLv2 fork could become the dominant one.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Novell may be getting "blackballed by the community" but recent earnings reports show that since the Novell/MS deal, Novell has gained share at Red Hat's expense. The "community" of which you speak might be good at "blackballing" but so what? That community doesn't pay the bills. It's not like you guys actually buy any distros or sign up for support contracts anyway, so you can "blackball" whomever you want. It makes no difference since distros aren't seeing any money from you anyway.
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
Are Xandros planning on distributing GPLv3 code? Has Microsoft just affirmed it is prepared to shield all downstream recipients against infringement claims? I hear Microsoft talking about building bridges which is strange considering the GPL is already a straight road.
I think the wider implications of this are important considering the FSF have essentially put Microsoft on notice with regard to GPLv3. Is Microsoft really spoiling for a fight or are they just upping their bluff?
Agreed - I actually was considering Xandros for my parents. Xandros looks very "windows like" and if I recall correctly it came with proprietary codecs as well for DVD playback. It was because of this that I considered them. I also considered Linspire for similar reasons. I wonder if they'll be next on Microsoft's list of converts?
I went with Ubuntu in the end. Now I'm glad I did.
~Dave
Bearded Dragon
It seems that they'd do it even without the lawsuit protection.
Microsoft seems to just want that bit in there so they can spread FUD.
So, for some money (small change to Microsoft, big bucks to Novell, no idea about Xandros), Microsoft purchases the assistance of a Linux distributor for spreading FUD.
In which case, it is understandable that the rest of the community will reduce their associations with that company. Why waste efforts on a company that is going to help spread FUD about you, your products and your customers?
Yeah, but that community does make the software. If the community gets pissed off, Novell has no more product to sell -- hence the GPLv3.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I used to be a big SuSE fan, starting way back in 1999. My last SuSE version was 10.1.
Now I'm using Kubuntu.
As for the OpenSUSE apologists, no thanks. OpenSUSE still exists at Novell's whim, using Novell's resources. Why use that when you can use a distro that has nothing to do with MS?
Well, I think this has just become a running joke. I think it is much more than just "the Linux community" that thinks Microsoft is full of shit with their lies and marketing ploys.
Microsoft continues to lose all credibility as anything other than a "me too" technology company. Microsoft makes money on the kickbacks it dishes out to idiot CIOs and by its policy of designing vendor lock-in into everything they make, not on the merits of their products.
Smart CIOs would ban MS products from the office, not standardize on them.
I'm no astro-turfing drone. [cut] ... Because that's the day that we as a community finally start to piece back together the tatters of both our credibility and that of our business model.
:-)
Which shows you to be an astro-turfing drone, since we don't have a business model.
That's what you Microsofties fail to understand. You can't demolish free software using the tactics that you employ against competing businesses, because we're not a business. But it's fun to see you going through the motions anyway.
Only if it is released as "GPL 2 or later". SuSE could release all their stuff as GPL 2 only, then it can't be put in the GPL 3 version of the product.
First they ignore you
then they ridicule you
then they fight you --- You are here
then you win.
The road between democracy and tyranny is paved with secrecy in the name of security.
Remember how the movie "Bull Durham" emphasized what a dramatic jump it is from the bush leagues to what they called "The Show", the majors?
Xandros and a dozen other of what Mr. Perens posted above as "struggling" Linux distributions are struggling because people like myself (MEPIS man, 3 years) consider their $50 or $100 OS price a Grave Decision and hopscotch through various distros (Mandrake, Lycoris and Linspire for me) and probably settle on a totally free one. Like me.
So Xandros and many others have gone over a decade unable to ever meet payroll for more people that can gather around one conference table, with growth flattening after they reach a base of a few thousand home users, a couple of dozen minor corporate installs and perhaps a couple of larger ones.
Then MS comes along, and it's not the direct cash so much as the mere prospect of a CHANCE of being seen as a Serious Corporate Solution that might, just might now get picked up by a couple or six dozen larger installs in the hundreds of desktops each. Slashdot readers might not be scared of the patent boogeyman but the larger a company is, the more averse it is to the prospect of such risks, however small. To them, a volume purchase price of $25 per desktop is very, very cheap insurance against even spending one legal-staff-week on a lawsuit threat.
So a company like Xandros can "offend" a free software community that has been collectively sending it a few hundred thousand a year at most to grab a shot at the brass ring of joining "The Show" and selling thousands of installs to big corporations. Like a baseball player taking a longshot at "The Show" even if it burns all bridges back to the bush leagues.
You can blame them but you should also see their point of view.
Xandros didn't have the money to pay Microsoft for this. They were dying anyway.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Ditto ... we had several SuSE licenses, they're slated to be replaced by RHEL5 by the end of the year. It was mostly my call to make, all it took was a quick slide show to management stating how SuSE was entering into a licensing agreement with MS, threatening the continuity of their SuSE Linux line, and approval to migrate to RHEL5 was a done deal. In the end, this is a good thing, it focuses resources back towards RH who really have maintained their stance on the GPL all along. If anybody is going to go to the mat for Linux, it'll be RH.
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
SLES is already "that other enterprise Linux". IOW, some zealot inside the IT organization has to go out of their way to make Novell visible to the CxO crowd. Novell is already in a disadvantaged position. Pissing off the people most likely to make them visible is not the brightest strategy.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
It more like rooting out the distos that are willing to sell out. I'd say it's a good service Microsoft is providing. And they can't get them all. Even if every single one is willing to sell out, all that does is create a cottage industry of new distros waiting their turn in line.
No, as a corporate CIO I probably wouldn't ban Microsoft products altogether, but like the former CIO of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, I would make sure that using standard open formats were a primary criteria for software selection. With proprietary formats only being used if no other software was available to fill a need.
Using open formats isn't about taking some moral high ground, it is about business continuity and being able to do what you want with your own assets. Nothing should piss off senior management more than discovering that you can't use the data that your own employees have generated over many years just because Microsoft doesn't support what you want to do.
"Long term" ... It looks like M$ are playing for the long term.
/. post on the subject...
First we had the M$+Novell stunt. Then the 235 fictitious patents and now the "deal" with Xandros. Its looking ever more likely, this is part of an ongoing serious tactical move by M$ to damage the name of Linux, by implication alone, that its somehow unsafe from legal action, unless licensed by them.
I'll just quickly paste in a section out from my previous
"Microsoft could well be using this "patent news" in a very underhanded, but very tactical way to scare corporations away from adopting open source tools and/or OS, in an attempt to tip the balance so corporations buy Vista. Non-technical Corporation bosses would be afraid of this kind of underhanded sabre rattling tactic of Microsoft, as they would fear wasting time and effort on Linux and so go the "safe" route of using Microsoft tools & OS. ("Safe"=What M$ tell them is safe)."
Now with this Xandros move, it looks like its part of a bigger overall strategy. It looks ever more likely this is a much more serious tactical move than just sabre rattling to just sell more copies of Vista.
I can only hope organisations and even governments who use Linux, can quickly take serious legal action against M$ for this strategically very devious mud slinging.
If this isn't stopped fast, M$ are going to scare other Distros into signing up and each that do, add implied weight from a legal perspective, in the eyes of non-technical judges, that something is up with unlicensed Linux. Its a very underhanded strategy to imply something is wrong with Linux.
If enough Distros sign up, then M$ just has to say in court "hey look judge, even these big Distros admit there was something wrong with Linux. So now, we want everyone else to pay up".
Microsoft look like they are playing a very big chess game to win control over Linux and it needs to be stopped fast.
There are 10 kinds of people in the world... those who understand binary and those who don't.
Choice of product is not a moral dilemma for the user, no more than buying a used car from an untrustworthy business is. It is all about what is in the users best interest. Buyer beware. Getting stuck with all your company's work in one vendor's proprietary format, so you are at the mercy of their future business practices, given a clear history of monopolistic business practices designed to promote vendor lock-in to maximize Microsoft profit beyond what they could reasonably expect in a free market, is not in any company's or user's best interest.
Microsoft continues to lose all credibility as anything other than a "me too" technology company.
Unfortunately, the reputation of a 800lb juggernaut which let others pioneer shallow waters and only comes cruising in where there's an established market to conquer isn't nearly as negative as you might think. Their similar-but-legally-distinct products won't be the best or cheapest, but you know it'll be pushed enough to get a decent market share, the deep pockets to stick around and it'll play nice with your other MS software. It's quite easy to find MS Certified Somethings to staff it up, rather than the mix of applications you'd need otherwise. Most CIOs aren't out to help "the little guy" or try out the latest bells and whistles or custom solutions, they want something standard and solid.
Of course, according to slashdot Windows has horrible stability and security. Yes, all through the 1990s Windows was crap. but Windows 2000 (for business) and Windows XP Home released in 2001 (for consumers) is stable. Perhaps not seven 9's stable, but enough that it gets lost among crappy drivers, hardware failure, lack of UPS, required reboots (which Linux has too, for the kernel) and whatnot. Yes, I know manufacturers are asshats and won't release specs and yadda yadda. The ratio of old obscure hardware supported by Linux to bleeding edge new hardware not supported doesn't really make it a big swing in favor of Linux. Oh and if you use "experimental" drivers, BLOBs and whatnot then most of the stability promises went out the window anyway.
As for security, on the server side IIS 6.0 released in 2003 has had NO major exploit, and on the client side XP SP2 released 2004 with the firewall patched up plenty. There's been nothing like slammer, blaster, iloveyou or any of the other mass exploits for several years. Yes, I know it was a decade or something after Linux, but it's there NOW. For a place that loves to pull up the "Companies have no right to ask time to be turned back" quote, many here are incredibly happy to turn back time and present old arguments as still valid.
Not to mention a few that are just absurd, like forced obsolesence when extended support lasts 10 years after release on Windows and not over 5 years on any Linux platform I know. Or how Windows users who don't patch their boxes for months at a time would be any different. In the same timeframe as one remote exloit there's probably several local ones, if you can't just patch a userspace program and trick you into sudo-install the trojan yourself. Or horribly unrealistic comparisons where you compare the effective security of tech-geeks on Linux against grandmas on Windows, or that postulate "everyone should become a tech geek like me".
Hell, I've heard the sales pitch some of the Microsofties give, even they aren't singing the hallelujah chorus. The pitch goes more in direction of "love them or hate them, but you'd be a fool to ignore them" and make the customers feel like they make some kind of strategic blunder if they go with anything else. There's more than ample proof that you need not be liked nor ground-breaking to be successful.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
1. Pick distro's nobody is using. ...
2. Give them patent protection hoping people will use them knowing they suck.
3.
4. Profit!!
Or, it could be that Microsoft recognizes that their Windows market share is at its zenith, and wants to start disarming a potentially nuclear patent war. Sure, Microsoft has a bunch of patents, but how many times has Microsoft been accused of (or actually has been) "borrowing" some *nix code here and there?
Granted, Microsoft could hire an entire state bar association if they wanted, but litigation is a pain and Microsoft's PR is bad enough as it is. Is is possible that there isn't a conspiracy, and that they just want some 1) good PR and 2) to avoid an ugly suit they're sure to lose by the "deepest pockets" theory of social justice?
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