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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."
The patent threat is just FUD.
I'm more interested, right now, in how much Xandros was paid for this "deal". Particularly after the problems Novell had with their's. And with Jeremy Allison leaving Novell after that deal.
They know their standing in the community is going to take a hit. So, how much was it worth to them?
What is selling out providing, except to bolster Microsoft's position that they must have something, else nobody would be dealing with them?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
When it was just Novell, you know they'd be screwed after GPLv3 because they wouldn't have the resources to fork the last GPLv2 releases of everything. But on the other hand, if Novell and Xandros and ??? ('cause at this point I think we can assume MS will continue making deals) get together, there could be significant forks. And that's really, really bad news.
All the people who've been saying "MS has something else up it's sleeve; just wait for it..." have just been vindicated, I believe.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
That happens to be openSUSE nowadays, and it is totally unencumbered by any deal Novell has made with Microsoft. And if you used SuSE in the past you're probably interested to know that Yast2 is now a fast, complete and GPL'ed system configurationtool. If you install the smart packages, you can select repositories and update your machine synaptic-style. You'd find that allmost every interesting package can be found on the repositories for openSUSE (from MythTV to XDVDshrink and hugin to ltsp). Novell updates openSUSE like clockwork, and is equally like Red Hat and IBM a big force in kernel development. That makes openSUSE a popular, high quality, solid, open source distribution (and there aren't that many).
Now I know that Novell is very impopular now, but I think, that if openSUSE would disappear it would be loss for open source as a whole. And if also Xandros would disappear it really wouldn't be that great anymore.
No, ranting and raving won't do a thing.
However no monopoly is an island.
Look at how hard the Microsoft drones have tried to discredit GPLv3 here. There is a steady stream of propaganda: "GPLv3 takes away your rights, RMS is evil, why limit freedom..."
If we - those who are meant to swallow such crud - are worth talking to, then we're not powerless. Microsoft cannot make an infinite number of enemies in a networked world. At some stage it needs friends. And it's got so few left, it now has to buy them.
I'm really waiting for the day when Microsoft looks at Apple's and Google's share prices and realises "being nice could actually make us more money than being evil bastards that everyone hates."
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Has anyone stopped to consider the fact that this might be exactly how Microsoft wants the OS community to respond? The backlash against Novell after their deal was significant...it's safe to say they lost at least a handful of customers as a result.
If Microsoft can chip away little by little at the guys who are selling support services, then it only helps their business.
Of course I could be totally wrong.
Not at all. You didn't read the Novell-Microsoft agreement. No use of server-client software is safe. No use of systems that send mail is safe. No use of wine, OpenOffice, several other programs is safe. No use of the software on the desktop is safe. And there are some additional ambiguous exceptions that may well apply to anything Microsoft decides they apply to.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.