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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.
This is great. I used to have to pick from so many distros, now I have 2 scratched off the list.
I have used SuSe in the past, but I will never again. Xandros I never used and never will.
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?
They took the money that Microsoft offered. That's really all the news there is here - that Microsoft found another foundering commercial Linux distribution willing to sign up to the patent covenant and give it publicity. The technical aspects are irrelevant, as they indeed are in the Novell deal. Xandros is a little fish without significant technology to offer. Even in the case of Novell, nobody needed Microsoft's help with virtualization - the only thing Microsoft can offer is the slight performance increment of paravirtualization for Windowsover the full virtualization that is available now.
There's not much to do about Xandros. They aren't a big player, this isn't going to make them into one. We should turn away from them as was the casewith Novell, but it seems a bit silly since most of us didn't even know they existed.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
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
Patents are involved, but they are Microsoft's not Xandros', since Xandros is quite a small company that clearly has no patents of interest - that's why it says MS is not licensing patents FROM Xandros. Another part of this article says:
"The agreement with Xandros, to be announced Monday, includes a promise by Microsoft to refrain from pursuing patent claims against users of Xandros software."
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."
The difference is that Xandros is a dieing company and a little cashola from Microsoft keeps them afloat a little longer. And too bad for Xandros, Microsoft doesn't own Linux, SCO does... ;)
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
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
There is a way to profit from open source. Make a Linux distro and then make an agreement with MS. Sweet.
Bearded Dragon
Those of you who would like to tell Xandros what you think may do so here. You may also tell Novell here. - Bruce
Bruce Perens.
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.
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.
I heard you were doing this thing where you -- generously, I must say -- agree not to sue a distrbution's customers for infringing a bunch of patents that you won't name. I also heard -- and this is why I'm writing -- that *you are paying *them for this. So...
I'd like in on this. I'm going to create a new distro every day from now until August 7. In exchange for you not suing the people who buy or download it, I'd like you to give me, say, $5 million per distro. I can come down a bit, though.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
"Long term" ... It looks like M$ 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.