Slashdot Mirror
Xandros CEO Doesn�t Agree Linux is Patent Violator
whitehartstag writes with a link to a Network World article about statements from Xandros in the wake of their Microsoft deal. Xandros CEO Andreas Typaldos made a point of stating that they don't believe their product violates any of Microsoft's patents. Nor, he said, did the software giant share with them exactly which patents they believe Linux violates. Just the same, he's disappointed with the reaction they've received from the open source community. "Feedback from the Linux community has been on the order of 'you shouldn't really be talking to the devil.' Linux and open-source advocates believe it is a big issue and say the Xandros deal, and another signed by Novell with Microsoft last year, erodes open source licensing provisions especially around intellectual property issues. Indeed, the Free Software Foundation is rewriting its GNU General Public License (GPL) 3.0 to prohibit such patent deals in the future."
Especially when significant money is involved?
Are you competent to even run this company?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Well, I've not been following this whole thing very closely, but I do recall seeing the frequent complaint that Microsoft refuses to identify which patents are being infringed upon. Given that Microsoft probably holds thousands upon thousands of patents, I expect that it's not reasonable to expect the Linux community to proactively slog through them all and make sure all violations are corrected.
If I understand correctly, at least part of the burden is on Microsoft to defend their patents. I'm sure if they provided a list of the violations, the community would take care of the violations. It just seems to me that not releasing the list means either (1) there's not really any substantial violations, or (2) Microsoft just wants the spectre of patent infringement hanging over Linux as long as possible. Or maybe a little of both.
Just my uninformed two cents, though...take it with a block of salt.
[b.belong('us') for b in bases if b.owner() == 'you']
And exactly what is the Xandros product? Just an FYI, Xandros does not own linux, they distriute linux which is licensed to them by the owners of the copyrights under the GPL. The Novell and Xandros deals are BS because they are linux distributors and at best a small player in the development of linux.
From the base of the kernel source code I ran an egrep -ir "Xandros" * | egrep "Copyright" and came up with nothing, for Novell there was only one. If you try something like "Red Hat" or "IBM" or "Hewlett" you come up with a list of multiple copyrights.
So is Microsoft signing a deal with Xandros to not go after their customers for the services that Xandros provides? Its definitely not for any Xandros intellectual property.
It is the same issue, both are based on posturing rather than facts, linux adoption did not stop, and there was no reason to fear The SCO Group unless you were a previous customer of the original SCO. The SCO Group professed loudly the same threats in the press but in the end they didn't go after a single linux user, they went after their own customers who did business with them in the past.
So if The SCO Group is any hint of what will happen its likely the people who are signing deals with Microsoft are the ones who will get screwed.