Linspire Signs Patent Pact With MS

RLiegh sends us to an AP article reporting that Linspire has signed a patent deal with Microsoft. The company, which started out life as "Lindows," joins a growing list of patent agreements reached between Microsoft and vendors. Linspire will be granted a license to use True Type Fonts and "various code" that would allow for Linspire users to use voice on Windows Live Messenger as well as the usual patent protection for Linspire's customers. In return, among other things, Linspire will make Microsoft's search engine the default search on PCs shipped with their OS. Kevin Carmony, the CEO for Linspire, approached Microsoft a year and a half ago, according to the article.

Comments

This will devide the boys from the men

[houghi]

Thanks to GPLv3 all people who are with Linux because they hate Microsoft will leave. Great move guys. Let's make GPL even stricker, so nobody remains.

RMS, why do you hate Linux so much?

To all of the confused...

[Pojut]

...did you ever think that maybe, just maybe, Microsoft is aware of how shitty their product is, is aware of how bad of a taste their name is leaving in folk's mouths, and is also aware of how attractive Linux is looking to people?

Look. The Linux deveopers that are signing into agreements with Microsoft? They care about money. Just like MS. Exactly like them. Profit, bottom line, whatever. They are no beter than MS, they just know how to take your money without you thinking that's all they are interested in.

I say let them join Microsoft. Let them go down the drain. You folks in the FOSS community seem to be able to make your own stuff....ok, then go out and replace what has been lost?

I know it's "not that easy", but hey according to you all if someone works at a major coporation that makes them inherently stupid and a horrible designer...so get off your chops, start designing, and shut the fuck up.

Ah, those F/OSS nuts

[rockhome]

So, on one hand, you have Linux vendors making pacts with Microsoft that will wind up having God knows what effects,
and then you have the King of the Nutjobs, Richard Stallman, trying to stamp out your freedom to do anything but
release free software(God forbid I create a closed, embedded system, even though I released the code to the wild).

So is the whole thing falling apart, or is Linus' valiant stand in opposition to GPLv3 the only thing that will keep
the community going? I would guess not, because I would imagine that GPLv4 would include provision that
would not allow a system built on GPLv2 code to even comminucate with anything written under GPLv4.