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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.
Allow yourselves to be assimilated, and we will drop all litigation. Hell, we'll even let you call yourselves a "vendor".
Resistance is futile, indeed...
The problem with socialism is that they always run out of other people's money. - Margaret Thatcher
Even Ubuntu? I think you are wrong, but we will see, won't we.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Microsoft clearly want to divide and conquer: They know they cannot fight against the movement of open/free software, but they sure can influence companies. As long as there are big distro's as foolisch to walk the path Microsoft lays down for them these kind of agreements will keep coming.
I'm very curious what will happen with these agreements with Novell, Xandros and now Linspire when gpl v3 arrives. And don't forget, the list of companies signing agreements with Microsoft will keep on growing.
But it seems these companies do not handle in the best interest of the community anymore, but only to serve their paying customers.
Greed, anyone?
Dependency hell? =>
I look forward to Microsoft's statement on Friday about how great it is that companies like Linspire are recognizing the need to properly licence Microsoft patents and blah, blah, blah...
Followed, on Monday, I guess, by a statement from Linspire CEO Kevin Carmony that they never admitted to infringing on Microsoft patents and that they never talked about it, and that Linspire infringes on no one's patents, and, and, and ...
Running Windows^H^H^H^H^H^H^H OSX and Linux in the home. (I don't have time for Solitaire any more.)
The wool has been pulled over your eyes. Microsoft is only doing this to give it's patent claims some validity. Their stance will be "see, Linux must infringe, all of these distributors have signed patent deals with us". This is a divide and conquer move.
But I see this dark cloud with some silver lining. We will know which companies actually are part of the Linux community and which ones are not. So far Redhat and Ubuntu have vocally expressed that they will not do any such deals with Microsoft. There may be others but I am unaware of any at this time.
- Ubuntu and Lindows have a deal regarding "click-n-run", etc., and that future Lindows distros will use Ubuntu as the base.
-
Microsoft can't attack Ubuntu directly
- So Microsoft attacks their partner.
No, there's no "... PROFIT> ...continues to hang itself. At least we still have Debian. Even though its derivatives will > probably all sell out.
A little perspective here, please.
* Novell sold out because, despite their purchases of Ximian & SuSE, they never really "got" Linux; they were just trying to shore up a rapidly dying Netware product while continuing business along the same paradigms that killed it. Witness the resulting exodus of several core SUSE developers, further reducing the company's understanding of Linux; frankly I've seen Novell Linux brands as almost defunct for some years now. (go on, flame away...)
* Xandros sold out because their market share and community was miniscule. They sought to steal Windows market share, but (unsurprisingly) didn't have the resource to tackle Redmond. Xandros are already defunct and starting to smell; they just don't know it yet. (go on, flame some more...)
* Linspire haven't really recovered since having their teeth pulled, and they really don't "get" the security issue. The whole distro is very much Kevin Carmony's baby, and seems to be very fluid while it tries to find a profitable niche. Ubuntu's just broken into the territory it was trying to win (i.e. preinstalled mainstream linux), so I think the distro will die soon. Strangely, though, I don't think that Linspire has sold out, exactly, it's following in its father's footsteps; it understands business, not OS, and is evolving into a kind of "software accessibility enabler". Personally I detest the proprietary shit its peddling, but Ubuntu's already proven there's a demand for that.
So MS has munched on the low-hanging fruit. Sad, but not unexpected; the old & weak are always the first to go in war & business. What remains is :
* Several hundred non-commercial distros, top of the list is Debian, the epitome of idealism.
* Ubuntu - very smart, idealistic, breaking into the mainstream.
* Redhat - very smart, idealistic, pwns the enterprise Linux sector and employs the majority of kernel hackers (and just ballsed up royally with its recent partnership - *Symantec*, for gods' sake! - but they should weather it ok).
* Mandriva - still kicking, playing interesting tunes on 3D desktop usability.
* Various other commercial appliance distros e.g. firewalls, Tivo, etc.
* One lone idealistic guy with who owns the damn trademark.
So let's not moan doom & gloom too early, eh?
Now, if someone rings tomorrow to tell me that Torvalds just sold Linux(tm), then you might have a point. But the *source* will still be out there & owned by the community that developed it. There is now a minimum level of code & application quality that proprietary software houses must meet; and while they don't, there will always be an underdog.
Best regards,
Conrad
What concerns me is that in spite of all the rallying on Slashdot, there seems to be no negative impact on the vendors that sign these deals. openSuSE is still third on distrowatch's rankings. This may not be an concrete indicator for installed base, but it does show that people are still reading about it and linking to their website.
We need to completely drop any Linux vendor that signs a deal with Microsoft. Change distributions to a "clean" one, remove any currently installed software, and contact the vendor for refunds on any boxed software purchased through them. I don't expect anyone to get refunds, but the calls will serve as a reminder.
This is serious people.
"He may be mad, but there's method in his madness. [...] It's what drives men mad, being methodical." G.K.Chesterton