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

The LInux business community...

[Recovering Hater]

...continues to hang itself. At least we still have Debian. Even though its derivatives will probably all sell out.

That's how they've always done business

[Puls4r]

This is how Microsoft has always done business. From Internet Explorer to Media Player on down the list, bundling the software or having it as a "default" is a very very powerful tool.

For instance, most companies lock down their computers. I can't even install quick time on ours - which means that unless it works with windows media, I don't visit the website. Many websites know that - so they don't use Quicktime formats. It's a neverending circle.

If I were google, I'd be thinking about doing the same thing in reverse. Get your office suite working and then begin package it free on every computer manufacturer that you can negotiate with.

What are you waiting for?

[b1ufox]

What are linux big shots waiting for now?

Red Hat , Ubuntu please do the rest of the honours. I have no freaking idea what MS has in his pocket that all these companies have agreed to MS terms of so called *patent* protection.Hell yes, i am paranoid but that so only because MS is involved in all of these pacts, i am not at all comfortable taking the bullshit.

Why is Linux community silent on a whole? Only thing they can do is host a site called as showusthecode.com and challenging Mr Balmer. And MS responded by making one more Linux company its ally. Now i am really getting worried about my submitted code as GPL. Is this just me or something is really cooking up at Redmond?

Re:What are you waiting for?

[Otter Escaping North]

Why is Linux community silent on a whole?

Good god, man! Are you serious? The Linux community isn't silent about anything. Novell has experienced a backlash, and the CEO had to go so far as to address it publicly. That's not insignificant, in my mind.

Now i am really getting worried about my submitted code as GPL. Is this just me or something is really cooking up at Redmond?

I'm struggling with that, too. Trying to figure out how serious a concern this is. My one solace at the moment is that what we've really got is Microsoft managing to rope Novell, and then two bit players in the game. Xandros and Linspire? Microsoft isn't exactly taking down the titans of the Linux world.

They did get Novell, and I agree that's not small potatoes - but the general opinion really seems to be that as well as getting hosed, Novell also got conned by the boys from Redmond. In the fallout - RedHat specifically rebuffed Microsoft's public offer.

Many people have compared this to the SCO fud-fest that got going - and that actually seems to be a more apt analogy the further we go. A couple of small-frys have caved in -- in their own defence, they're not equipped for a battle with Microsoft, and we must assume these are businessmen and not fanboys.

I expect Microsoft will continue to pick off the small distros, trying to build some PR momentum before training their guns on the larger players in the Linux industry. Not dissimilar to SCO's approach.

What happens then, is what tells us what's really going on here...

Re:Is this really that bad of a situation?

[denominateur]

The problem is that a lot of the software we use on a daily basis is largely copyrighted by these businesses in addition to the thousands of developers that have contributed code. Most of the nuts and bolts of a linux distro, including a lot of the kernel, came from redhat developers. As for the desktop, GNOME has a lot of contributions from Novell programmers. KDE is almost entirely Trolltech's child and so on. So in case any patent litigator has valid (in legal terms, we all know how much we agree with software patents) claims in any of these pieces of software, the community at large will be forced to rewrite large portions unless these copyright owners transfer everything to GPL3.

Re:Divide and conquer

[Bert64]

Microsoft are not the biggest worry when it comes to patents...
Sure they will talk and talk, but they wont actually do anything. They have as much to lose from ridiculous software patents as anyone else. If microsoft start suing people over patents, then a large number of companies will start suing them back, including big companies like ibm and sun, which could have significant impact upon microsoft's products.

The biggest risk, comes from the small companies who have a few patents but no products. They have nothing to lose, you cant sue them because they dont have any products anyway, their entire business is litigation.

Re:Well isn't that special?

[Stocktonian]

In return, among other things, Linspire will make Microsoft's search engine the default search on PCs shipped with their OS.

As someone who sells Linux ,and only Linux, pre-installed on PCs and laptops across Europe I'm disappointed in this. My company is a Linspire reseller and system builder and we've been awaiting the new Linspire 6.0 for a few months now with baited breath. Linspire 5.0 doesn't work on most of our hardware so we're not selling it at the moment and news like this makes me want to drop it all together.

It'll be a cold day in h*ll before I ship a PC with Microsoft Search as the default.
---
http://www.xephi.co.uk/ for Linux without MS Search

That's really funny

[kimvette]

It's really funny that Microsoft is "letting" Linspire use Truetype, especially considering that:

    - Truetype is an APPLE innovation
    - Truetype was developed over 20 years ago, so any patents pertaining to such have long run out. Even if there were valid claims, APPLE would have to be the one to pursue the claims. Somehow I cannot see Apple doing this.
    - Fonts aren't copyrightable, based on numerous court precedents (note: a font is distinct from a typeface: a font is a typeface with a style, weight, size applied)

A typeface dscriptor (a .ttf file) may be coprightable ( http://nwalsh.com/comp.fonts/FAQ/cf_13.htm ) however that is easily resolved: ttf2afm $foo $bar && afm2ttf $bar $zag. Granted, that is a sleezy way to work around the issue, but the end result is likely not going to be an identical binary file. That would be a slightly interesting test case. Considering that the outline itself is not copyrightable but the binary representation of it is, I wonder if such a tactic is clear of infringement in a court of law? I'm sure the big business would win, but it's not outside feasibility for that to be considered not infringing since typefaces are an odd creative work in terms of copyright.

So, licensing truetype fonts to Linux distributions? Ha. I hope these linux vendors are not paying so much as a dime for these "agreements"