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Shuttleworth Says No Patent Deals With Microsoft

Posted by kdawson on from the one-domino-not-falling dept.

christian.einfeldt writes "The FOSS press has speculated for some time now that Mark Shuttleworth would probably not agree to any patent 'protection' deals with Microsoft, but blogger Steven Rosenberg has found a page on Shuttleworth's personal blog ('Here Be Dragons') that unambiguously sets out Shuttleworth's opposition to Canonical's participation in any such deal. Rosenberg summarizes Shuttleworth's position in these terms: 'So there you have it — Canonical welcomes any efforts by Microsoft to improve "interoperability," isn't a fan of OpenXML, doesn't want to infringe on anybody's patents or trademarks, thinks Microsoft's threats are ill-advised, and would like to actually deal with the issue rather than respond out of fear.'

2 of 121 comments (clear)

  1. Everyone kinda knew. by Howitzer86 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Canonical is out of range of Microsoft's Patent arsenal. Mark is also a smart guy and knows what's really going on.

    I think everyone kinda knew this already, though it is nice to be sure.

  2. summaries help busy readers by christian.einfeldt · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I linked to Steven Rosenberg's blog because he did a great job of finding a comment buried deep in Mark Shuttleworth's blog and because he nicely summarized Shuttleworth's opinion. Rosenberg broke that story by exhuming it from lots of other content on Shuttleworth's very active blog. Without Rosenberg's blog highlighting of Shuttleworth's blog entry, we /. readers would not have noticed it. Shuttleworth posted his comment on 15 June 2007, and a full day passed without that comment being noticed on /., which is a long time for a comment by the founder of a major GNU Linux distro to go unnoticed by /.

    Also, Rosenberg saved busy readers a bit of time by summarizing Shuttleworth's longer opinion. Shuttleworth clearly took the time to make sure that his comments were diplomatic and well-rounded, but the result is that his comments were not subject to the kind of quick-glance summary that many /. readers need.

    So, in summary, I felt that Rosenberg provided two important journalistic services, and that he deserved to get the attention and traffic for his good work.

    Aysa is critical of the decision to link to Roseberg's blog, but IMHO, Aysa's criticism is directed more toward his or her disdain for bloggers and evinces a bias toward big media. Aysa would have had no complaint if this same summary had appeared on say Newsforge. Notice that Aysa doesn't complain about the caliber of Rosenberg's summary or Rosenberg's editorial choice to discuss Shuttleworth's blog. Indeed, Aysa could not have made such complaints, because Rosenberg's summary is pithy and his choice to run a comment by news-making Shuttleworth was unimpeachable. Rosenberg's only "fault" was the fact that his work did not appear on Newsforge. IMHO, Aysa's criticism of the link to a blogger therefore lacks substance and shows a meritless disdain merely for Rosenberg's status. If journalism is good, it's good regardless of where it appears.