Red Hat Rejects Microsoft Deals

Kurtz'sKompund passed us an article detailing another loss in Microsoft's licensing push: Red Hat has summarily rejected Redmond's offer of an alliance. The article also touches on Ubuntu's rejection of the same offer, which we discussed this past weekend. ZDNet reports on comments from Mark Shuttleworth and the Red Hat organization, with Shuttleworth stating "Allegations of 'infringement of unspecified patents' carry no weight whatsoever. We don't think they have any legal merit, and they are no incentive for us to work with Microsoft on any of the wonderful things we could do together." Red Hat was even more blunt, stating the organization refused to pay an "innovation tax" to Microsoft. "Red Hat said there would be no such deal. Referring to previous statements distancing itself from Microsoft, the company insisted: 'Red Hat's standpoint has not changed.' The company referenced a statement written when Microsoft revealed it was partnering with Novell, saying that its position remained unaltered. Red Hat director of corporate communications Leigh Day added: 'We continue to believe that open source and the innovation it represents should not be subject to an unsubstantiated tax that lacks transparency.' Many open-source followers argue that Red Hat, as the largest Linux vendor, would have a lot to lose from partnering with Microsoft."

Comments

Licenced to steal

[zakeria]

I never payed for my XP software so why the hell should I pay for something that I don't have to steal, it's freedom to steal and they are trying to steal from that idea!

Re:Bye-bye Red Hat

[DogDude]

The bigger problem if you ever did decide to run linux is that the MS blessed distro's are as good as dead. Go ahead and ask for some help using your new blessed linspire distro on here and see where it get's you.

If I ever installed a Linux box at work, it had better have 24/7 tech support. I'm not asking Linux geeks for help. "Business use" means that it *has* to work. I'm not talking about some generic PC at home that may or may not play DVD movies for me so I can dick around in forums, trying this and that. It had better be as close to bulletproof as software can be, which is why I'm saying that interfacing with all of the MS stuff is the #1 requirement, as far as I'm concerned.