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Mandriva Says No to Microsoft Linux Deal
Kurtz'sKompund writes "French Linux vendor Mandriva said no to dealing with Microsoft on open source patents. They're the third Linux vendor in a week to do so, joining Red Hat and Ubuntu in the 'against' column. TechWorld reports that Mandriva's CEO echoed statements from other open source leaders, saying essentially 'we don't need to pay protection money to do our job.' From the article: 'Jonathan Eunice, an analyst at Illuminata, said Microsoft's deals with Xandros and Linspire don't have the same impact as they would if they had been made with a major Linux vendor such as Red Hat. "I think Microsoft is going to second-tier players, and they're cutting deals with them because they are softer targets," Eunice said.'"
So all these groups need to do is go "we'll make no deal" and they get free press on a bunch of geek news sites, more support from the community AND they get street cred?
Wow, who would side with MS when you can get 3 priceless things which your entire business model relies on?
I like muppets.
I was afraid everyone was going to cave in to M$.
What does Microsoft think it will get from these deals with distributions? I doubt most of them have patents that can be cross licensed. I gather most patents in OSS are retained by individuals, or by companies like IBM or Sun.
Microsoft's patent threat can only go so far.
a) Acting out a patent lawsuit against a European company would be an utter political disaster for Microsoft. As soon as MS starts filing patent lawsuits against European companies, the EU will invent a reason to sue Microsoft again and again.
b) Acting out a patent lawsuit against an American company that is well funded, such as IBM, would be a disaster for the software industry and invite federal involvement, which no one wants.
c) Microsoft, like many tech companies, has managed to alienate Republican support. Ballmer might be a Republican, but Gates has already said he's, sigh, for the other side. So, I wouldn't expect a great many Republicans leaping to the defense of MS in the event some sort of legal war goes against them. And surely, Democrats aren't exactly going to rush to defend an oligarchical billionaire's company. Microsoft doesn't really have the allies on the hill that it thinks it has, and Republicans remember MS didn't do them any favors after they got a sweetheart anti-trust deal to begin with.
Bottom line is this: Microsoft's patent threat is a threat only, one that would it be stupid to use, and Linux distros shouldn't be afraid of it.
This is my sig.
Seriously man, I said no too, seriously.
But seriously, what of Gentoo. I can't imagine them going along for the ride, but have they in fact said so publicly?
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
is what I think.
Way to go Mandriva. This affirms that MS is only able to pick off the weaker/greedier distro's.
Mandriva/Mandrake has held a place in my heart for a long time. It is up to date, and it has about the nicest install.
If you are going to give a linux PC to a newbie, they are one of the first I would recommend. They have configuration tools (drake) that are second to none.
It is a very nice distro, and now with the assurance that we are free from MS worries, I would highly recommend trying it to see if it is the right distro for your friends.
Let us not forget. MSFT does have a large war chest, and we cant be sure if it backs up a huge truck load of money on to the driveway of these players, these guys wont have a change of hearts and sing a different tune. So let us not celebrate it too much.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
"I think Microsoft is going to second-tier players, and they're cutting deals with them because they are softer targets," Eunice said.
Let's hope that perception catches on. Only second-tier Linux players go in for a Microsoft deal.
Want to give everyone the perception that you're one of the major players? Refuse to deal.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
I hope now that a few distros have stood up, that every other one Microsoft approaches say NO!
Keep it real, Linux users!
Shameless plug alert: Game server control panel
This is the best thing that Linux distributions and other oss vendors could be doing - rejecting Microsoft's deals. They are based on F.U.D. and have no basis in fact. That's why Microsoft is so vague about it. F.U.D. is one of Microsoft's main marketing and business tactics.
Let's just say that MS had something that they could use against Redhat, Ubuntu, and Mandriva. And say MS somehow shut them down.
Could Linspire (or some other company that did cut a deal) take up the old source code, call it the Enterprise version or something, and distribute it, without worrying about getting sued?
The "pay protection money" makes the sweet folks at Microsoft sound like evil mobsters.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walk_to_Canossa
l l-not-go-to-canossa/
http://corp.mandriva.com/webteam/2007/06/19/we-wi
Since they went with the bizarro agreement in the first place, I guess that makes them the ultimate second-tier vendor.
...i'm waiting...
Oh, I'm curious about these software patents. Can some one please show me a piece of software?
I'd like to hold it and examine it....
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
It matters when a commercial distro stands tall instead of just cutting a deal with MS out of fear.
Thank you Mandriva for standing against Microsoft's attack on Free Software.
Could poor vista sales be the reason for Microsoft brandishing vagues patent threats?
I wonder how many more Linux vendors have to say no to Microsoft before they remember what got them in the position they're in. Didn't they at some point develop and ship software people wanted to use?
Note to Bill: Fire the lawyers and improve Vista. See the accompanying discussion to this article to begin pulling your head out.
Redhat, Ubuntu, and now Mandriva are not just holding out for more money from MS before caving in on the patent threat.
You can take that to the bank. And celebrate!
"I think Microsoft is going to second-tier players, and they're cutting deals with them because they are softer targets,". I think it is very tactless to call Novell second tier. Yeah they may have caved but truthfully they do work on several projects that border on Microsoft ISP Mono, OpenExchange, etc. Do I think it is bad form to partner with MS yes, but if you look at the deal Novell really didn't come out on the bad side of the exchange. Suse is a pretty powerful distro and arguably 3 or 4th in the Corporate distro list.
http://distrowatch.com/stats.php?section=popularit y
by happy coincidence, lists 357 distros.
Redmond has bought off a couple already, and certainly a healthy chunk have a userbase in a low power of two. That leaves a couple hundered in the middle somewhere.
So the strategy can't be to try to bail out the ocean. Redmond's business acumen is way beyond that.
I'm thinking that this is all about hedging against further anti-trust litigation:
"But dad! We played nice with a whole bunch of those kids. That pile of human wreckage over in the corner is just a bunch of lazy whiners."
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Nice business you have there. It'd be a shame if I started a Linux distro... 300 Million and it won't happen...
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
It wants stronger FUD mojo...
Microsoft has got to know that if it really sued for patent infringement it would lose. Any minor infringement that did make it to litigation would be coded out ASAP. They wouldn't get billions and billions of dollars but they would lose their FUD talking points.
This can be a good thing. We are now separating the distros who have integrity from those that don't.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Obviously MS is paying off companies to avoid getting sued in future. Marketing spin is used to make it look like it is the other way around, but if it is unclear, follow the money. MS paid Novell M$40 not the other way around. What exactly it is that MS did that is making them scared of getting sued, I don't know, but it will probably come out in the next ten years or so. I guess they misappropriated a bunch of GPL code and is feeling guilty.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
They should also highly publicize this agreement. It will go a long way against the MS patent FUD. Actively recruiting players who were not approached, like IBM and Oracle, would go even further.
In the end, a couple things might happen:
In any case, mutualy defense is a win for F/OSS.
So how many years until those patents covering Windows '95 start expiring? The "Window" for lawsuits is closing. See how generics changed the pharmaceutical industry. Maybe it's time to make a patent /countdown site for some significant software patents. You see, this is why big companies or government will never be able to control the internet, it's too easy for competitive free speech and competitive free trade to occur online. Politicians won't commit political suicide in the US by censoring content (or even allowing everyone who has downloaded something "illegal" to be punished with "theft" and sentenced to jail). In the short term people that charge to "talk" will be ignored, because they are competing against those who talk for free (how them 'pay' news sites doing?). And lack of IP on "talk" hasn't caused the production of "talk" to stop.
Artists not necessarily being millionaires anymore is just the free market correctly valuing artist's contributions to society. It's a leisure activity. They can dig ditches from 9 to 5 to put food on the table, and practice music and do shows and release mp3s at the same time other people are home from work doing their own hobbies (which could be going to your shows or buying your music). And for the sake of simply avoiding of hypocricy will the pro-copyright and patent defenders please stop communicating their thoughts in a common language, and start mumbling gibberish understood by nobody but themselves. {silence} Thank you, that's much better.
"From DNA to P2P, we are all Copycats now. Go Go Copycat Power! Copycat Powers activate! Form of, a Copycat." --monxrtr
Novell should move to Europe (where the SuSE distro probably should have stayed, in hindsight) and tear up their MS patent agreement into little pieces.
Or heck, Red Hat (having rejected MS patents outright) could even go first, with Linus in tow.
It would make perfect sense if the MS threats weren't also aimed at users.
So, MS convinced some sucke...errr..vendors to cough up dough for licensing. If they don't pursue action against those that didn't bend over, how pissed off will those that shelled out $$$ be if others are getting it for free?
"You can't patent, you know, on-off-on-off code in the abstract, can you?"
-- Antonin Scalia
(IANAL)
It's so hot and I'm so tired I'd read that you had Mr Goatse's fax number.
Only on /. would that even make sense.
Ignore this signature. By order.
"Contracts are what you use against parties you have relationships with." - Darl McBride
Listen, Mr. Dancing Monkey Boy Ballmer, I have already told you several times not to post as AC or shut the fuck up.
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Here's an example of this done goodlier: Thank goodness
Help stamp out iliturcy.
(...but otherwise it offers nothing the average desktop user is interested in... )
.. for... I dunno.. ever...)
I beg to differ on that point, the average desktop user tends to use their computer for web surfing and checking their email, etc., all of which GNU/Linux can do quite well. As far as power users go, I would consider myself one, and I use GNU/Linux exclusively.
(...In the end what keeps your dream and product alive is monetary success. Idealism will not do it. Linux MUST become profitable soon...)
GNU/Linux isn't about money, if that were the case why would you be able to get it for free? And if profits are your only concern, just ask the Red Hat guys about that. Also, its damn near impossible for it to die. The source code is out there, and I guarantee even if the big corporate guys fold, the remainder of the community will continue to maintain it, just as we did before IBM, etc. stepped in in the first place. Welcome the beauty that is free software.
(..If people run Linux once they get their 3 programs installed that they actually use they probably won't be calling tech support
Ok, that's just plain silly. There are literally millions of apps available for GNU/Linux, and unlike MS products where you have to install them piecemeal (and heaven help you if you ever want to uninstall one cleanly), most distros maintain a repository of the more popular ones, and it takes only one or two mouse clicks or commands, to update all of them.
You know, I should've just modded this funny...but it doesn't deserve the +1.
Jonathan Eunice .. I prefers Leinuce over Eunice.
It is no coincidence these are the 3 distros that are by far the most easy to install for users. They are also the most likely to install on both very new and very old hardware (with exception to SUSE's grinding down old hardware with their default cron jobs)...
One guy from East Lithuania also said NO to dealing with Microsoft. He has not been approached by anybody from Microsoft yet, but as he said 'I went public with it to spare Microsoft the disappointment'.
Has anyone noticed in the euphoria over distros standing up to M$ that M$ has already won the first round?
/Xandros /Linspire? They may, or may not die. If they die, the pool of competitors against M$ just got smaller, and the choices available to Linux users shrink. If they don't die, the community is fractured on whether or not to support these distros, and most probably there will be infighting within the community of Linux users.
Look what happened :
- Linux distros stand (more or less) united vs. M$
- M$ issues FUD over patents
- Some distros give in and licence with M$
- Community gets upset with licensed distros and threatens to boycott them.
So what happens if the community carries through its threat and boycotts Suse
Either way its profit for M$.
Look out for that chair!
You are reading a sig. Cancel or allow?
News in brief http://planetlinux.org/
"I think Microsoft is going to second-tier players, and they're cutting deals with them because they are softer targets" -- Is Novell a soft, second-tier player? Maybe MS just got lucky.
-Benjamin Vander Jagt
Since Linux can be re-distributed by anybody who wants to, couldn't I grab Debian/Red Hat/SuSe, re-brand it, throw up a website, and write an email to MS claiming they should send me boatloads of cash for a cross licensing agreement?
If I recall correctly, the MS deals are based on userbase, so I wouldn't have to pay MS very much money, but since their userbase is huge, they'd have to pay me quite a bit.
Would this work? I don't think MS has a leg to stand on, but if they want to pay me millions of dollars, I can pretend.
Maybe not
Sorry guys, but I was the one to write an article http://opensourcelearning.info/blog/?p=359/ on my weblog that first brought up the point that Mandriva is one of two companies I felt could be Microsoft's next target. After that there was some discussion http://opensourcelearning.info/blog/?p=362 on Mandriva's cooker mailinglist whether or not Mandriva should respond yes or no. In the end the Mandriva management came with a clear statement which was pre-announced here: http://opensourcelearning.info/blog/?p=365.
Am I complaining? Nooooooooo, of course not ;-)
It'd be a shame if something happened to it.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
If the traitor distros die then we all stand united.
If they don't (and I don't see how they can possibly continue now) they will become increasingly irrelevant.
The moment MS commits the mistake to sue somebody, these distros would stop receiving any further support form anybody in the Linux world.
They are a bunch of shortermist @(@!)(@@#!%^#
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
.... is pretty useless.....
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
If MS does not take any action in enforcing their "patents", then many people would start to question if MS really has anything at all.
FUD like this is the short term strategy of the technological scoundrel, innovative companies are busy doing actual useful stuff.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
The 3 distro-traitors had at least the decency to say that Linux is not infringing on any patents whatsoever.
And completely bypassing their worthless opinion in the subject, it is not for them to say or not if there are patent problems, since MS is not telling them what is there and most likely it would not be up to them to fix the problem anyway.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
... the other distros are more like losing some bad hair frankly, they were bit players and now I hope they go down the drain.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.