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.'"

Comments

So..

[Turn-X Alphonse]

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?

Re:So..

[madcow_bg]

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? Which is very, very good indeed! It shows that the community matters!

Re:So..

[kungfoolery]

I'm sure it's a bigger deal than that.

Undoubtedly, Microsoft is waving a big bag of money in front of these vendors in order to entice them to sign. Turning away a deal with a devil that'll plop you tons of cash in your pocket to help fuel future R&D plus the promise of no future litigation from M$' army of lawyers so you can focus on said R&D might not be as easy to turn away as it seems.

I will say though, this makes my respect for those vendors who have refused to sign that much greater

Re:So..

[smilindog2000]

I will say though, this makes my respect for those vendors who have refused to sign that much greater

Agreed. Even further, how many of us now boycott the Linux distros that buckled under M$ pressure? I do, and have steered multiple companies away from Suse already. Xandros and Linspire weren't really on my radar anyway, but now I'll be on the lookout for opportunities to torpedo them. Is there any community group organizing such a boycott?

Re:So..

[bonefry]

Turning away a deal with a devil that'll plop you tons of cash in your pocket to help fuel future R&D ... You forget that it's the community that does the actual R&D ... and Novell, Xandros and Linspire will feel this when major projects start going GPL3, and they are left behind with old forks that need maintenance.

That's what happens when you bite the hand that feeds you ;)

Re:So..

[Wylfing]

So very well put.

These companies who profit wholly on the efforts of gift-economy programmers want to make deals that shaft those very same people. Either participate in the gift economy or don't. We don't care. But please don't try to poison our gift economy.

Re:So..

[MightyMartian]

That's precisely the position I take. For all the contributions these guys make, the fact is that the overwhelming majority of code sitting in their distros was not developed by them and is not maintained by them. They are the recipients of a good deal of hard work by other people, and as they take this road to complicity with Microsoft's anti-OS campaigns, they're going to find themselves on the margins.

Re:So..

[projektdotnet]

I have my boycott. I refuse to buy microsoft products actually. When my parents got their new(er) used computer the first thing I did was put feisty on it. Also in case anyone is wondering and would like to send a message to Mr Gates his fax number is 425-708-0600. It took some hassle to get it from the receptionist but I got it!

Thank God.

[cromar]

I was afraid everyone was going to cave in to M$.

Re:Thank God.

[MollyB]

Thank God all you want, but don't forget the brave developers, coders, programmers and others who, collectively, stood up to The Bully.
They are our liberators, not a Supreme Being (may I be struck dead by lightning if it ain't so)!

Re:Thank God.

[MollyB]

ah-yup (unlessin' I's daid 'n y'all're too)

Re:Thank God.

[dvice_null]

> If there is a God, why does he/she allow disasters like earthquakes and Microsoft?

Are you comparing a disaster that causes billions of dollars finansial losses and thousands of people to lose their home every year, to a natural movement of tectonic plates? That's low.

Re:Thank God.

[negated]

They are our liberators, not a Supreme Being (may I be struck dead by His noodley appendage if it ain't so)!

Sorry, just had to fix that for you!
- S

Re:Thank God.

[nschubach]

Oh No!

He's done far worse than kill you. He's given you that thick southern accent!

Where's the business case?

[Urusai]

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.

Re:Where's the business case?

[klingens]

They get acknowledgement for their patents. They have proof that people settled for their patents they can show in lawsuits down the line. Now their patents have assigned some value. And those deals won't last forever either:
Do you think MS still pays money to distros 5,10 years down the line? No, then they want to receive money, at least from the ones still around.

MS is in for the long haul here.

Re:Where's the business case?

[MightyMartian]

It doesn't give a damn about that. It wants, like SCO before it, to have some trophies on the wall, so it can point at them and say "See, these guys think there's a violation of our IP rights going on!" I'm sure they expected guys like RedHat and Ubuntu to tell them to kiss their shiny metal asses, but still, they've got a few, and now they'll milk those PR wins for everything they're worth.

Re:Where's the business case?

[CastrTroy]

Who cares if I get people to acknowledge my patents. Does that mean they are valid patents? Would a judge even consider this? I don't see how getting people to pay for licenses for you patents adds any validity to them. Especially when nobody even knows what the patents are.

Re:Where's the business case?

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Red Hat and a few other major players have openly contested MSFT's claim that Linux violates its patents. So the value of "Look Ma! These guys agreed and paid me money" argument is very low.

Further to sustain, "they paid us money" argument, they have to show that these companies paid more to MSFT than the recieved in concurrent deals. Already they can show that it is MSFT that paid Novell and not the otehr way around. They will move for discovery to see what kind of deals it offered to others who signed on. That is a can of worms MSFT would not like to open.

Further, many open source advocates have openly challenged MSFT to identify the alleged violations and they claim if there were really violations they could work around it easily. By not identifying these patents, Linux advocates could argue that MSFT has abandoned whatever rights it had. In copyrights/trademarks, if a company knows there is a violation of its trademark/copyright and still takes no action, it loses the trademark. This is one argument Linux could make.

In my opninion, IANAL, the strong, open and vocal dispute over the claims MSFT made over Linux has completely voided any residual "why would they have paid us money if they had not violated my patents?" arguments.

Re:Where's the business case?

[organgtool]

Good point. In addition to that, deals like this go further to fragment the growing Linux community. Let's not forget that with contributions such as Xgl, Mono, Beagle, and AppArmor, Novell is no slacker when it comes to Linux development. If the Novell-Microsoft agreement makes Novell unable to release their code under the GPL3 like some people have speculated, that would not only punish Novell but all of the Linux users who could benefit from Novell's projects.

Absolutely no reason to cave.

[tjstork]

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.

Re:Absolutely no reason to cave.

[aichpvee]

I think you mean the only cable news network that hasn't listed so far to the right that it's sunk. BTW, last time I heard Bill Gates was a Republican. Is there any evidence that this is no longer the case?

Re:Absolutely no reason to cave.

[mp3phish]

Bill Gates also heavilly donates to the RNC and to republican candidates

How do you think the political appointment of Ashcroft went through so smoothly and what was the first thing on Ashcroft's agenda? Dissolve the push for a harder MS settlement.

Mandriva has always been nice

[John Jamieson]

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.

Re:Mandriva has always been nice

[sconeu]

Been using Mandrake/Mandriva off and on since 2001 (8.1).

The x.2 and the 10.x (through 2006) were pretty ugly. 2007 and 2007.1 seem to be pretty good.

Until Ubuntu, MDK had the rep as *THE* newbie friendly distro. The installer is still second to none (with the caveat that it seems to overwrite the MBR with grub even if you tell it to install grub on the root partition instead).

Who paid whom?

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

We know that MSFT actually paid Novell to get them. Something like Novell pays X$ to "license" the patent infringing technology from MSFT and MSFT paid Y$ to Novell to distribute some "coupons". Y > > X. May be some other such deals with Linspire and Sandisk/Samsung or whoever else who signed with MSFT.

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.

Re:What about me? And gentoo and...

[Spy der Mann]

But seriously, what of Gentoo.

Gentoo + Microsoft. hmm....

"To compile properly, this version of Gentoo requires Microsoft Visual C++ for Linux(TM) version 7.0 or later. [Click to buy online]"

Nah..

I hope that perception catches on

[Weaselmancer]

"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.

Re:I hope that perception catches on

[aichpvee]

Which way to the Microsoft Make a Linux Deal Department? I wouldn't mind the cash or free entry into second-tier Linux distribution status for my umm... Debunhat Enterprise Linux...

Re:What about me? And gentoo and...

[EvilRyry]

Gentoo has no commercial offerings, and therefore wouldn't be a good target for MS.

Way to go Mandriva!

[sleekware]

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.

Microsoft = Mob ?

[ruewan]

The "pay protection money" makes the sweet folks at Microsoft sound like evil mobsters.

the canossa reference in the blog title

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walk_to_Canossa

http://corp.mandriva.com/webteam/2007/06/19/we-wil l-not-go-to-canossa/

So SUSE is a second-tier vendor?

[filesiteguy]

Since they went with the bizarro agreement in the first place, I guess that makes them the ultimate second-tier vendor.

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.... ...i'm waiting...

Is it because vista sales were weak?

[ruewan]

Could poor vista sales be the reason for Microsoft brandishing vagues patent threats?

Re:Is it because vista sales were weak?

[init100]

Only Microsoft knows that, but it is a suspicion I've had for some time. Issuing public threats is bad PR, and would only be done in an emergency. If Vista and Office 2007 sales were shooting through the roof, why hurt the company's reputation by starting to make vague threats left and right?

How many more?

[Statecraftsman]

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.

Re:How many more?

[Zantetsuken]

Maybe you still think its just the lawyers influencing these decisions and that Ballmer and Gates still actually would care about the company if "we just swayed them in the right direction" - these decisions would still happen, if not more often and more aggressive attacks against the open source community even without lawyers. Quoting Steve Ballmer off of Wikipedia (and the source from the wiki quote: http://news.com.com/2100-1001-268520.html)

He has referred to the free Linux software system as a "[...] cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches."

Can't stop a magnum

[smittyoneeach]

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."

A deal they SHOULD be making

[CrazedWalrus]

... is one with each other. Some sort of mutual defense agreement. If MS does decide to sue, they should all come to each other's aid. Maybe one company is too small, but the combination of those in the 'against' column might stand a fighting chance.

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:

1. MS doesn't sue, and good PR was had by all (except MS).
2. MS sues and gets a run for its money. They might even lose, all dollars being equal. Either way, they need to disclose their patents at that point, which ends this particular FUD campaign.

In any case, mutualy defense is a win for F/OSS.

Re:A deal they SHOULD be making

[imroy]

MS sues and gets a run for its money.

MS won't risk it. No, the FUD value is *far* more valuable to them. They can scare people away from F/OSS and scare others into making their own deals.

Re:A deal they SHOULD be making

[DMalic]

Don't fret too much. Once you convert the timescale from "corporate upgrade period" to our standard clock system, it's really been less then a week.

Re:A deal they SHOULD be making

[Kpt Kill]

Insert Gentoo emerge zealotry here

Go European

[Burz]

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.

now that some have said yes, some no - next step?

[CodeMunch]

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?

The best reason not to do any deal...

[jobsagoodun]

"Contracts are what you use against parties you have relationships with." - Darl McBride

Divide... and conquer.

[Camael]

Has anyone noticed in the euphoria over distros standing up to M$ that M$ has already won the first round?

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 /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.

Either way its profit for M$.

Re:Divide... and conquer.

[jez9999]

But what doesn't kill you only makes you stronger. The remaining distroes will think twice before signing any similar deals, if that happens.