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Red Hat CEO Talked Patents with MS

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the sleeping-with-the-enemy dept.

c3ph45 writes "Before the Novel-Microsoft deal, Red Hat was in talks with Microsoft over patents. Thankfully, the deal fell apart before Novel made their infamous partnership with Microsoft. As has been reported before, Red Hat doesn't plan to enter into any patent agreements with Microsoft, but it leaves open the question: What if both Red Hat and Novell had entered into such deals? One large vendor doing so has caused enough disruption. How would the community have coped with two of the largest vendors doing so?"

3 of 126 comments (clear)

  1. All this proves is that by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    despite Linux' vendors' holier-than-thou attitude with regard to F/OSS vs. proprietary and software patents, business takes precedence. In other words, RH, Novell and Mandriva and all the other companies trying to make a buck selling Linux would happily go to bed with the devil if it earned them more money, and that their self-professed interest in the happiness of the community is just a facade to avoid alienating their source of income. RH probably rejected any deal with Microsoft because they didn't want to ruin their image, not because MS' deal was necessarily bad for them.

    --
    "A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
  2. One word by javilon · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    How would the community have coped with two of the largest vendors doing so?

    One word,

    Ubuntu

    --


    When his defense asked, "Which computer has Jon Johansen trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His own."
  3. If major do a Microsoft Patent deal. . . by TheUndertaker · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    In a heartbeat, I'll switch to FreeBSD.

    This type of crap, Linux vendors making deals with the devil, Microsoft, goes against the whole core philosophy of the OSS movement. It is a shabby excuse for Novell, Xandros and Linspire to ink these type of deals knowing full well that the @$$h0le$ in Redmond, WA will spin saying, "You see, they're signing these deals because Linux does infringe on our patents! Now be prepared to be assimilated."

    Red Hat, in its infinite wisdom, negotiated with the devil themselves but yet didn't sign any deals because frankly, it would have most likely required some kind of statement Red Hat to say, "hey, look what we did. . .we're respecting patents!" And than our Borg friends at Redmond would have spun it to say, "we are your friends, and we mean no harm, now give us your money."

    These type of deals do no justice to any vendor and simply give legitimacy to the public relations garbage of that Borg alien race software vendor named Microsoft. Simply put, a new distribution ought to be created and with the understanding that no patents deals may be associated with it but hey, IANAL, so I'm not sure how enforceable that really is. . . .