Microsoft Fracturing the Open-Source Community

TechGeek sends us to eWeek, where Mark Shuttleworth is quoted to the effect that Microsoft has succeeded in fracturing the Linux and open-source community with its patent indemnity agreements. Quoting: "Microsoft's strategy was to drive a wedge into the open-source community and unsettle the marketplace, Shuttleworth said. He also took issue with the Redmond, Wash., software maker for not disclosing the 235 of its patents it claims are being violated by Linux and other open-source software. 'That's extortion and we should call it what it is,' he said." Shuttleworth added, "I don't think this will end well for the companies that slipped up and went down that road."

Comments

No surprise, but it won't work

[pieterh]

Microsoft are doing what they do best, divide and conquer, with FUD and money. The good news is that by attacking the open source community, they have shifted into "FIGHT" phase (ignore, mock, fight, lose, as Gandhi said). Microsoft will not win, for the simple reason that the open source community is unlike any business they have crushed before.

We can't be divided, we are already utterly fragmented and internecine. Our strength is that we can never be absorbed; once open (and especially if GPLd) the code can never be killed.

Microsoft will try, and try, and try to divide the FOSS community, and each time they'll just make it stronger. Eventually the attempts will change Microsoft; the only real way it can fight and beat FOSS is to become FOSS.

Nothing Microsoft can do, no amount of money, patent blackmail, FUD, ISO corruption and bribery, not even murder and assassination, can stop the Community, because FOSS is not a business, it is a better technology, and like MSN/1.0 in 1995, where Microsoft thought, "let's beat the Internet by making our own private network", you cannot fight better technology. You use it, or your competitors do, and either way it survives.

Of course, in the meantime, Microsoft can and will cause a lot of pain and damage and destroy many careers and corrupt many officials, and mis-educate millions of young people. It's very sad. But in the long term, makes no difference.

Re:Much ado about nothing

[Chosen Reject]

I'm not a zealot by any stretch of the imagination, but copying music isn't stealing. How hard is it for people to add a new phrase to their vocabulary. It's called copyright infringement. It's illegal. It's against the law. It has been put on the law books as something that should not be done. It is NOT stealing. Perhaps those zealots are hypocritical when getting angry at copyright infringement when it is their copyright, perhaps there are more than one group of people on slashdot. But in either case, people who say such a thing are correct and you are wrong. Get over it.

I don't copy music, nor do I download games, and I don't own any unpurchased-by-me movies either. I don't participate in copyright infringement, I don't condone it. I recognize that it is illegal and unlawful. But I also recognize that it is not stealing. It is copyright infringement.

Do you realize that murder and manslaughter and aggravated assault are different?
Do you realize that robbery and theft are different?
Do you realize that trespassing, breaking and entering and burglary are different?

If not, then I can understand that you don't know the difference between copyright infringement and stealing. But if you do understand the difference in all of those above, then why do you have such a hard time understanding that there is a difference between copyright infringement and stealing?

I will say it one more time: Copyright infringement, while still an illegal and unlawful act (in jurisdictions where the copyright is held), is NOT stealing. They aren't the same crime. Both are crimes, but they are not the same crime.

I hope that clears it up for you.

Poorly reasoned article contradicts its own quotes

[Torodung]

The first sentence of the article:

Microsoft has succeeded in fracturing the Linux and open-source community with the patent indemnity agreements it has entered into with several prominent vendors, Ubuntu leader and Canonical CEO Mark Shuttleworth told eWEEK. Followed by Shuttleworth later directly quoted (in the same article!) as saying:

"I think it's obvious at this stage that really what Microsoft is doing is trying to unsettle the marketplace. It isn't working and has not had the slightest impact on those companies that refuse to be drawn into that line of discussion with Microsoft." Equals near to direct contradiction, folks.

How eWeek's Peter Galli managed to divine that "Microsoft has succeeded in fracturing the Linux... community" from Shuttleworth's clear refutation that "Microsoft is trying to unsettle the marketplace. It isn't working..." is beyond me.

This dubious claim of Galli's is one of the clearest cases of "white is black" reporting I've seen in a while. Shuttleworth clearly, from his own statements, does not agree with the concept that the community is "fractured." At best, he believes that a few insignificant vendors have been "drawn into [negotiations with MS and] have paid a significant price."

I would say, from his clear, concise statements, that he sees the whole, sordid event as "extortion," and a crucible that has purified the community, rather than "fractured."

Read Shuttleworth's statements (in TFA) and see if you don't agree that Peter Galli is either a) a poor reporter who made a gross mischaracterization or b) has a strong agenda and preconceptions and can't even tell white from black in his zeal to follow them.

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Toro