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Microsoft (Probably) Didn't Just Buy Unix
jfruhlinger writes "Word came down this morning that when Attachmate bought Novell, certain intellectual property rights were sold to a Microsoft-led consortium as part of the deal. Since Unix is the most valuable piece of IP Novell owns, there was a certain amount of panic that suddenly Redmond is in charge of this foundational technology for Linux and a number of other open source projects. But, while MS is being cagey, Brian Proffitt doubts that Unix was part of the IP package that was sold — and believes that Linux would be safe even if it were."
What if Novell sold them Unix, but didn't give them the root password?
Evil people are out to get you.
Novell's 8-K filing says that Microsoft's "CNPT" bought 882 patents.
* What important patents did Novell have?
* What happens now to Novell's contribution to OIN?
Novell contributed some big patent sets to OIN, like the Commerce One e-commerce patents. What's their status now? Did Novell "give/transfer" them to OIN, or did OIN just have a transferable assurance of access to these patents via Novell?
* http://en.swpat.org/wiki/CPTN_Holdings_LLC
* http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Novell
* http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Open_Invention_Network
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
which is exactly what you don't want - if they said "we own it", no-one would believe them until it got to court. If they said "we don't own it", no-one would care.
But, because they say "maybe", everyone starts to panic and worry, and think the problem is far worse that it ever could be.
After the revelations years ago that Microsoft had funded SCO during the Darl era, and has been on the attack against Linux for a good 10 years now at least, I would not just put my feet up and rest easy following this news. At this point nobody even knows what MS bought, so it's a little too early to be going down for a nap.
Microsoft knows that there are several threats to its existence, but most of them can just be bought off, paid off, or partnered with. Linux is not really susceptible to any of those vectors. If indeed MS has come away with the Unix intellectual property rights we can expect a renewed set of attacks. Specifically, Microsoft would probably avoid dirtying its hands directly, and instead use some sort of nominally separate entity (which would probably end up being the holder of the Unix IP) to attack Linux through a confusing and expensive court case.
I know it is nice to hope for the best, but while one does that, they should also prepare for the worst.
So how come the /. poll is no longer shown on the home page even though I have it ticked off in my preferences?
(It's not the only thing ticked off.
Your repository will be merged into ours. Your code will serve us. Resistance is futile.
...Is tired of this whole software patent mess?
I mean, come on. Not only do people have to worry about what patents their newest idea is stepping on, but now when companies are bought, they may have large ramnifications which ripple around?
I'm pretty tired of this rubbish. They should just throw away software patents - then we could still have good companies which actually develop stuff instead of simply being bought for their patents. Alas poor Sun.
A Microsoft Unix 2013 Professional Edition doesn't exactly give me pleasant imagery.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Well that puts my mind at ease now. ;-)
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
I thought Unix /was/ foundational to Linux, but Linux had moved on enough that no matter what happened to Unix, Linux could carry on. Or is this just the threat of bogus lawsuits, where My Lawyers Can Waste More Time Than Your Lawyers?
And even if Linux is somehow vulnerable, wouldn't that just mean a flurry of activity* while Canonical et al port to BSD?
*[roughly a year of much screaming and flinging of poo, but it'd get done.]
Linux Is Not UniX so what is the big deal?
Dear Windows Users:
We've been working on this project for decades. The good news is that your new operating systems is based on Unix.
The bad news ( for you ) is that you owe Microsoft U.S. $200.00.
The good news ( for us ) is we're U.S. $300,000,000,000 richer.
Please proceed now to your upgrade with Winix 1.0 for your operating system pleasure.
Yours In F.U.D.,
Steve Ballmer
See my subject-line above, & this -> http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/1998/09/08/BU85830.DTL&type=tech_article
PERTINENT QUOTE/EXCERPT #1 of 2:
"Linux is a form of Unix"
and also this -> http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2006/02/letter_writers.html;jsessionid=ZVAVPXEVVZMITQE1GHRSKH4ATMY32JVN
PERTINENT QUOTE/EXCERPT #2 of 2:
"Unix as an operating system is not disappearing because of Linux. Linux is Unix"
APK
P.S.=> Well, "will wonders NEVER cease"... however: I have always wondered IF those are "official", & what-not, though... any takers? Thanks for the info., either way... apk
While you may attribute Microsoft's cageyness to an effort to enhance royalty revenue by not being clear on what they own, it is much more likely their large corporate structure and lawyers getting in the way. If someone asked Microsoft's PR what patents they now hold, the PR guy has no idea. He needs to go to the M&A team who did the deal and ask what exactly they now own. When the PR guy hears back he needs to do his job and put some spin on it to make Microsoft sound cutting edge yet not monopolist with the new IP. Then the PR guy needs to forward his response to legal, who will circle back around to M&A to cross check the facts. The legal guys will come back with a list of things that the company can't say and the PR guy will need to apply another round of spin to get around what the lawyers told him would't be fit to print. All of this will probably take a couple of weeks, so don't expect an immediate answer regarding the implications of the specific of a deal to UNIX, especially during the holidays.
Bill Gates Jr. retired from Microsoft some time ago. Couldn't you Slashdot guys at least update the silly icon so it shows Ballmer as a Borg?
You could even make him the Borg queen...
#DeleteChrome
What if you sucked 10,000 cocks per second?
.. then you would have a 10KHz CPU (cock processing unit).
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
There is a threat here, but it has nothing to do with the Unix copyrights. We have already established really, really well that the Unix copyrights are irrelevant at this late date. They can't be used like patents to enforce against other similar works. They were released under an unterminating BSD license and covered by a government standard. Forget them.
What they got was 481 patents that were part of a portfolio that Open Invention Network had previously used to defend Linux against patent suits. So, this is escalation in the patent war they are running against Linux, because they just removed one of our defensive weapons.
Bruce Perens.
I have serious doubts that MS would be interested in patents other than those with potential to hurt Linux (or even OSX). Was Novell known to own any other patents of significant importance to Microsoft? If they could get their hands on the SCO stuff wouldn't they try very hard? For me, there is no other reasonable explanation for Microsoft getting involved at all and none has been published anywhere as far as I can tell.
So yes, expect a new series of boring attacks on Linux/Android (and perhaps OSX) by Microsoft.
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
Don't they already own it? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenix
MS has two likely choices for patents they want to acquire:
1. patents their competitors infringe
2. patents they infringe
With the large number of patents involved there were probably quite a few of both.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Microsoft will not attack OSX, they need a "competitor" that is not a real competitor. If OSX ever steps foot in the enterprise space then maybe they would, but for now OSX is a value to them not competition. Linux is competition, google is competition. Nothing that threatens the MS desktop market and operates in the enterprise space is safe, they protect that above all else.
Was that a self-referring post?
Well played
"Why should I buy anything, that I can throw at chair at.?"
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Miguel must be ecstatic. Seems like he always wanted to work for Microsoft, and now he will, albeit indirectly.
IOS which is OSX which is UNIX (real UNIX, not Linux) is the smart-ass kid which is making MicroSofts Mobile OS feel stupid and lonely.
MicroSoft are facing assaults on all fronts, their situation seems a bit reminiscent of Sun circa 2000. Don't put anything past their ability to "innovate" - it worked well to crush netscape and only suffer a tickle on the pinky.
Just use an icon depicting a chair flying through the air...
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Ballmer: And next will be my kernel I suppose, let's get on with it.
Stallman: WRONG! Your kernel you keep and I'll tell you why. It's so that every missed IRQ, every dropped packet, every sysadmin who wanders by and says "My God what is that abomination" will fall upon your unused IO buffers unserviced.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
www.groklaw.net. Pamela Jones is the Empress, the rightful dispenser of knowledge on who goeth there regarding Linux, the Law, and the great game called Follow The Money.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
Perhaps that Russian guy who a few days ago commented that Linux was near the end of its release cycle knew something!
In all seriousness, given the FUD Microsoft spreads about Linux to their customers, I wonder if this purchase has been working its way into their propaganda engine for a while.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Microsoft probably would do it as you described, since that is the convoluted, much more complicated, and much slower way to do it. A real Linux guy would simply pass "single" as a kernel boot parameter, which gets you to run level 1 logged in as root sans the need to enter a password.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
... then he'd be giving you a little competition.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
I'll just wait for details of what they actually bought, because Microsoft owning UNIX is not a very pleasant thought. In fact, I feel dirty just saying that...
I'd rather not think about it, and hope it ends up being untrue. Microsoft is nothing but a bunch of monopolistic, price-gouging scumbags, and they own enough software that they shouldn't as it is. They can keep their Windows, shove it up their ass for all I care, but leave the rest of the OS business the fuck alone. If this disaster of a scenario does turn out to be true, it would scream "antitrust" louder than the Win9x days.
The bought and marketed something a PC version of Unix called Xenix in the late 1970s and early 1980s. I used to use UNIC on PdPs and Vaxen at that time. But Xenix was way under-powered on 16-bit CPUs. They sold to SCO after they developed IBM-DOS.
Net wide i mean. With all participants possible - from google to small companies, from ngos to individual donors. An international unix consortium or something can be created, and everyone can donate to that, and the consortium can buy and release unix as public domain or gpl, therefore ridding unix and linux and all the companies and individuals using them of all these troubles. There had already been such organizations founded back in 2005 or so to defend net neutrality. It can happen again.
Read radical news here
what you say doesnt seem so surreal to me. tho, i would say that its good that such people are still about in this time and age.
Read radical news here
Novell didn't have to show they owned the rights to Unix in SCO vs Novell - just that, whatever rights they had, they didn't convey them to Santa Cruz.
So whatever they bought from AT&T, it wasn't "ALL right to Unix."
Sometimes a distro will muck with init setup so that prompts for root password.
However, there's a good chance init=/bin/sh will work (depending on initrd contents).
Booting a rescue image is probably the most bullet-proof way to do it, unless the root fs is encrypted in which case you're screwed unless you had a password that can be dictionary cracked.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
mm-m-m.. to kill bugs? (swarming leftovers in his beard)
Horde as much source as you can, just in case.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Won't always work. Sometimes a system will have a filesystem that is not supported by the live CD. Having a clue, knowing Linux, and starting with the most simple and quick method, and then trying progressively more complex and time consuming ways is probably the most bullet proof way to do it.
;-)
See, I can be a know it all naysayer too
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Anyone who can't work that one out is daft.
If Microsoft bought the Unix patents and tried to actually do anything with them, they they'd either lose and have worthless patents or win and have the government invalidate their patents to prevent a 100% monopoly. There's no upside for them in that game. Microsoft may have been rooting for SCO, but that's a war they need fought by proxy, they can't fight that themselves.
Microsoft will not attack OSX, they need a "competitor" that is not a real competitor.
Right, and Linux is not also exactly that.
Microsoft is still in a good overall position and is the only company even wanting the open PC OS market, and Linux is still hostile to commercial ISVs with no end in sight. Apple knows its current strategy makes it hard/impossible to retain a majority share of PC or smartphone markets, and they don't care to with their margins.
Microsoft has displaced UNIX in the past, and now it's back with... what GNU utilities? Get real. They only need to win back hearts & minds, they have the technology already.
I like quality open source software, but I don't like software "because it's open source."
Now everybody who visits this page will see my comment about sucking 10,000 cocks per second. Brilliant. Yes, I agree with my sibling poster—well played!
I hear his belly hangs low, so he cuts a vertical incision on his belly button to fuck his own birth-socket that was sealed frightful eons ago. Every now and then when he is busy whoring himself to OSI, the slit heals and so he must again go under the sword to carve a fresh mangina for himself to play with.
At-least we can barely call forth the mis-managers, and that none of ours is an ussurpation but as long as maintane our standard of living, all documented. Only instance of oppression on my hands is the malfeasance of COPS, then there is the wretchedness of IRS employees ignoring Internal Revenue Code Section 83(a) that exempts my property out-right from such classification as income because it is accounted not as excess over the gross.
All struggles in courts are nothing more than a continuation of a bankrupt United States since 1933, then before that a bankrupt United States in District of Columbia in 1861, and before that the destruction by war into bankruptcy of United States of America in 1812, and before that the destruction and revokation of charters against the 13 States of America in 1775 at the hands of King George's new-state charter The United States.
Microsoft "spun off" the Intellectual Ventures troll king, which "liquiditises intellectual property", both by trolling itself, and by farming out junk patents to its "there's no blood on our King's hands" army of dependent troll firms.
Anyone going to be surprised if the newly created CPTN Holdings LLC turns out to be simply a smoke screen hiding Microsoft, Intellectual Ventures, and their troll army?
Aka Intellectual Ventures, and its troll army. IV itself pretends not to be a troll, so maybe it liquiditizes the work directly out to the army. Given that the individual patents will be trackable, we may expect to see Microsoft arguing that "while we helped to organize CPTN Holdings LLC, we are just one of many members, and we have no control of, nor reponsibility for, how independent individual members choose to use their honestly acquired intellectual property". (Im)plausible deniabilty political cover.
1. buy Novell
2. Sell Unix
3. ???
4. Brian Proffitt!
So tell me, of all the major players out there in line for something like UNIX, which is the LEAST distasteful? Google? Oracle? Apple?MSFT?HP? Great choices aren't there? I could see Microsoft actually utilizing UNIX and keeping it open source. Look at the revenue from servers without all of the baggage of their own. Windows does overlay on UNIX as well as(or better than) on Win Server. Apple or Google. They are as bad or worse than MSFT, they somehow are coated in teflon to many people out there Just some quick thoughts of mine
...My first guess would be that some of the patents involved will assist Microsoft in creating better ICs for Hyper-V.
The scox scam, which will be in it's ninth year this March, is about 200 lines of code.
MS does not have to own all of UNIX to file a lawsuits against Linux companies.
What is to stop MS from filing a lawsuits against Redhat, Oracle, or Google? Or even the customers of those MS competitors? Even if the lawsuits were completely bogus, MS could send a warning that Linux is minefield of legalities - so smart companies had better stay away from Linux.
What if you sucked 10,000 cocks per second?
.. then you would have a 10KHz CPU (cock processing unit).
Not necessarily. If this were a superscalar cock processing unit, with say, 2 cock processing pipelines, 2 cocks could be processed per cycle. In this case, a 5KHz superscalar cock processing unit could process 10,000 cocks in one second. Cock processing is all about efficiency.
this doesn't really contradict the OP's view, does it?
After all, you are just describing the "corporate mechanism" geared towards maximizing income by spreading uncertainty.
Nothing good can come of this.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jizz_in_My_Pants
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
this patent nonsense is being forced down the collective throats of all of the rest of the world, in the name of "harmonization of trade rules" and of "combatting counterfeitors". ACTA anyone? Or watch those assholes in the EU patent office, handing out patents which *effectively* are software patents, although the letter of the law states in the EU that "sofftware as such is not patentable". And the courts actually follow the money (in Germany, a patent related to XML held up in court).
When the big corps don't manage to buy the legislative (which doesn't happen often, mind you) they just buy the bureaucracy.
Moving away won't help, alas. We've got to fight.
Ah, but what if the cocks are super-pipelined?
Billy is still the chairman and THE puppeteer.
Slashdot should make a bigger icon + two horns.
waitwhat?! HOW IN THE WORLD can linux be AT ALL THREATENED... no matter WHO owns unix? wasn't that the reason why SCO failed so badly in their litigations? jin
And what if a hen ends up in the queue? Then what?
Be relentless!
what part of "GNU's Not Unix" do I not understand?
"I'll bet it makes people's heads explode that he lists Plan9, Windows, and Inferno as what he uses for his daily computing." - by Beelzebud (1361137) on Monday November 22, @07:40PM (#34312526)
Per my subject-line above? No, not really: The man works on C/C++ compilers iirc, so it only makes sense he uses them all, since his compiler work has to work on all those platforms, consistently.
On a "side-note" here though:
Heh, this was definitely an "amusing" thread for me, because I watched my init. post be modded down to -2 Troll, & then upwards to "offset that" apparently... & all I was doing was asking a question in the end!
(That question being essentially "are these ratings 'official' that Linux is a form of UNIX")
However - Seeing as Dennis Ritchie, one of the fellows that helped develop UNIX, classify Linux as a form of UNIX (from king neckbeard's reply here -> http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1879466&cid=34311798 ) does make sense to me, especially coming from Mr. Ritchie really... if anyone can "classify" these OS' as a UNIX, it'd be he imo @ least since he helped "start the show" in the 1st place for *NIX period.
HOWEVER: Someone said this here (h4rr4r -> http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1879466&cid=34312046 ) - "Check with Linus T." (more or less, not a direct quote)
Do I think Linux is a form of UNIX? Yes, I do... just from having used *NIX's since the mid 1980's in academia, & into professional environs years afterwards (you can't avoid it. It's there, nearly everywhere).
I feel that way, mainly, because the commandline's are VERY close in shells for one thing. They can share GUI's too (like KDE, which is why I use it and because it's very "Windows-like" vs. GNOME for instance I feel - & KDE even has ports for Windows iirc)...
Still, I feel that way mostly because of the commandline's being similar between *NIX variants like BSD or other variants.
(Sure, even DOS had similar commands to a predecessor it had (CP/M), and even *NIX's type commands "bled into" VMS as well (well, close, but not THAT close (lots of "SET" work on this one)) from what I recall of it (1980's work, AGES ago)).
APK
P.S.=> In the end, I should have put up a post that said:
"Can a Penguin's feathers be 'ruffled'?"
I say that, because it's pretty apparent that yes, they can be (especially if one tries to point out valid data used to make that point).
I mean, hey, take a read - Some of you guys put up some REALLY "religiously fanatical zealot type replies", such as symbolset's here -> http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1879466&cid=34314590 which if you read it? Only "2nd's my motion" & shows his zealotry and yes, on a "religious fanatic" type level no less. Nothing REALLY "wrong with it" either (he's just "into it" is all)...
Bottom-line? They're JUST OPERATING SYSTEMS, people! You use them, when they make sense (pragmatically, for WHATEVER reasons (be it costs, be it usefulness, be it familiarity... but above all, where it GETS THE JOB DONE!)).
Still - The whole exchange here, & the reaction my post recieved (along with mod downs)? It is quite hilarious in a way!
So you know? I am speaking figureatively more than literally about "feathers & Penguins" here (and yes, Penguins DO have feathers by the by), but my question & data along with King Neckbeard's certainly DID "raise hell" around here... & it wasn't intended to! I really want to KNOW "what the scoop is here" on IF Linux is considered a form of UNIX is all!
(Yes, also? Believe-it-or-not?? Hey - I use Linux myself daily and lately for the past 6-7 months now (again, it's FINALLY where I think it's a usea
Brian Proffitt's a great guy and all, and I'm sure he's right, but what if? What if?
Nocturnal Slacker
Microsoft has never displaced Unix. Go into a server room someday.
As Rob Pike noted two decades ago: "Not only Unix is dead, but it is starting to smell really bad." So does it really matter much who claims to 'own' Unix today? Specially when 'Unix' means little more than a trademark and perhaps ownership of some really ancient code nobody uses anymore.
"When in doubt, use brute force." Ken Thompson
gates is evil! i do not like this guy.