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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.
...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)
Linux Is Not UniX so what is the big deal?
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.
Linux is not Unix, it is only unix-like.
Forgot to mention, two articles written by two idiots does not change this fact.
Unix is a trademarked term that belongs to the open group, genetic unix would be the BSDs. Linux does not fall into either of these groups, it is only unix-like.
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)
Being functionally similar to GNU/Linux, the patents of Unix vendors are quite likely to cover GNU/Linux. Windows is much further away, and yet GNU/Linux allegedly infringes hundreds of MS patents. I'm not particularly worried because as I understand it anything that Novell is an author of or distributes that is under the GPL would be safe from Novell's patents even if said patents are sold. As for porting things to BSD, that wouldn't help anything, especially since the *BSDs have a decent amount of code in common with Unix, and doesn't have a patent clause.
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Don't they already own it? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenix
That's going to be one nasty diff...
I would think BSD would be more at risk than Linux. I don't claim to understand what exactly was patented, but BSD is Berkeley Unix, while Linux is not considered an operating system without the GNU project - which, as we all know, is Not Unix.
Funny may not give karma, but +5 Informative never made anyone snort coffee out their nose.
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.
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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.
BSD's UNIX code was replaced in accordance to the terms of settlement of USL v BSDi. Though this case happened almost 17 years ago, so the patents in question are probably no longer enforceable.
Well played
Dennis Ritchie includes GNU/Linux when speaking of Unix. Just the word 'Unix' is rather ambiguous. I generally use four sets of terms and try to be specific whenever possible:
1. AT&T UNIX or Bell Labs UNIX. The operating system developed by AT&T/Bell Labs (SysV, Version 7 UNIX)
2. Genetic UNIX. Any operating system that can trace it's history to AT&T UNIX.
3. Branded UNIX or SUS. Any operating system that meets the Single Unix Specification and pays the necessary fees.
4. Unix-like, functional Unix, or *nix. Any operating system that is designed to be have the same functionality and overall design as AT&T UNIX.
GNU/Linux only meets the terms of functional Unix, but being functional Unix is more important than being branded or genetic Unix in most usage, so it's not uncommon to use Unix just to describe functional Unix.
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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.
It is also not uncommon for people to call all cattle cows, even though only females are actually that.
It is unix-like, that is all.
Because of patent deals ofcourse, what else ?
New things are always on the horizon
Saying that "GNU/Linux isn't branded Unix" is much more clear than "GNU/Linux is not Unix." I personally put more stock in the opinion of one of the main developers of the original system than the party that happens to own the trademark right now, but even if you feel differently, you can still properly differentiate what you mean and never need to argue.
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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
I would personally ask suggest you ask Linus.
Linux only even falls under the 4th case, not the other three. So should I say "Linux is not Branded Unix, AT&T Unix nor Genetic Unix, but might be considered Unix by some people who claim everything that acts unix-like is Unix"?
Because that seems like a really long way to say "Linux is not Unix".
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
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."
However, BSD Unix is free of any AT&T code (which is what Novell bought from AT&T in the first place), so neither BSD, nor linux, is threatened.
In other words, there are NO issues, no matter who now owns the AT&T code. And everyone else already has a paid-up perpetual license ... so it only matters if you want to create a new Unix based on the AT&T code - which is pretty darned obsolete. Might as well buy a copy of SCO OpenSewer.
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
I'll bet it makes people's heads explode that he lists Plan9, Windows, and Inferno as what he uses for his daily computing.
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.
Even that was shorter than the debate that has already occurred, and functional Unix is the most important one in most scenarios. GNU/Linux and the *BSDs have taken over many of the strongholds of branded Unix because of this. Also, in the case of the Novell acquisition, I would think that genetic Unix would be what actually matters for the copyright (since I presume this is over the rights to AT&T Unix), and functional Unix for the patents. Branded Unix is actually the least relevant here since complete compliance to a specification doesn't factor in to this in a relevant way.
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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."
I personally put more stock in the opinion of one of the main developers of the original system
It seems to me that the original Unix developers would have a vested interest in trying to define the scope of their output in the most expansive terms imaginable, so as to burnish their legacy. So I'd take any such statements with a grain of salt.
On the other side of the coin, the GNU and Linux developers have a vested interest in saying that Linux is *not* Unix.
The truth is more complicated, and I don't think that either of the assertions "Linix is Unix" or "Linux is not Unix" are true. It's best just to avoid making either statement.
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.
My first guess is that MS will do what it always does: file nuisance lawsuits against MS competitors, by proxie. For example: scox vs ibm, or acacia vs redhat. My guess is that MS's next target will be google.
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.
Unix isn't really a piece of intellectual property that you can assign a lawyer to and own in court. It's not a destination either, nor a product. It's a path, a journey. A Way. It's the Unix Way. Unix is more of a religion than anything else. You can't own a religion.
For ten or fifteen years Unix has been sidetracked by commercial interests that want to claim ownership of the Way because they see value in it; it has power and utility. They have all failed for the most part because they don't understand that to lock it up and deny it the vital dynamism of the community is to kill it.
GNU, and now Linux also, set the Unix Way free again. They adopted the religion, prosteletyzed it throughout the world and with new adherents drive it to transcendent new heights. But they only took the Way - not the bread, the work, the root or fruit of the elder Unix. That tree is poison now, and its fruit too.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
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.
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!
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.