Microsoft Apps Will Be Pre-loaded On Lenovo and Motorola Android Devices (betanews.com)

An anonymous reader writes: There was a time when Microsoft was seen as the enemy of Linux and Apple communities. Understandably, at the time, the company only wanted Windows to succeed. Nowadays, however, the operating system is sort of inconsequential. Microsoft seems happy to have its software succeed on 'competitor' platforms such as iOS, Android, macOS, Ubuntu and more. Today, Microsoft announces that it has partnered with Lenovo on a new mobile initiative. The Windows-maker's productivity apps will be pre-loaded on Lenovo and Motorola-branded devices running Google's Linux-based Android operating system.As of earlier this year, Microsoft had over 74 Android OEM partners. As for submitter's take on this, it's pretty simple. Microsoft is going where users are. If they are not going to purchase Windows Phones, Microsoft will go to Android and iOS.

Comments

White-washed submission

[LichtSpektren]

My submission was clearer about this: https://slashdot.org/submissio...

Lenovo/Motorola aren't going along with this because they legitimately think customers want Microsoft bloatware. They're doing this to avoid the ~$10 patent tax that Microsoft extracts from Android OEMs so that SD cards will work out-of-the-box (their patent on the exFAT file system, to be precise).

Re:White-washed submission

[Luthair]

So? As long as they are uninstallable taking a $10 line item out of the cost of the devices works better for the consumers.

Re:White-washed submission

[LichtSpektren]

So? As long as they are uninstallable taking a $10 line item out of the cost of the devices works better for the consumers.

You're missing the problem. I don't care that Lenovo is mitigating the problem with bloatware; I've already decided to boycott them over Superfish and the lack of security updates for their phones.

The problem is that Microsoft is adding ~$10 to the cost of every Android device with their patent trolling.

Re:White-washed submission

[LichtSpektren]

I don't think you can call it patent trolling when Android is a direct competitor to a line of business they've continuously had for a couple of decades.

Oh, I see then. So if I own an ice cream shop, and you open an ice cream shop too, I can use some frivolous patent to force you to give me pennies for every scoop you sell, since you're my competitor, right?

Re:White-washed submission

[LichtSpektren]

It's not patent trolling. Patent trolling is about buying up abandoned (or just generally useless) patents and suing everything that makes money claiming infringement.

These are patents Microsoft owns, filed, and has every legal and moral right to demand be honored.

Maybe some day you will grow up and realize the world is not cleanly divided into two groups of "people who give LichtSpektren stuff for free" and "trolls."

Don't be daft. Microsoft forces SD card manufacturers to sell their cards pre-formatted only with Microsoft-patented file systems. It's monopolistic abuse and there's "every legal and moral right" to punish them for it, only nobody will because they've greased enough politicians' palms to avoid most infractions.

Re:White-washed submission

[Luthair]

You're missing the problem. I don't care that Lenovo is mitigating the problem with bloatware; I've already decided to boycott them over Superfish and the lack of security updates for their phones.

How is any of that relevant?

The problem is that Microsoft is adding ~$10 to the cost of every Android device with their patent trolling.

Ah, I see it isn't. You're simply taking the opportunity to bitch about stuff. Microsoft doesn't really qualify as a troll as they make software, though as a developer one would hazard that many of their patents are probably not novel.

Re:White-washed submission

[Junta]

It may be abuse, it may be a stupid patent, but it's not patent trolling. The point is that is a specific form of nastiness that describes company with literally *no* product but a patent portfolio and only makes money through litigation.

Re:White-washed submission

[Gr8Apes]

You do realize those cards can be formatted with some other FS? In fact, various cameras do so, likely to avoid this $10 tax? Funny enough, my systems can read those alternatively formatted cards.

Re:White-washed submission

[Rob Y.]

What's worse is that you've already payed a patent royalty when you bought the card. But then you have to pay again for the ability to read it. That, IMO, is the biggest problem with data format patents. It's one thing to charge the producer of a file format a royalty - if they want to use the format, pay up. But it's another thing entirely to charge the consumer of a file another royalty. They didn't choose the format of the file, they simply bought it and want to be able to use it. We're not talking about a license for the software to read the file - we're talking about legally reverse-engineered software being slapped with a patent royalty.

The same applies to media codecs. If Apple or Amazon (or Google for that matter) want to sell you media files compressed with Microsoft's (or anyone else's) wonderful algorithm, they should pay for the privilege (assuming there's a valid patent on the algorithm). But at that point, the royalty's been paid, and the consumer shouldn't have to be restricted to playback on devices based on whether another royalty was paid.

Maybe if royalties could only be collected at the production end, they'd be higher. But that would only make non-encumbered formats a bigger bargain...

Re:White-washed submission

[thegarbz]

Don't be daft. Microsoft forces SD card manufacturers to sell their cards pre-formatted only with Microsoft-patented file systems. It's monopolistic abuse and there's "every legal and moral right" to punish them for it, only nobody will because they've greased enough politicians' palms to avoid most infractions.

Microsoft forces no such thing. The people who force this is the SDA who define the standards of interoperability of SD cards. Up to SDHC cards used FAT32 as the main file system. SDXC changed this to exFAT as decided by the SDA. Why did they decide it? Microsoft offered to create the design and make it compatible with all versions of Windows dating back to XP, and contrary to popular belief designing a file system is hard, and making it instantly compatible with 100 million Windows PCs is even harder. It was a technical decision to adopt a technology offered by a 3rd party to the SDA. Microsoft isn't a member of the SDA and doesn't have anyone sitting on the SDA board.

Now do you believe just because a company is big they should be forced to work for free?

Choice?

[djbckr]

How about this: If I want a M$ product on my device, I'll install it.

Poisoning the well...

[ausekilis]

I wouldn't put it past MS to use this to get a foot in the door, get some users hooked on whatever migration... then start belly-aching about how stuff is "locked down" and "incompatible" with what they really want in a device. Then we get the return of Windows Phone. Like Clippy, it will never truly die.

Addendum

[_KiTA_]

Not just preinstalled, but fraudulently flagged system so you can't uninstall them. Similar to Facebook and a host of other crapware on my Samsung.

No kidding?

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

"There was a time when Microsoft was seen as the enemy of Linux and Apple communities."

Lol, "there was a time". And that "time" is "now".

Super. They can name it

[ThatsNotPudding]

"Microsoft No Space Left On This Devi"

It's about the money- nothing else

[chris2net23]

Microsoft is still the same evil corporation it was before. The difference is Microsoft lost the OS wars in the end and are solving the problem through the threat of violence on OEMs who would rather not ship with Microsoft's offerings. They're utilizing patents and the courts/legal system (ie violence, theft, etc) to blackmail others into submission (or threat thereof).

Microsoft offers nothing of value to GNU/Linux users and those shipping with Android and similar operating systems. Those patents are all garbage. There is no reason we shouldn't be able to utilize a different file system if it were not for MS's monopoly. It was used (and some cases it wasn't even really used, like in the Tom Tom case) only to retain compatibility and that was because of Microsoft's monopoly which gave them the ability to refuse to implement support for other filesystems. Certainly this is monopolistic. If Microsoft had supported other filesystems like every other company we wouldn't be forced into utilizing it's shitty 'patented' filesystem. The patents don't actually provide anything of value. They are more or less a form of DRM. It's nothing more than a mechanism to force people to cough up cash to implement compatibility.

We should get rid of copyright, patents, and similar. The only one with some legitimacy are trademarks and that's an issue of fraud really. I shouldn't own the mark, just the right to sue for label, slander, and fraud should someone use it to deceive others into buying what they think is our product, etc. However I would argue that the case that patents are enforced in malicious ways against those not actually committing fraud. There is no reason someone should be prohibited from using a trademark provided it's not in a way to deceive. Utilizing it to criticize a company or on a product page linking to reviews or similar should not require permission. I'd even go so far as to argue patents should be limited to off-line scenarios and other systems of authentication should be implemented into the software to verify authenticity (we should never censor a site that sells fraudulent goods, but our technical systems should enable people to differentiate between legitimate and illegitimate, or between what people recognize thereof, so if I start using a name/brand/etc I build up a reputation under that name then anybody else using that name should be in competition for said name would have to spend a lot to overtake its legitimacy, and that might even not work should the history aspects factor in, plus category, so penguin, a company that distributes ICE is as legitimate as penguin, a company that publishes book, is as legitimate as penguin, a company that sells computers with the GNU/Linux support, etc).

Re:No one would want a common format ?

[perpenso]

Most people won't ever want to move the SD card from their phone to the computer...but...Easy, just grab any open source windows EXT3 disk mounting utility for windows, reskin it, package it up in your own installer, include a GPL license with it and put it up on the "downloads" section of the support site. Then include an insert with the phone directing them to the web address on your website on where to download it.

Or license FAT and the user just plugs it in and it works.