Exactly. I live in Orem, UT where project Utopia is busy wiring houses up with fiber. There are plenty of service providers competing to provide phone, television, and Internet services over this fiber including what is in my opinion the best ISP on the planet, xmission.com.
If projects like this make economic sense in Utah, then they almost certainly are a no brainer anywhere else.
Sure, Novell could simply switch horses. That won't help them with the Samba team (as there definitely is no BSD licensed replacement for Samba), but theoretically Novell could simply rip out all of the FSF licensed code in its distribution and start over from scratch using BSD licensed code.
Meanwhile Red Hat will be hard at work selling more subscriptions. Novell needs to do something that is going to put them *ahead* of the competition, not put them farther behind. At some point Novell would be better off dropping Linux development entirely and going back to simply trying to sell Netware.
The question quickly becomes how happy do you think Novell's customers are going to become if Novell drops all of SuSE's engineering on the GNU tools and switches to BSD ones that are mostly compatible but not 100% compatible. SuSE has a hard enough time convincing customers that Red Hat isn't the de-facto standard. Now imagine how much more difficult life would be for these poor fools with a distribution that is radically different from every other Linux distribution.
Even if Novell's customers aren't upset at Novell for how this deal will effect the Free Software community, they are going to be upset when they find out that their applications don't run, and that they have a completely new userspace to deal with.
Not to mention that some critical projects that aren't part of the FSF (like Samba) are also very upset. How useful is Novell's Linux likely to be if it gets stuck maintaining its own version of Samba? Sure the kernel guys aren't switching to the new version of the GPL, but they can't be happy about how this has turned out. Eventually they are going to have to ask the same question that everyone else is asking. Can we accept contributions from Novell?
Novell has pulled yet another typical bonehead Novell move. It was really only a matter of time before it happened.
In the end it all works out the same. Novell can use Microsoft's patents in its software and then tell its customers that things are all right. Sure, Microsoft could sue Novell for patent infringement, but it's not going to. After all, Novell is paying a per seat license to protect its customers. Microsoft wants *everyone* to do that. The last thing that Microsoft is going to do is sue Novell.
Other Free Software developers and vendors have no such promise. Microsoft can sue their customers with impunity. If these developers accept code from Novell's engineers then they have to worry that the Novell engineers are inserting Microsoft's patented methods into their code opening the window for Microsoft to sue their end users. Heck, it's in Novell's best interest to insert Microsoft's patents into Free Software. After all, if Microsoft does start to go after customers Novell can say that they have the solution. Simply purchase Novell's SuSE distribution and everything will be fine.
That's why Free Software developers are mad at Novell over this deal. All of a sudden any project that cooperates with Novell engineers has serious problems.
Yes, and anyone who has ever had to maintain an incompatible fork with a Free Software project knows how difficult and time consuming that can be. In the end Novell will likely be forced to maintain their own fork of nearly all of the GNU tools, a considerable burden. Novell's competitors (ie Red Hat) won't be forced to accept this same burden. Novell already has the added burden of maintaining Netware and other pieces of commercial software. Maintaining versions of GNU software is going to add to its expenses.
More importantly, don't be surprised if Free Software projects start rejecting code from Novell engineers out of hand. After all, under its agreement Novell's customers are safe from infringing on Microsoft's patents, but everyone else's customers are potentially at risk. Anything that Novell engineers contribute has to be judged on that fact. Novell could easily inject software that is covered by Microsoft's patents into Free Software projects knowing that its customers are safe.
It boggles the mind that Novell's executives could take such a large step without talking to its partners in the Free Software community.
The FSF has reimplemented quite a bit of the BSD userspace tools. Most Linux distributions use the GNU versions instead of the BSD ones. Combine that with the fact that the FSF has been very savvy about getting developers to sign papers turning over their copyrights and the FSF is far and away the largest copyright holder in any given Linux distribution. Novell can pretend that the FSF's opinion doesn't matter, but it does.
Add in the fact that the Samba developers are very upset with Novell and Novell is in serious trouble.
Here's IBM's side of the story. Even with IBM writing the story you can see that IBM is basically claiming to own Amazon's business. I didn't read the actual patents (nor am I going to read them), so I can't tell you exactly what the claims are, but I wouldn't be surprised if any ecommerce site would infringe.
Now, if you happen to be the sort of person that happens to believe that IBM should own the concept of ecommerce whether or not they have written or sell code that is ecommerce related then I suppose we are going to have to simply agree to disagree. If not, then here's a little bit about the realities of software patents (and patents in general).
It is a common myth that software patents are commonly used to protect the "little guy" from the big guy. That is true in some cases, but only when the little guy doesn't actually write software. If you write software chances are really good that you are using one of IBM's patents without paying royalties. This means that IBM and most of the other large patent holders can do whatever they want, and if they happen to infringe on your patent and you take them to court they can simply bury you in patent lawsuits until you agree to settle your case and set up some sort of patent licensing deal (chances are good that you'll end up paying money).
These days companies are getting around this problem by simply not actually writing any software. This guarantees that they aren't infringing on anyone's patents. You can't force someone into a cross licensing deal that doesn't actually write software. These companies simply patent their ideas and wait for someone else to write the software. Once their patent is embedded in all sorts of software (say like IBM's ecommerce patents) they begin to go after companies that have actually written software.
IBM is a bit of a special case. It has so many patents that it can basically build a case against anyone. However, it also makes billions of dollars selling software, so it has to be careful and pick victims that don't have patents that it uses in its own software. That's the reason that IBM went after Amazon.com in this case. Amazon.com has patents, but it doesn't have any that IBM infringes on because IBM doesn't actually sell ecommerce software so it is relatively safe. Here's an article that talks about this.
I honestly doubt that you could find a single solitary example of a software patent suit that was "useful," and business method patents are worse. In the real world these types of patents simply don't work like they should. For the most part they are used by the large software development houses to keep the software development game an activity that only large, well-funded software houses can play. If you don't have the money to keep an army of lawyers busy creating patents then you are vulnerable to patent abuse. Even if you do hire the lawyers and obtain some patents these patents aren't going to help you if you actually write the software. If you write and sell software then you'll end up having little choice but to cross-license your patents (you'll probably pay a fee as well). That's why you hear so much in the news about companies that simply license their patents without actually writing software. These days its the only sane way to deal with the current patent regime. Unless, of course, you are IBM and have 40,000 patents already.
Excuse me if I think that a system that discourages companies from actually writing software is promoting innovation.
First of all, patents don't diminish like trademarks. That's why "submarine" patents are so dangerous. Take this particular patent in question. It covers a form of Internet advertising. That's about as generic a function as you can find. Seriously, who hasn't written Internet advertising code. IBM waited until the business was worth billions a year and now it is striking. If it had sued earlier no doubt a judge would have said that the patent was worth far less (assuming it came to that point).
Software patents are all bad. Business method patents are worse.
Exactly. That's why IBM is a bad guy when it comes to patents. They make millions of dollars shaking down companies that they feel are using their patents without paying. IBM has been more successful (by far) than any other company at monetizing its patent portfolio.
In this particular case IBM wants a piece of the multi-billion dollar online advertising business. If IBM can set a precedent with Amazon then it will round up all of the other big players and get its money from them.
When it comes to patents IBM is far and away the biggest problem in the software business. Microsoft just wishes its patent portfolio generated as much money, no one else is even close. IBM does a lot of things right, but when you are talking about patents, IBM is the enemy.
IBM is the ultimate patent troll. They make quadzillions every year licensing their patent portfolio. In fact, Microsoft's recent foray into the patent business are based on recreating IBM's success. When it comes to patents IBM is definitely not the good guy.
Microsoft isn't going to go after hosting companies. It is hard enough to find inexpensive Windows hosting. The last thing that Microsoft wants to do is to make non-Microsoft hosting technologies more attractive.
Let's imagine that Microsoft did pick one of the many hosting companies as a potential patent suit target. The first thing that they would have to do is to put their cards out on the table and specify what patents they believed that the hosting company was using illegally. This would cause a mad scramble while the rest of the hosting companies changed their software so as not to infringe on the patent. After the dust cleared you would then begin to see these same hosting companies move away from what little Windows technologies they supported. Windows boxes would be decommissioned, things like front page extensions would get turned off, and Microsoft's loyal customers would find themselves without support or a place to host. Not to mention the huge PR backlash that such a move would create. To a certain extent every software developer on the planet is in competition with Microsoft on one level or another. If Microsoft started using patent litigation as a weapon then utilizing Microsoft's technology stack would become a much more dangerous proposition.
Even worse Microsoft could very well trigger the patent equivalent of global thermonuclear war. Lots of companies (including long time Microsoft foes like Oracle, Sun, and IBM) have patents that Microsoft is currently using.
Microsoft's position is nothing but pure bluster. It isn't going to sue anyone, and the fact is that patents are far more dangerous to its business model than it is to the Free Software model. Microsoft is currently defending itself in over 30 major patent lawsuits, some of which have already lead to large judgements against Microsoft (like Eolas). Microsoft has a big pile of money, and it writes a lot of software. This makes Microsoft the ideal target for patent trolls. An entire industry is popping up around the idea of patenting software practices without actually writing code and then suing the folks that actually write the software. Theoretically a company like Red Hat could have problems, but the fact that it "gives" the software away and charges for support changes the dynamics of the game considerably.
The mere fact that BSF was tagged for the job shows how huge their reputation as a law firm is. The reason that Al Gore lost in Florida is because he didn't really have much of a case. Put a "normal" law firm on that trial and you'd expect it to be over in less than a week. BSF is good enough that people actually thought they might win.
Not really, Novell is still basically a bit player when it comes to Linux in the U.S., and Novell has a long history of making huge blunders (WordPerfect anyone?).
Actually, Microsoft's plan is even stupider than that. Microsoft wants to charge a per seat license for Linux users, but they aren't really offering enhanced interoperability. Novell and Red Hat are both going to include the same software. It's not like Novell is going to have its own version of Samba, for instance. The primary difference is that Novell customers are going to be able to "sleep easy" because Novell is paying Microsoft so that Microsoft won't sue Novell's Linux customers.
Microsoft isn't going to sue Red Hat's customers either, but that's only because suing Red Hat customers would be ridiculously foolish. At its heart the real issue is that Microsoft has such a poor relationship with its customers that many customers are worried that Microsoft will drag them into patent court. These customers are willing to pay money, not for any sort of patent license, but for a short term commitment from Microsoft that they won't be sued.
Next thing you know Microsoft execs will be brutalizing school kids for their lunch money.
The truly ironic bit is that Microsoft is not going to sue anyone over patents. Microsoft execs know that if they did this the various organizations that have a stake in the success of Linux (which is essentially everyone but Microsoft) would pay for a well-funded defense. Millions of dollars would be spent, and in the end the patents in question would either be shot down or removed from the Free Software product in question. Depending on who Microsoft chose to attack it could even trigger retaliation from other large players with huge patent repositories. What's more, Microsoft's patent aggression would start a wholesale migration away from Microsoft's technologies.
If Microsoft started suing folks using its technology then its technology would become much less popular virtually overnight.
This is why Microsoft has wisely chosen a middle road. Instead of actually taking people to court, it is simply going to threaten to take people to court and hope that they'll throw money Microsoft's way.
I wouldn't be surprised if RH is going to grow some sort of "RHEL+JBoss+Postgresql combo" *now*, as a response. But the RH database is currently a defunct product. It made better business sense at the time for RH to get Oracle. I think that what's happened is that Oracle has seen an opportunity to seriously damage RH, and at a minimum keep them from moving up the application stack.
The Red Hat database is not a defunct product. It has been deemphasized, but that was only because Red Hat didn't want to step on Oracle's toes. Tom Lane still works for Red Hat, and that means that Red Hat has the ability to start delivering serious support for PostgreSQL any time they want to start advertising.
They do love to either wack or buy competition. Sound familiar?
That's the way that the commercial tech business works. Instead of competing the companies at the top buy serious competitors before they have a chance to get momentum. That doesn't really work with Free Software though. The company may disappear, but the software persists.
RH was already struggling with a 34% drop in profit in their last quarter. This has taken their price down further (-$5 to $14.30 a few moments ago). If there's any stumble in integrating JBoss, they'll be further hurt. Oracle's just done a string of acquisitions, and may be betting on a stumble as the final event which drives the company to a firesale price.
RH is profitable, and its revenues are increasing. What's more, it's market cap is still very high. If Oracle wants to pay that sort of money for a Linux distribution then that's good news for folks in the Linux business.
Of course, that could involve a bidding war. The RH brand is still valuable, after all. I wonder if IBM would need regulatory approval to buy RH?
I would be surprised if anything of the sort happened.
They could make it easier to purchase machines without a Windows license. There's lots of folks that have legitimate reasons for not wanting a Windows license on new hardware, and there are even more people that would be happy to install a pirated version of Windows if they could save a bit of money on the hardware.
Remember, Windows and Windows support are both considerable costs for OEMs. Selling more blank hardware not only makes the OEMs hardware look more cost effective but it cuts down on costs as well.
Or they could push Linspire:). With the right marketing that's not even such a bad idea.
This assumes, of course, that the only reason previous to this point for buying RH Linux is if you wanted to run Oracle, and that's hardly the case. There's a lot of RH Linux that isn't even remotely involved with Oracle software. This will likely put a damper on RH sales, but there still is a whole lot of commercial UNIX to undercut and there's a lot more to Linux than a platform to run Oracle software.
In fact, this could easily backfire on Oracle. Red Hat has been laying off on pushing it's own PostgreSQL based Red Hat database. Organizations could save a lot by forgoing Oracle completely and using Red Hat's complete stack. Say what you want, but in the long run "good enough" and less expensive tends to compete very well against "enterprise class" software. Linux, is a good example of this phenomenon, as are Windows and Microsoft's SQL Server.
Red Hat has a software stack that is fairly competitive with Oracle's while spending an order of magnitude less on R&D. In the long run that is going to make it hard for Oracle to compete with Red Hat, especially if Oracle has to stoop to Red Hat's level.
The problem with that line of thinking is that the Christmas season presents sales opportunities that simply don't come around again later in the year. No one wants to get a coupon for a Vista computer in their stocking, and a computer with XP pre-installed simply isn't as competitive an offering as a computer with Vista installed would be. That means that a significant amount of money that would have gone towards PCs this Christmas will probably go towards something else. OEMs are pissed, and rightly so. Missing the Christmas season is the unpardonable sin in the retail business.
If the government wasn't there, I could say whatever I pleased.
Yes, and I could put a bullet in your brainpan with impunity.
If the government wasn't there, I could not stop you from copying what I wrote.
But I could stop you from copying what I wrote, by force if necessary.
Which then, is a right, and which then is a privilege granted by the government?
Without government you would only have the "rights" that you could defend for yourself. If someone bigger, stronger, and meaner came along your "right" to life, liberty, and property would disappear completely. The difference between what you believe to be a natural right and what you would label mere privilege exists only in your mind. Society determines what "rights" its members have, as is evidenced by the fact that different societies have different sets of "rights."
I'd quite like to know there's a certified person somewhere who I've paid to help me (and if he doesn't I can sue his/her ass).
I suggest you read your Oracle service agreement again. I guarantee you that suing Oracle is not cost effective. If you are buying support to have "someone to sue" then you are delusional.
What color is the sky in your world where swinging your arms is not a "natural" movement?
No one worries about hurting their shoulders hoeing beets, raking the leaves, fly fishing, chopping wood, or any other list of completely natural things that people do with their arms every day.
Moving around is how people get in shape. Unless you have serious medical problems swinging around a remote isn't going to kill you (or even hurt you). I personally would be glad if more video games required a bit of conditioning. People weren't designed to spend their life on their ass.
If Nintendo can put enough of these bad boys in people's houses then the third party developers will have no choice but to develop for the Wii, and Nintendo is likely to price the Wii so that they within the reach of a lot more of the market than the 360 or PS3.
Price matters, and Nintendo has that nailed. It's entirely possible that the Wii will become far and away the most popular console of the generation and then the third party developers will use it as their primary development target. At that point the added horsepower of the 360 or PS3 will simply be wasted with third party games.
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Exactly. I live in Orem, UT where project Utopia is busy wiring houses up with fiber. There are plenty of service providers competing to provide phone, television, and Internet services over this fiber including what is in my opinion the best ISP on the planet, xmission.com.
If projects like this make economic sense in Utah, then they almost certainly are a no brainer anywhere else.
Sure, Novell could simply switch horses. That won't help them with the Samba team (as there definitely is no BSD licensed replacement for Samba), but theoretically Novell could simply rip out all of the FSF licensed code in its distribution and start over from scratch using BSD licensed code.
Meanwhile Red Hat will be hard at work selling more subscriptions. Novell needs to do something that is going to put them *ahead* of the competition, not put them farther behind. At some point Novell would be better off dropping Linux development entirely and going back to simply trying to sell Netware.
Good luck with that.
The question quickly becomes how happy do you think Novell's customers are going to become if Novell drops all of SuSE's engineering on the GNU tools and switches to BSD ones that are mostly compatible but not 100% compatible. SuSE has a hard enough time convincing customers that Red Hat isn't the de-facto standard. Now imagine how much more difficult life would be for these poor fools with a distribution that is radically different from every other Linux distribution.
Even if Novell's customers aren't upset at Novell for how this deal will effect the Free Software community, they are going to be upset when they find out that their applications don't run, and that they have a completely new userspace to deal with.
Not to mention that some critical projects that aren't part of the FSF (like Samba) are also very upset. How useful is Novell's Linux likely to be if it gets stuck maintaining its own version of Samba? Sure the kernel guys aren't switching to the new version of the GPL, but they can't be happy about how this has turned out. Eventually they are going to have to ask the same question that everyone else is asking. Can we accept contributions from Novell?
Novell has pulled yet another typical bonehead Novell move. It was really only a matter of time before it happened.
In the end it all works out the same. Novell can use Microsoft's patents in its software and then tell its customers that things are all right. Sure, Microsoft could sue Novell for patent infringement, but it's not going to. After all, Novell is paying a per seat license to protect its customers. Microsoft wants *everyone* to do that. The last thing that Microsoft is going to do is sue Novell.
Other Free Software developers and vendors have no such promise. Microsoft can sue their customers with impunity. If these developers accept code from Novell's engineers then they have to worry that the Novell engineers are inserting Microsoft's patented methods into their code opening the window for Microsoft to sue their end users. Heck, it's in Novell's best interest to insert Microsoft's patents into Free Software. After all, if Microsoft does start to go after customers Novell can say that they have the solution. Simply purchase Novell's SuSE distribution and everything will be fine.
That's why Free Software developers are mad at Novell over this deal. All of a sudden any project that cooperates with Novell engineers has serious problems.
Yes, and anyone who has ever had to maintain an incompatible fork with a Free Software project knows how difficult and time consuming that can be. In the end Novell will likely be forced to maintain their own fork of nearly all of the GNU tools, a considerable burden. Novell's competitors (ie Red Hat) won't be forced to accept this same burden. Novell already has the added burden of maintaining Netware and other pieces of commercial software. Maintaining versions of GNU software is going to add to its expenses.
More importantly, don't be surprised if Free Software projects start rejecting code from Novell engineers out of hand. After all, under its agreement Novell's customers are safe from infringing on Microsoft's patents, but everyone else's customers are potentially at risk. Anything that Novell engineers contribute has to be judged on that fact. Novell could easily inject software that is covered by Microsoft's patents into Free Software projects knowing that its customers are safe.
It boggles the mind that Novell's executives could take such a large step without talking to its partners in the Free Software community.
The FSF has reimplemented quite a bit of the BSD userspace tools. Most Linux distributions use the GNU versions instead of the BSD ones. Combine that with the fact that the FSF has been very savvy about getting developers to sign papers turning over their copyrights and the FSF is far and away the largest copyright holder in any given Linux distribution. Novell can pretend that the FSF's opinion doesn't matter, but it does.
Add in the fact that the Samba developers are very upset with Novell and Novell is in serious trouble.
Here's IBM's side of the story. Even with IBM writing the story you can see that IBM is basically claiming to own Amazon's business. I didn't read the actual patents (nor am I going to read them), so I can't tell you exactly what the claims are, but I wouldn't be surprised if any ecommerce site would infringe.
Now, if you happen to be the sort of person that happens to believe that IBM should own the concept of ecommerce whether or not they have written or sell code that is ecommerce related then I suppose we are going to have to simply agree to disagree. If not, then here's a little bit about the realities of software patents (and patents in general).
It is a common myth that software patents are commonly used to protect the "little guy" from the big guy. That is true in some cases, but only when the little guy doesn't actually write software. If you write software chances are really good that you are using one of IBM's patents without paying royalties. This means that IBM and most of the other large patent holders can do whatever they want, and if they happen to infringe on your patent and you take them to court they can simply bury you in patent lawsuits until you agree to settle your case and set up some sort of patent licensing deal (chances are good that you'll end up paying money).
These days companies are getting around this problem by simply not actually writing any software. This guarantees that they aren't infringing on anyone's patents. You can't force someone into a cross licensing deal that doesn't actually write software. These companies simply patent their ideas and wait for someone else to write the software. Once their patent is embedded in all sorts of software (say like IBM's ecommerce patents) they begin to go after companies that have actually written software.
IBM is a bit of a special case. It has so many patents that it can basically build a case against anyone. However, it also makes billions of dollars selling software, so it has to be careful and pick victims that don't have patents that it uses in its own software. That's the reason that IBM went after Amazon.com in this case. Amazon.com has patents, but it doesn't have any that IBM infringes on because IBM doesn't actually sell ecommerce software so it is relatively safe. Here's an article that talks about this.
I honestly doubt that you could find a single solitary example of a software patent suit that was "useful," and business method patents are worse. In the real world these types of patents simply don't work like they should. For the most part they are used by the large software development houses to keep the software development game an activity that only large, well-funded software houses can play. If you don't have the money to keep an army of lawyers busy creating patents then you are vulnerable to patent abuse. Even if you do hire the lawyers and obtain some patents these patents aren't going to help you if you actually write the software. If you write and sell software then you'll end up having little choice but to cross-license your patents (you'll probably pay a fee as well). That's why you hear so much in the news about companies that simply license their patents without actually writing software. These days its the only sane way to deal with the current patent regime. Unless, of course, you are IBM and have 40,000 patents already.
Excuse me if I think that a system that discourages companies from actually writing software is promoting innovation.
First of all, patents don't diminish like trademarks. That's why "submarine" patents are so dangerous. Take this particular patent in question. It covers a form of Internet advertising. That's about as generic a function as you can find. Seriously, who hasn't written Internet advertising code. IBM waited until the business was worth billions a year and now it is striking. If it had sued earlier no doubt a judge would have said that the patent was worth far less (assuming it came to that point).
Software patents are all bad. Business method patents are worse.
Exactly. That's why IBM is a bad guy when it comes to patents. They make millions of dollars shaking down companies that they feel are using their patents without paying. IBM has been more successful (by far) than any other company at monetizing its patent portfolio.
In this particular case IBM wants a piece of the multi-billion dollar online advertising business. If IBM can set a precedent with Amazon then it will round up all of the other big players and get its money from them.
When it comes to patents IBM is far and away the biggest problem in the software business. Microsoft just wishes its patent portfolio generated as much money, no one else is even close. IBM does a lot of things right, but when you are talking about patents, IBM is the enemy.
IBM is the ultimate patent troll. They make quadzillions every year licensing their patent portfolio. In fact, Microsoft's recent foray into the patent business are based on recreating IBM's success. When it comes to patents IBM is definitely not the good guy.
I wish that I had mod points. This was far and away the best post on the subject.
Microsoft isn't going to go after hosting companies. It is hard enough to find inexpensive Windows hosting. The last thing that Microsoft wants to do is to make non-Microsoft hosting technologies more attractive.
Let's imagine that Microsoft did pick one of the many hosting companies as a potential patent suit target. The first thing that they would have to do is to put their cards out on the table and specify what patents they believed that the hosting company was using illegally. This would cause a mad scramble while the rest of the hosting companies changed their software so as not to infringe on the patent. After the dust cleared you would then begin to see these same hosting companies move away from what little Windows technologies they supported. Windows boxes would be decommissioned, things like front page extensions would get turned off, and Microsoft's loyal customers would find themselves without support or a place to host. Not to mention the huge PR backlash that such a move would create. To a certain extent every software developer on the planet is in competition with Microsoft on one level or another. If Microsoft started using patent litigation as a weapon then utilizing Microsoft's technology stack would become a much more dangerous proposition.
Even worse Microsoft could very well trigger the patent equivalent of global thermonuclear war. Lots of companies (including long time Microsoft foes like Oracle, Sun, and IBM) have patents that Microsoft is currently using.
Microsoft's position is nothing but pure bluster. It isn't going to sue anyone, and the fact is that patents are far more dangerous to its business model than it is to the Free Software model. Microsoft is currently defending itself in over 30 major patent lawsuits, some of which have already lead to large judgements against Microsoft (like Eolas). Microsoft has a big pile of money, and it writes a lot of software. This makes Microsoft the ideal target for patent trolls. An entire industry is popping up around the idea of patenting software practices without actually writing code and then suing the folks that actually write the software. Theoretically a company like Red Hat could have problems, but the fact that it "gives" the software away and charges for support changes the dynamics of the game considerably.
The mere fact that BSF was tagged for the job shows how huge their reputation as a law firm is. The reason that Al Gore lost in Florida is because he didn't really have much of a case. Put a "normal" law firm on that trial and you'd expect it to be over in less than a week. BSF is good enough that people actually thought they might win.
Not really, Novell is still basically a bit player when it comes to Linux in the U.S., and Novell has a long history of making huge blunders (WordPerfect anyone?).
Actually, Microsoft's plan is even stupider than that. Microsoft wants to charge a per seat license for Linux users, but they aren't really offering enhanced interoperability. Novell and Red Hat are both going to include the same software. It's not like Novell is going to have its own version of Samba, for instance. The primary difference is that Novell customers are going to be able to "sleep easy" because Novell is paying Microsoft so that Microsoft won't sue Novell's Linux customers.
Microsoft isn't going to sue Red Hat's customers either, but that's only because suing Red Hat customers would be ridiculously foolish. At its heart the real issue is that Microsoft has such a poor relationship with its customers that many customers are worried that Microsoft will drag them into patent court. These customers are willing to pay money, not for any sort of patent license, but for a short term commitment from Microsoft that they won't be sued.
Next thing you know Microsoft execs will be brutalizing school kids for their lunch money.
The truly ironic bit is that Microsoft is not going to sue anyone over patents. Microsoft execs know that if they did this the various organizations that have a stake in the success of Linux (which is essentially everyone but Microsoft) would pay for a well-funded defense. Millions of dollars would be spent, and in the end the patents in question would either be shot down or removed from the Free Software product in question. Depending on who Microsoft chose to attack it could even trigger retaliation from other large players with huge patent repositories. What's more, Microsoft's patent aggression would start a wholesale migration away from Microsoft's technologies.
If Microsoft started suing folks using its technology then its technology would become much less popular virtually overnight.
This is why Microsoft has wisely chosen a middle road. Instead of actually taking people to court, it is simply going to threaten to take people to court and hope that they'll throw money Microsoft's way.
The Red Hat database is not a defunct product. It has been deemphasized, but that was only because Red Hat didn't want to step on Oracle's toes. Tom Lane still works for Red Hat, and that means that Red Hat has the ability to start delivering serious support for PostgreSQL any time they want to start advertising.
That's the way that the commercial tech business works. Instead of competing the companies at the top buy serious competitors before they have a chance to get momentum. That doesn't really work with Free Software though. The company may disappear, but the software persists.
RH is profitable, and its revenues are increasing. What's more, it's market cap is still very high. If Oracle wants to pay that sort of money for a Linux distribution then that's good news for folks in the Linux business.
I would be surprised if anything of the sort happened.
They could make it easier to purchase machines without a Windows license. There's lots of folks that have legitimate reasons for not wanting a Windows license on new hardware, and there are even more people that would be happy to install a pirated version of Windows if they could save a bit of money on the hardware.
Remember, Windows and Windows support are both considerable costs for OEMs. Selling more blank hardware not only makes the OEMs hardware look more cost effective but it cuts down on costs as well.
Or they could push Linspire :). With the right marketing that's not even such a bad idea.
This assumes, of course, that the only reason previous to this point for buying RH Linux is if you wanted to run Oracle, and that's hardly the case. There's a lot of RH Linux that isn't even remotely involved with Oracle software. This will likely put a damper on RH sales, but there still is a whole lot of commercial UNIX to undercut and there's a lot more to Linux than a platform to run Oracle software.
In fact, this could easily backfire on Oracle. Red Hat has been laying off on pushing it's own PostgreSQL based Red Hat database. Organizations could save a lot by forgoing Oracle completely and using Red Hat's complete stack. Say what you want, but in the long run "good enough" and less expensive tends to compete very well against "enterprise class" software. Linux, is a good example of this phenomenon, as are Windows and Microsoft's SQL Server.
Red Hat has a software stack that is fairly competitive with Oracle's while spending an order of magnitude less on R&D. In the long run that is going to make it hard for Oracle to compete with Red Hat, especially if Oracle has to stoop to Red Hat's level.
The problem with that line of thinking is that the Christmas season presents sales opportunities that simply don't come around again later in the year. No one wants to get a coupon for a Vista computer in their stocking, and a computer with XP pre-installed simply isn't as competitive an offering as a computer with Vista installed would be. That means that a significant amount of money that would have gone towards PCs this Christmas will probably go towards something else. OEMs are pissed, and rightly so. Missing the Christmas season is the unpardonable sin in the retail business.
Yes, and I could put a bullet in your brainpan with impunity.
But I could stop you from copying what I wrote, by force if necessary.
Without government you would only have the "rights" that you could defend for yourself. If someone bigger, stronger, and meaner came along your "right" to life, liberty, and property would disappear completely. The difference between what you believe to be a natural right and what you would label mere privilege exists only in your mind. Society determines what "rights" its members have, as is evidenced by the fact that different societies have different sets of "rights."
I suggest you read your Oracle service agreement again. I guarantee you that suing Oracle is not cost effective. If you are buying support to have "someone to sue" then you are delusional.
What color is the sky in your world where swinging your arms is not a "natural" movement?
No one worries about hurting their shoulders hoeing beets, raking the leaves, fly fishing, chopping wood, or any other list of completely natural things that people do with their arms every day.
Moving around is how people get in shape. Unless you have serious medical problems swinging around a remote isn't going to kill you (or even hurt you). I personally would be glad if more video games required a bit of conditioning. People weren't designed to spend their life on their ass.
Which is why I am completely in favor of California raising its gas prices to pay for research into alternatives.
If Nintendo can put enough of these bad boys in people's houses then the third party developers will have no choice but to develop for the Wii, and Nintendo is likely to price the Wii so that they within the reach of a lot more of the market than the 360 or PS3.
Price matters, and Nintendo has that nailed. It's entirely possible that the Wii will become far and away the most popular console of the generation and then the third party developers will use it as their primary development target. At that point the added horsepower of the 360 or PS3 will simply be wasted with third party games.