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Microsoft To Announce Linux Partnership
Posted by
Zonk
on Thu Nov 02, 2006 03:37 PM
from the shout-at-the-devil dept.
from the shout-at-the-devil dept.
Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "Microsoft is entering into an unusual partnership with Novell that gives a boost to Linux, people familiar with the companies tell WSJ.com. From the article: 'Under the pact, which isn't final, Microsoft will offer sales support of Suse Linux, a version of the operating system sold by Novell. The two companies have also agreed to develop technologies to make it easier for users to run both Suse Linux and Microsoft's Windows on their computers. The two companies are expected to announce details of their plan today at a press conference in San Francisco. In addition, Microsoft won't assert rights over patents over software technology that may be incorporated into Suse Linux, the people said. Businesses that use Linux have long worried that Microsoft would one day file patent infringement suits against sellers of the rival software.'"
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Dvorak On Microsoft/Novell Deal 218 comments
zaxios writes, "John C. Dvorak has weighed in on the recent Novell-Microsoft pact. Among his insights: 'Microsoft has been leery of doing too much with Linux because of all the weirdness with the licenses and the possibility that one false move would make a Microsoft product public domain at worst, or subject to the GPL at best.' But now, 'the idea is to create some sort of code that is jammed into Linux and whose sole purpose is to let some proprietary code run under Linux without actually "touching" Linux in any way that would subject the proprietary code to the GPL.' According to Dvorak, it's only a matter of time before Linux is 'cracked' by Microsoft, meaning Microsoft figures out a way to run proprietary code on it."
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Has the Novell/Microsoft Deal Made a Difference? 120 comments
willdavid writes "The deal between Microsoft and Novell was announced a little more than a year ago, and it's hard to judge what impact the deal has really had on the marketplace (if any). The two groups claim to have signed up 30 new customers (including heavyweights like Costco and Southwest Airlines), but it will still be some time before any real changes will be felt. 'Regardless of what impact the deal has triggered in the marketplace over the past year, ultimately it's about meeting market requirements. "The fact is that the vast majority of businesses do not want homogeneous IT infrastructures," Pund-IT analyst King said. "Instead, they want to be able to better and more easily manage their IT assets no matter what hardware or OS platforms they buy. Microsoft and Novell deserve congratulations on their one-year anniversary, but the needs of Linux and Windows customers are as much responsible for the partnership as the companies themselves."'"
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openSUSE Hobbled By Microsoft Patents 266 comments
kripkenstein writes "openSUSE 10.2 no longer enables ClearType (which would improve the appearance of fonts). The reason given on the openSUSE mailing list for not enabling it is, 'this feature is covered by several Microsoft patents and should not be activated in any default build of the library.'
As reported on and discussed, this matter may be connected to the Microsoft-Novell deal. If so, Novell should have received a license for the Microsoft patents, assuming the deal covered all relevant patents. Does the license therefore extend only to SUSE, but not openSUSE?"
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Ballmer Says Linux "Infringes Our Intellectual Property" 820 comments
Stony Stevenson writes "In comments confirming the open-source community's suspicions, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer Thursday declared his belief that the Linux operating system infringes on Microsoft's intellectual property." From the ComputerWorld article: "In a question-and-answer session after his keynote speech at the Professional Association for SQL Server (PASS) conference in Seattle, Ballmer said Microsoft was motivated to sign a deal with SUSE Linux distributor Novell earlier this month because Linux 'uses our intellectual property' and Microsoft wanted to 'get the appropriate economic return for our shareholders from our innovation.'" His exact wording is available at the Seattle Intelligencer, which has a transcript of the interview. Groklaw had an article up Wednesday giving some perspective on the Novell/Microsoft deal. Guess we'll have something to talk about in 2007, huh?
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Red Hat Rejects Microsoft Patent Deal Overtures 201 comments
Geekgal writes "Red Hat has slammed the door shut on any possibility of entering into a patent protection deal similar to the one Microsoft recently announced with Novell, eWeek is reporting. While Microsoft has repeatedly said it wants to work with Red Hat and would like to structure a relationship where its customers can be assured of the same thing as Novell's customers now are, Mark Webbink, Red Hat's deputy general counsel, says 'we do not believe there is a need for or basis for the type of relationship defined in the Microsoft-Novell announcement.' Interestingly enough, Microsoft also says that it has not ruled out going it alone and providing some sort of indemnification for its customers who also use Red Hat Linux." Meanwhile, Eben Moglen, the FSF general counsel, promises that GPLv3 will explicitly outlaw deals like this. (Of course everyone's on v2, so calling the Novell deal "DOA" would be premature.)
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Is the Microsoft/Novell Deal a Litigation Bomb? 342 comments
mpapet writes "According to WINE developer Tom Wickline, the Microsoft/Novell deal for Suse support may one day control commercial customers' use of Free Software. Is this the end of commercial OSS developers who are not a part of the Microsoft/Suse pact?" From the article: "Wickline said that the pact means that there will now be a Microsoft-blessed path for such people to make use of Open Source ... 'A logical next move for Microsoft could be to crack down on 'unlicensed Linux' and 'unlicensed Free Software,' now that it can tell the courts that there is a Microsoft-licensed path. Or they can just passively let that threat stay there as a deterrent to anyone who would use Open Source without going through the Microsoft-approved Novell path,' Wickline said." Bruce Perens dropped a line to point out that most of the content actually comes from his post.
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Eben Moglen To Scrutinize Novell-Microsoft Deal 102 comments
An anonymous reader writes "Novell is providing Eben Moglen's Software Freedom Law Center with confidential access to the legal terms of the Novell-Microsoft partnership, allowing to organization to verify if the deal is compatible with the GPL2 and GPL3 licenses. Moglen in the past has alleged that the patent license between the two companies could be in violation with section 7 of the GPL. Novell on Tuesday published a document on its website, explaining that they circumvented the GPL provisions by providing a patent license to the end user rather than between the two companies."
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Microsoft Interested In More Linux Deals 256 comments
eldavojohn writes "Microsoft has announced that it would be open to more deals similar to the one it just made with Novell. 'We will love to put that kind of agreement in place with anyone who distributes Linux software, Red Hat, whoever else,' Steve Ballmer told India's Economic Times. Considering the recent reactions to the Microsoft Novell deal, it would be interesting to see who else takes them up on the offer. Novell is due to receive USD $348 million in up-front payments. Will Red Hat cash out on this offer if it feels the impending pressure from Oracle's Linux? Will non-profit Linux distributions attempt to make deals with Microsoft?"
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Samba Team Urges Novell To Reconsider 472 comments
hde226868 writes "The team responsible for Samba has just asked Novell to reconsider its recent patent agreement with Microsoft, arguing that the agreement is a divisive agreement, effectively splitting the open source movement into groups with and without commercial status. Samba argues that with this move Novell is disregarding the will of the people who write the software sold by Novell and that Novell has 'no right to make self servicing deals on behalf of others which run contrary to the goals and ideals of the Free Software community'."
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Hell called. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hell called. (Score:5, Funny)
- Duke Nukem Forever was released today.
- Hell froze over.
- SCO v. IBM trial over.
- Apple uses Intel Processors.
oh wait, that last one is true...Re:Hell called. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Hell called. (Score:5, Funny)
...And in yet more news:
Four horsemen arrived in Seattle today. When approached one horseman was quoted:
So, to wrap it up:
Hey Novell! (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Whats in it for Microsoft? (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsoft has been nicer since Bill Gates left the CEO position to Steve Balmer but Microsoft must have an incentive. Why would Microsoft help a competitor? Especially one that is very entrenched in the server market which MS wished it owned like the desktop market.
I wonder if there are clauses in that agreement for MS to pull a SCO if they feel to threatened? This is the same microsoft that screwed IBM twice with DOS and OS/2 and Netscape so I am skeptical.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Very simply... (Score:3, Insightful)
I dont understand why Microsoft has been so friendly to OSS sofwtare on windows, but this is well strange.
By getting their technology ("Intellectual Property", patents etc.) into SuSE Linux, the automatically get Novell and all of its SuSE customers hook
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
And do you think Microsoft's "promises" not to charge for patents, and so forth, will be worth the paper they're written on, if they are indeed written down at all?
RMS is indeed a wise man.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe you could ask Steve Jobs. I think he might know.
We do Linux too! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Whats in it for Microsoft? (Score:5, Insightful)
The adaption of
Mono solves the problem of running
This partnership sends a clear message to all enterprise architects: Mono is OK, we won't sue you. The extent of this is unclear... Will wait and see
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Specifically, so they can prove they have competitors is my cynical response.
When people say MS is a
Re:Whats in it for Microsoft? (Score:5, Interesting)
And don't expect MS to try and make SuSe proprietary; they're doing this precisely because they need an alternative product line, to gain an entry with customers who won't use Windows.
Expect to see a LOT of SuSe in China.
The lesson from this and the Oracle move is that it makes more economic sense for huge software companies to handle the distribution, and to benefit from the various synergies and good will that it creates, rather than to start a company that does nothing but Linux (and trying to figure out how to monetize free software). MS will eventually profit more from Linux than Red Hat ever did, but not by charging for the software.
Linux has "won", in a sense.... it's reached enough critical mass that there's a mad rush to be the one who gives it away. It may never outnumber Windows, but it will ALWAYS be a factor from here on out. The only question remaining is who will eventually buy Red Hat (sure, they may try to restructure, but they'll never be able to make a go of it with MS and Oracle trying to outdo each other at giving it away). SAP and HP are the first names that come to mind. Maybe Sun, but they couldn't afford it. Intel would have antitrust problems. Not sure if IBM would still be interested.
Just Call It Microsoft SuSe WinLinux Already! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Just Call It Microsoft SuSe WinLinux Already! (Score:5, Funny)
IE for Mac (Score:3, Funny)
Wait For It! (Score:3)
2. Embrace (today) Extend (tomorrow) and Extinguish (next year)
3. There's going to be a whole lot more newsgroup traffic from MS support phone jockies from whatever developing country they live in this year.
4. MS says "All your corporate monies belong to us!".
5. Redhat should be renamed DeadHat.
Good thing I'm on Debian Etch. Which has been running beautifully despite the "testing" moniker.
MS sales support for Suse Linux (Score:3, Funny)
Customer: Oh, hi Steve. Not "Susie", "Suse".
MS Salesman: No one here by that name. But how may I help you?
Customer: Well, we need highly scalable, robust Web services with low cost-per-seat and low TCO running on older hardware with industry-leading uptime.
MS Saleman: Gotcha! I'll ship you some Windows Vista licences right away. Don't worry, there's a GUI for all that Interweb stuff.
Source Code (Score:4, Funny)
Novell Buyout Prelude? (Score:3, Interesting)
MS wants consolidation in the Linux market (Score:5, Insightful)
Fewer players in the Linux world, and preferably one dominant vendor, means one opponent for Microsoft. Would you rather fight a distributed and decentralized enemy, or a centrally-controlled one with a well-defined center of gravity?
The more standardized and less fragmented Linux is, the more Linux is like the traditional competitors Microsoft is used to crushing. My guess is that Microsoft's current attitude toward Linux is based on this assumption. Will Microsoft's attempts to manipulate the Linux market succeed? Probably not. But that won't stop them from trying.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Yep, they've already trademarked the name Microsux
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
This is the Microsoft from Redmond, WA we are talking about? The same ones that can't do anything right lately? The ones who are trying to sell the Zune? The same ones who los