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Microsoft/Novell Deal Could Create Two-Tier Linux Market
Posted by
Zonk
on Tue Nov 07, 2006 10:38 AM
from the now-which-hat-will-they-wear dept.
from the now-which-hat-will-they-wear dept.
Rob writes writes to mention a Computer Business Review article about the recent Microsoft/Novell Linux deal. Article author Matthew Aslet warns that while some may see the announcement as a step forward, it may ultimately be very divisive for the Linux community. From the article: "Microsoft made it clear that only SUSE users and developers, as well as unsalaried Linux developers, are protected. 'Let me be clear about one thing, we don't license our intellectual property to Linux because of the way Linux licensing GPL framework works, that's not really a possibility,' said Microsoft chief executive, Steve Ballmer. 'Novell is actually just a proxy for its customers, and it's only for its customers,' he added. 'This does not apply to any forms of Linux other than Novell's SUSE Linux. And if people want to have peace and interoperability, they'll look at Novell's SUSE Linux. If they make other choices, they have all of the compliance and intellectual property issues that are associated with that.'"
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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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Bill + Steve (Score:5, Funny)
Steve: I've got an idea. Let's buy another version of Linux.
Bill: Are you crazy? The SCO gambit didn't fool anybody.
Steve: No, not like that. Instead of trying to fool a judge, we'll try to fool our customers.
Bill: So? That's already company policy.
Steve: Yes, but we'll release our own version. We tell the public that we're joining the Linux bandwagon, and with our marketing clout, it will soon become the dominant version on the market. Then when the public is convinced that MSLinux IS Linux, we make gradual changes to turn it into an unusable bloated wreck. Linux will be finished!
Bill: No way! Remember, Steve, I used to write software. No self-respecting programmer would deliberately wreck an OS. Where are we going to get a bunch of programmers to do that?
Steve: We have all the guys who wrote Vista. I think they could do it.
Plus: what if they want war? (Score:2)
Someone go get me some popcorn.
Re:Plus: what if they want war? (Score:5, Insightful)
http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/19
http://news.com.com/IBM+offers+500+patents+for+op
Re:Plus: what if they want war? (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed, and that's exactly why MS is never going to actually sue anyone over patents. The aim of the exercise, as far as I can tell, is to make a lot of noise and give the impression that you might sue at any minute. As far as MS is concerned having people beleve you're about to sue is as good as actually sueing in terms of results, an it is a lot safer for them. MS is never going to sue - they might be rathere noisy about it though.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Wrong. The deal means that any would-be contributors to Debian having a commercial Linux background are assumed to be litigation targets.
Bill's coding (Score:3, Interesting)
He hasn't ever coded anything to functional completion.
Umm, just untrue. When Microsoft was a brand new company, he wrote their first products, one of which was a version of BASIC that ran on the Altair. Not a small accomplishment. Also remember tha
Re:Bill's coding (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_BASIC [wikipedia.org]
The writing is on the wall! (Score:4, Insightful)
Wait, I think I've seen this one already. (Score:5, Interesting)
Rarely have I ever seen such perfect examples of FUD. This has it all; it's an unspoken threat, dropped only in order to create feelings of uncertainty in the marketplace.
I had thought for a while that Microsoft was just ignoring Linux, but now it seems they're opening up a new front, one where they're going to engage in overt psychological warfare in order to discourage adoption of competing products.
In a sick way, you have to appreciate watching Microsoft work. It's not as though this hasn't happened a dozen times before, just in the IT market, and yet it still always seems to do the trick. At a certain point, you either have to laugh or cry. I haven't decided which way to go yet.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm a SuSE guy, and when I heard this, I thought to myslef (and now you can read my thoughts), "I'm going to have to find a new distro"!
That being said, I am not sure what M$ thinks that they can bring to the Linux front that is not already there,
They're restraining, not pushing. (Score:5, Insightful)
Can they really be said to be "better" or "faster" when they actively discourage other people with potentially superior products from competing with them based on technical merits?
Seems to me that almost every area where Microsoft is dominant and not faced with external competition has stagnated. Look at what happened to the browser between the demise of Navigator and the rise of Firefox: basically nothing (well, except viruses and trojans; it was a great time to be a malware writer).
They are a huge brake on what ought to be an accelerating, ever-changing industry. The outcome that Microsoft would really like -- one platform, under EULA, with per-seat licensing and DRM for all, Amen -- would be nothing less than a dark age for information technology.
Microsoft only looks like a good thing when it's compared to nothing at all; if you compare it to what might exist in the absence of such a distorting influence, they've caused nothing but harm.
Microsoft didn't 'bring computers to business;' businesses would have bought computers in the absence of Microsoft; the advantages are just too great to be ignored. What Microsoft did, was effectively eliminate any choice that businesses might have had in the OS and software they wanted to buy and run, in order to be inter-operable. They injected themselves into computing and ended up in a place where they could become one of the "costs of doing business," applicable to everyone, everywhere. You aren't just paying the Microsoft Tax when you buy a new PC, you're paying it all the time, everywhere, because everyone uses their stuff. You're paying for it in the cost of your food, your electronics, your entertainment, and even your taxes, because not even our government can live without MS.
Microsoft is a plague, a parasite, that has so thoroughly infested the business world that it's basically impossible to remove. But just because it's too close to our vital bits to get rid of it now, shouldn't prohibit us from considering the nature of the infection and realizing that there could have been -- indeed, was -- a multitude of other ways that things could have gone.
Microsoft didn't "push technology all over the globe," people in all corners of the globe pulled that technology to themselves; they bought and paid for it because of the benefits it offered, despite the necessity of paying for Microsoft software in order to get anything done. Microsoft didn't create those markets, or those benefits; they would have existed anyway, because the technology really is that good. It's not good because of Microsoft -- MS didn't invent email, or CRM systems, or word processing, or spreadsheets -- and there's little that Microsoft offers that wouldn't be offered by somebody else in their stead. (Even the 'lingua franca' that Microsoft provides to the world could be easily replaced by a variety of open standards, because such a standard would be mutually beneficial in the absence of a standard piece of software.) It's good despite Microsoft.
A few quick responses. (Score:3, Insightful)
Just as an aside,
Re:The writing is on the wall! (Score:5, Informative)
They're not worried about the OSS community. Not even a little.
This is about making the perception among customers that the only way to have a Linux which is free from being sued by Microsoft for IP violations is to go with Novell/Suse. They hope to make the rest of the Linux offerings 'poisoned' for businesses to use with the veiled threat that all other versions of Linux are potentially tainted.
Really, who didn't see this coming on the day they announced it?
Cheers
Bad move by Novell (Score:4, Interesting)
Not sure what Novell are thinking of here. Surprised IBM hasn't had something to say...
Re:Bad move by Novell (Score:4, Funny)
give them time, they're busy reviving a fresh batch of lawyers from cold storage, then they've got to work out precisely who to let them loose on, Novell and/or Microsoft
Re:Bad move by Novell (Score:4, Informative)
I doubt Novell were thinking at all. As far as any GPLed code is concerned, the agreement is worse than worthless; if Novell thinks they're distributing GPL code that needs extra rights granted, then they must forward those extra rights to any and all recipients, or they cannot distribute the code at all.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Dang. (Score:4, Interesting)
We were right (Score:2)
Bye Bye Novell (Score:5, Funny)
Re:You're completely wrong! (Score:4, Informative)
The best response from the community is to boycott SuSE in every way as a distro. The best response from GNU and other rights holders is to immediately sue Novell over violation of GPL license (but this may require showing that there *are* patented code in Linux that SuSE aren't extending rights to use it).
Limitations... *sigh* (Score:4, Funny)
Dear Microsoft,
How will my baby mulching machine [wikiquote.org] be able to legally interoperate with your software?
This is very important to me and my colleagues, and I would appreciate it if you would address our concerns.
Not Your Grampa's Xenix (Score:5, Interesting)
The only defense is RedHat and IBM, and possibly other corps with money to fight MS attacking their Linux distros their future OS strategies all depend upon. Maybe Oracle is bought in to Linux enough that it too will defend a Linux version. RedHat is new and bubbly enough that I'm not surprised they're vulnerable to this attack, and maybe Oracle could tell that, too. But IBM should have known that its defense from SCO, which was a defense against Microsoft's proxy, was too close an alliance with Novell. I'm surprised IBM didn't protect themselves from this Microsoft attack through Novell. But then, MS has always made all its biggest victories by attacking IBM's blind spots.
The other defense is anarchy. Tens of thousands of Linux developers, and tens of millions of users, all across the world, just ignoring MS patent attacks on their distros. If that works, it could also undermine the very patent weapon Microsoft and others wield to destroy SW progress. If they bit off more than they can chew, MS could very well be doing us all a big favor, by destroying itself and patent regime in which it makes its crooked living.
oh pleeze (Score:2, Informative)
FUD (Score:4, Informative)
Microsoft is basically saying "If you want to run your ASP.NET app with open source software then Novell is your only choice". Microsoft is not saying "Novell Linux is the only safe Linux distro from Microsoft lawsuits" because Linux is inherently safe as long as you don't run Microsoft's crappy
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:FUD (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course to the average Slashdotter, who doesn't RTFA or does any research, this means Microsoft is going to start suing other Linux companies that aren't blessed by Microsoft. But again how can Microsoft sue over patents when they don't own any in regards to the Linux kernel or Linux development stack. Even Wine is safe from Microsoft. It's just some portions of Mono which deal with
And honestly trusting press releases for good information is a waste of time. Doesn't Bush send out PR every day saying how good things are going in Iraq?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
How can that be interpreted as other than a threat?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
An interesting quote (Score:5, Interesting)
than to stimulate invention. It creates a class of speculative schemers who
make it their business to watch the advancing wave of improvement, and
gather its foam in the form of patented monopolies, which enable them to
lay a heavy tax upon the industry of the country, without contributing
anything to the real advancement of the arts. It embarrasses the honest
pursuit of business with fears and apprehensions of concealed liens and
unknown liabilities to lawsuits and vexatious accountings for profits made
in good faith. Atlantic Works v. Brady, 107 U.S. 192, 200 (1882) (Bradley, J.).
Violating GPL (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Novell own a lot of IP such as original UNIX copyrights. Microsoft suing over Linux patent violation
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It goes sorta like this:
1) Peo
The Easy Way (Score:3, Interesting)
Licensing (Score:5, Insightful)
MS and Novel know this, and that's why they don't call what they've done "licensing." Instead, as they've said, they have carefully taken the GPL into account when they made this deal (in order to work around it), and called their deal a "promise not to sue" or some such.
If MS DOES successfully sue another distributor or coder over GPL'ed code, then Novell's deal with MS would not give them any EXTRA ability to continue to distribute that code.
So what have MS and Novell done? They have created the illusion that Novell has licensed MS patents and that other Linux distributions do not have this license. The truth is:
* No court has ruled that MS holds patents on any GPL'ed code
* MS has not claimed that any specific GPL'ed code violates MS's patents
* If MS DID bring a patent suit against a prominent Free software project or it's proxy, it would be resolved:
- Many big projects would fight in court (Red Hat, FSF, IBM), and MS would lose
- MS would come under attack by other companies that have interest in GPL'ed software and that have large patent portfolios -- MS would back down
- If MS did win a suit (or if the legal battle was too much), the code would be replaced quickly
Question: how does the BSD'ed code (or Apache licensed, etc) fare in the above context?
I wonder... (Score:5, Interesting)
If Microsoft are planning on threatening people with suits for using their IP, they're going to have to make damn sure that said people *are* using their IP first. If they threaten a company, the company calls their bluff, and it comes out in the courtroom that said company isn't actually infringing on their patents, an astute judge might then ask some rather awkward questions.
Methinks Ballmer needs to be very, very careful. An approach of, "Nice distribution you have there. Would be a shame to see anything happen to it," could seriously legally backfire.
Ominous but empty threats (Score:4, Interesting)
IANAL, but I think these are empty threats and here is why:
Looking for the silver-lining, I hope this will lead to an officially blessed MS smb/ad client that will reveal some of the inner workings that continously stump Samba.
Richard Stallman's most prescient writing... (Score:4, Informative)
it may be divisive? (Score:3, Interesting)
No shit?
This development signals a parting of ways for everyone I know with Suse Linux.
My phone has been ringing off the wall and everyone is asking me, "What should we switch to now?"
No one I know wants to have anything to do with this abomination.
This is nothing more than a ploy to poison the well.
Thanks Suse, it was great while it lasted, but now you've shot yourself in both feet and we don't trust you anymore.
I don't think MS and Novell get a choice (Score:3, Interesting)
Section 7 of the GPL explicitly says it's not limited to any particular thing, so equivocation about "covenant" vs. "license" doesn't get either of them out of it. If Novell can't pass on to it's customers all rights needed for them to redistribute SuSE Linux, then the GPLv2 says it doesn't have a license to distribute Linux at all. If those rights come from a convenant not to sue rather than a patent license, they're still required for SuSE's customers to redistribute SuSE Linux. GPLv3 makes the point even clearer, but GPLv2 has enough language in it to make the argument. I think all Novell's managed to do here is shoot themselves in the foot, and MS won't gain any advantage from having one "blessed" distribution when that blessing calls that distribution's copyright license into question.
A Call to Action (Score:3, Interesting)
FUCK YOU NOVELL! Turn your back on us and we'll walk right out the door.
Sound and Fury (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously.
When XP rolled out a few years ago, a bunch of businesses used Linux to leverage better deals on corporate licenses for XP and MS-Office. Microsoft probably "lost" hundreds of millions (meaning they didn't make hundreds of millions more) this way.
Now that Linux is much more mature, some of those threats to migrate to Linux might actually turn out to be real. Wouldn't *that* suck for Microsoft. But even if they didn't, customers would use Linux like they did last time.
Many companies might delay rollout of Vista simply to take a "wait-and-see" approach, to see if anyone else is moving to Linux. It's not a big threat, but it is a threat. Microsoft needs Vista to not look like a flop out of the gate. This is a big launch for them, and they need it to look good, to drive early sales. Yes, they have the market locked up, but it's better to get everyone's money *now*, and not later, especially for their stock price.
Anyway. To me, that seems the most reasonable explanation, what with the timing of this. The important thing isn't that Linux is in trouble (which it is not); the important thing is that there is the *appearance* that Linux is in trouble.
Hmmm (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Sorry, there is no way out from this.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
That being said, the three main BSDs (Free/Open/Net), unlike many Linux distros, will not include cl
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Patent Infringements I ask you they certainly know how to play their own
Re:Not kidding (Score:5, Funny)
Amongst other things, it states that any cucumber with a curvature of more than 10mm per 10cm length cannot be sold as a Class 1 product. Microsoft must have broken something in one of the more obscure directives.
Yep. (Score:3, Interesting)
Sure. Not so much with Mono, but I'm *way* happy with Gtk+/GNOME. Although, I have been running e17 for a while as my own desktop, GNOME is nice, and I have more faith in its openness