Red Hat Rejects Microsoft Deals 287
Kurtz'sKompund passed us an article detailing another loss in Microsoft's licensing push: Red Hat has summarily rejected Redmond's offer of an alliance. The article also touches on Ubuntu's rejection of the same offer, which we discussed this past weekend. ZDNet reports on comments from Mark Shuttleworth and the Red Hat organization, with Shuttleworth stating "Allegations of 'infringement of unspecified patents' carry no weight whatsoever. We don't think they have any legal merit, and they are no incentive for us to work with Microsoft on any of the wonderful things we could do together." Red Hat was even more blunt, stating the organization refused to pay an "innovation tax" to Microsoft. "Red Hat said there would be no such deal. Referring to previous statements distancing itself from Microsoft, the company insisted: 'Red Hat's standpoint has not changed.' The company referenced a statement written when Microsoft revealed it was partnering with Novell, saying that its position remained unaltered. Red Hat director of corporate communications Leigh Day added: 'We continue to believe that open source and the innovation it represents should not be subject to an unsubstantiated tax that lacks transparency.' Many open-source followers argue that Red Hat, as the largest Linux vendor, would have a lot to lose from partnering with Microsoft."
Two camps? (Score:5, Interesting)
Even worse (serious question), will this lead to less interoperability between those who refuse MSFT and those who sold their souls (IMHO)? Sure, YaST vs. YUM type stuff will always be present, but what of deeper items, say things that would otherwise wind up being incorporated in kernel.org? I wish I had a better way to articulate the question ATM, but the jist is that maybe the whole 'divide and conquer' plan may work more than most folks think it will, in that either by necessity of 'patent deals' or by necessity of what-have-you, the coders @ Novell won't or can't spread their improvements to RH and vice-versa.
IMHO, that is a greater danger than any lawsuit blustering and posturing that has been coming out of Redmond.
A Microsoft Deal is More Than Just Patents (Score:5, Interesting)
I discovered a few weeks ago that as part of the Novell deal, and Microsoft selling SLES coupons supposedly, SLES actually has to be a subserviant within a Windows domain controller set up. Ergo, SLES can quite easily be replaced with Windows at a later date without anyone being any the wiser. Presumably, when this deal runs out in five years Microsoft will have hoped that they'll have replaced all the SLES and Netware servers with Windows, replaced a lot of Red Hat servers with SLES replaced with Windows, and Novell will be no more.
That deal Novell struck will do quite a bit of damage if any more like it are agreed.
Microsoft's strategy... (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsoft is doing a classic patent ambush on the Linux community, and it's significant. We're not seeing an attach on Linux, but on the Linux market. Microsoft wants to own the market.
I'd be surprised if MS actually threatened any FOSS developers, and I'd expect eventually MS to start supporting some free software projects, and eventually even the GPL, if it does get its planned iron grip on the Linux market via its unnamed patents. Free software is so much cheaper to build than the classic kind. Eventually, MS will port its stack of patent-protected lock-in technologies to a BSD or Linux core.
The weakness in Microsoft's armour is those unnamed patents. If they were to be named, they would be disarmed, and Microsoft's entire gambit would fail. In the US there is no need to detail a patent infringement claim. In Europe, Microsoft's claims come very close to illegal unfair competition; IIRC there is a clause in the European Patent Convention that says a claim of patent infringement must be backed by details of what patents are concerned.
Probably drivers (Score:5, Interesting)
Furthermore, users of the pure distros won't be able to swipe or reverse-engineer the binaries without being at risk for infringement lawsuits.
The end result will be a market-perception of superior functionality and legal saftey when using Linux distributions that include a Microsoft tax.
Re:Thank goodness (Score:4, Interesting)
I think the Microsoft deal isn't about whether Microsoft has or doesn't have anything, it's about not being the victim of it. Given the insanely trivial things that can be patented, it'll be a huge undertaking to defend yourself. I doubt you'll find any way to recover those costs, certainly not turn it into a profit. And even if you did, it's a cheap bill for Microsoft for throwing you on the wayside - many companies have ended up there with Microsoft paying them a few bucks while laughing all the way to the bank with the market they captured.
Sooner or later, Microsoft will have to have a show of hands, but not before Novell etc. start getting impatient about "what did we pay for, really? everyone else is doing the same as us, and you're not striking down on them". Until then, FUD beats facts in marketing every day of the week. I bet Novell got a decent deal too for being first, credibility witness and all that. It's the latecomers who say "hmm, maybe we should have a deal too" which they bleed. So yeah, it might make business sense even if the claims are utterly and completely bogus. Sad but true, but they still deserve the flogging they get here.
Re:Licenced to steal (Score:5, Interesting)
Lord Vader (er, Ballmer) sends you his regards.
If you think that pirating XP is "sticking it to the man" you're wrong. Microsoft _depends_ on you doing that, because for every illegitimate copy of Windows installed, it means one less "alternative" installed.
You don't think that WGA will ever become bulletproof, do you? It won't, ever, despite Steve Ballmer's bombastic assertions that it will.
"Although about three million computers get sold every year in China, people don't pay for the software. Someday they will, though. And as long as they're going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade."
Bill Gates - about 9 years ago.
--
BMO
Re:It's really time for MS to put up or shut up (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, they are - as are several million other patents, and you have absolutely no idea what sort of patent you are alledgedly infringing so good luck trying to find the right needle in the haystack.
Aren't things like Ubuntu/Red Hat open source?
Yup, which makes it incredibly easy for any patent holder to find infringing code (these days it really is impossible to write any software without infringing someone's patent - the only thing that protects the propriatory vendors is that closed code is much harder to examine for infringements).
How hard is it for M$ to say "Look at patent 5,656,565 and lines 1-3,000 of kernel.c. This is a violation of our IP rights.
Very easy. However, they have said that they won't disclose which patents are being violated because:
1. The Free software community would be able to discredit the patents (e.g. provide evidence of prior art, show the code isn't infringing, etc).
2. The Free software developers would be able to remove the offending code.
Microsoft doesn't want to licence the patents, they are simply using them as a FUD campaign to scare people away from switching to Linux - if the patents are discredited or the offending code is removed they have lost all their leverage.
To people not in the know, this is perceived as a big risk - if you switch to Linux then MS has threattened to sue you. Of course, to those of us who can see what's going on it's obvious that MS can't possibly sue anyone because:
1. That would involve disclosing the patents.
2. MS doesn't seem at all confident that it's patents are valid since the cited reason for not disclosing them is that they would be discredited.
3. MS themselves will certainly be infringing a large number of patents held by organisations who have a vested interest in Free software (IBM, the Open Invention Network, Sun, etc.) - firing off lawsuits at Free software users will almost certainly invite retaliation from those patent holders.
The patent system is nolonger about protecting your innovations, it's an arms race - everyone is infringing everyone else's patents anyway (since it's practically impossible to produce any code which isn't infringing) and whoever holds the least patents is crushed since they cannot retaliate to any threats. The whole patent system needs to be abolished - it once served a useful purpose, but these days the merits are far outweighed by the abuses.
Re:It's really time for MS to put up or shut up (Score:4, Interesting)
The nature of software and the industry makes that statement true for software, but in other areas it works just fine.
The patent system should not be abolished. It's a good system. Software and business methods need to not be patented. Clearly that should be a copyright matter.
Or, make it so all patented software myust be open it inspection. Including all code in any application that uses patented code.
BTW, for 12-15K you could have an attorney to a patent search. Hell, you could do it yourself for free. Of course, time is money but I think you know what I mean.
Re:It's really time for MS to put up or shut up (Score:3, Interesting)
Microsoft wants a couple of things. They want Linux to stop being free as in beer and free as in speech.
Ultimately they want Linux to go away.
If you look at Microsoft's history in regards to partners you may notice that to partner with Microsoft is often the kiss of death. They are known for stabbing partners in the back.
Be sure that they paid well to partner with the distributions that have signed up. Novell got over 300 million dollars. It only cost them their good standing in the OSS community. I don't know the specifics of the other deals but Microsoft is paying out big to try to make this happen. You can bet that regardless of what the astro-turfers try to say this IS a big deal and we SHOULD NOT relax and think everything is fine.
I believe that Microsoft is setting the stage for its next act. I hope IBM and other large corporations who claim to support the OSS movement are watching and planning.
If Microsoft succeeds the playing field will continue to be tilted in their favor for the foreseeable future. If they fail the playing field will become level again where true innovation and competition can thrive to the benefit of all.
Re:Glad (Score:2, Interesting)
I understand the context from which you are calling others 'greedy' - but before you do that, try and have a look in the mirror to see if there was any instance where you may have been less than, shall we say, humble...?
It's only fair
Re:It's really time for MS to put up or shut up (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:So... (Score:4, Interesting)
What you failed to understand is that making a deal with Microsoft is the most evil thing RedHat can do right now. That they respond initially with a flat "no" is truly not saying much. All it really says is that they are not very evil (which we already knew). If, for example, RedHat publicly announced that they considered MS's tactics to be racketeering, that would be news. As it currently stands, RedHat's actions just aren't that significant. They haven't hurt Microsoft in any way, and they haven't challenged Microsoft to "put up or shut up." All they've said is "we aren't playing."
Re:It's really time for MS to put up or shut up (Score:2, Interesting)
Will some lawyer out there who knows more than I do tell me how in the h**l you can win a patent suit against a defendant who has begged to be told what infringes so he can take it out? Where the heck are your damages in such a case?
Re:Thank goodness (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:It's really time for MS to put up or shut up (Score:3, Interesting)
I think the same logic should apply to copyrights. Companies that want copyright protection should be required to disclose the code in order to get it. If they want to keep the code secret (which does occasionally make sense, though much less often than people think), then they should use contract and trade secret law to protect it.
My rationale is, basically, the rationale used to justify copyright law's existence in the first place. Copyright protects expressions in order to help ideas be widely disseminated. The authors of copyright law never considered that it might some day be possible to publish your expression in a form that hid the ideas in it, so that others were unable to learn from them. How would you write a book so that people could read it but not learn from it? Binary-only software achieves exactly that, and in doing so it undermines the rationale for supporting copyright law in the first place.
Note that requiring publication of source code would not imply that others can take the published source and use it. Arguably, under current copyright law they probably couldn't even compile it, since compilation creates a binary which is a derivative work of the copyrighted source code. They could, however, read it and learn from it. They could also analyze it for security weaknesses, bugs, etc. I think that under such a copyright regime the quality of commercial code would increase substantially, and also that the amount of copyright infringement that goes on would decline dramatically. There is a lot of commercial software that infringes copyrights of commercial libraries and of F/LOSS code, but gets away with it because no one can see the source. That would change.
In the case of patents, I think software simply should not be patentable.