Turbolinux Is Latest To Sign Microsoft Pact

mytrip sends word that Turbolinux has followed Novell, Linspire, and Xandros in signing a patent and technology agreement with Microsoft. Microsoft pledged not to sue Turbolinux's users for patent infringement. Turbolinux, headquartered in Japan, sells Linux systems mostly in emerging markets such as China and India. The Betanews story speculates on some of the technology benefits Turbolinux might get out of the deal.

Money ?

[DrYak]

Yeah but did they get money out of the deal ? Back then, Novell got Microsoft to invest some money in the development of cross-compatibility software (in short : Novell payed some cash to MS for patents, and MS in return gave huge wads of cash to Novell for development)

Is this the case tody with TurboLinux ?

Is this really bad

[prelelat]

Don't companies all of the time say hey I won't sue you if you don't sue me? If Microsoft has so much on Linux as far as software patents go then I would think they would sue instead signing non aggression agreements. I think Microsoft might have some things that Linux could say they hold a patent on. Maybe this is a good thing for Linux as they don't have to worry about going to court for 10 years with their clients and developers wondering what will happen if Microsoft gets the upper hand. Even if it was something developers could change easily it's nice to know you won't be going to court because something is similar enough to a patent Microsoft owns. I can see why they would go and do this, though I do think it's almost like signing a deal with the devil. I hope distros like Red Hat and such don't do it personally.

I don't know much about it so if I'm wrong could you please explain to me how this is bad?

Is MS's threats liable or slander?

[newgalactic]

Is MS's threats liable or slander? It seems that they always throw around that "we'll protect our Intellectual Property..." line a lot, but no one seems to have a clue what their talking about. As far as I know, making unsubstantiated claims like that for the purpose of scaring corporations away from Linux is illegal (called liable or slander I think). It's akin to "Brand X" claiming "Brand Y kills a puppy every time you use their product", when they don't. Can someone shed some light on this issue? Does Linux infringe upon MS IP, and if it doesn't, why hasn't Redhat or someone sued them to shut up?

Re:Money ?

[jbengt]

ACtually, the way I heard it, MS gave wads of cash to Novell for patents.
Because MS sells so much more than Novell, in balance they owed more to Novell for the use of Novell's IP than Novell owed to MS for the use of MS's IP.

Re:Turbolinux?

[trolltalk.com]

... and that's why they did the deal - attention. The article say's they're big in Asia, but they're not, and their other forays into things like "appliances" didn't work.

Just another linux company slowly sliding into obscurity as other linux distros make get larger and more capable by the day. This market rationalization will end up with a few major distros ready to take on Redmond head-to-head - and win.

Small distros will still continue to exist, to serve their market niches where warranted, and not as "me to" linux.

Re:huh?

[trolltalk.com]

I'm not that fond of Ubuntu for myself - I find it "too user-friendly" (what can I say, I'm a big fan of slackware :-),

Still, I might throw it on one drive again, so that I have a frame - but my needs and usage patterns aren't your "average user."

Re:huh?

[awrowe]

Problem is, the more small players who sign up to this sort of thing, the harder it is to refute claims made in court. If you add up all the users of these 'small'distro's' what sort of percentage are we looking at of total linux users? Even more pertinent perhaps, is that if lots of these tiddlers signed up and a Microsoft sock puppet decided to go to the courts citing '359 distributions have signed our agreement but these five or six recalcitrant organisations think they are too big to worry about the law', what happens then? The courts they are going to aren't necessarily tech savvy. The sock puppet will try very hard to obfuscate the number of users in the non-signing distros and will instead try to highlight the number of organisations who do sign. At that point, it doesn't come down to users, but to distributors and when that happens, the sock puppet wins on numbers. This is more dangerous than it looks. Microsoft wouldn't be going after the tiddlers if they didn't have a strategy like this.