Linspire Signs Patent Pact With MS 386
RLiegh sends us to an AP article reporting that Linspire has signed a patent deal with Microsoft. The company, which started out life as "Lindows," joins a growing list of patent agreements reached between Microsoft and vendors. Linspire will be granted a license to use True Type Fonts and "various code" that would allow for Linspire users to use voice on Windows Live Messenger as well as the usual patent protection for Linspire's customers. In return, among other things, Linspire will make Microsoft's search engine the default search on PCs shipped with their OS. Kevin Carmony, the CEO for Linspire, approached Microsoft a year and a half ago, according to the article.
It could be worse... (Score:1, Informative)
MS seems to be giving an ok to pretty much any commercial Linux vendor that would have customers needing solid support without any fear from MS or other companies trying to nail them for patents. (Note they are getting MS protection on things not even related to MS, that is pretty big and a broad acceptance.)
However, it could be worse, MS could just have ignored all these companies and pushed MS Linux or even a Linux Subsystem for NT as an alternative for business and left every Linux distributor to fend for themselves in the commericial market. This would be worse...
MS is not the devil anymore, we can't continue to just hate them for the sake of hating them. IBM and DRDOS got screwed by MS, not Linux. Wordperfect and Lotus screwed themselves with horrible products. Novell screwed themselves with horrible client software and high prices.
So yes MS feked up, but not as bad as they could have.
MS helped Apple several times along the way, when they could have went in for the kill. If MS was truly predatory or evil, there would be no Apple, especially when Apple was very dependent on IE and Office.
If this was MS playing the role of borg, they wouldn't even deal with these companies and like I said, would be pushing MS Linux or Linux on NT as the only solution for non-Windows *nix.
Instead MS has a BSD subsystem for NT that is not hardly even marketed other than for integration with the *nix community, and MS is looking for ways to partner with *nix OS vendors they could easily shun and effectively kill off in the corporate/business sectors. But they aren't.
So things could be a lot worse...
(If I'm wrong and MS starts shutting down these companies, I will freely admit it and join everyone here with pitch forks outside Redmond. Until then, MS giving credibility to Linux companies is a good thing.)
Thanks ESR! (Score:4, Informative)
Lots more detail regarding the deal... (Score:1, Informative)
Re:The LInux business community... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:PANIC IN THE HENHOUSE! VISTA DOES NOT SELL! (Score:1, Informative)
Why are you trying to convince yourself? What is so deeply wrong with you? It's the fastest-selling OS of all time:
http://stuff.techwhack.com/archives/2007/05/16/vi
The way that Linux users just shove their fingers in their ears, say "blah bla blah" over the top of facts and refuse to believe anything makes me ashamed to be part of this community.
Now, let's see what Linspire was saying before... (Score:4, Informative)
Shuttleworth interview: June 1st, 2007 (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, this is really bad! (Score:3, Informative)
Why? Because these agreements don't protect the developers. In the long run, it won't do Linspire or whoever any good if they're legally allowed to sell Linux, but the community is dead.
This is how Microsoft "cuts off the air supply" of Free Software.
Msft deal targets screwed-up companies (Score:3, Informative)
"Xandros are about to go BK (and this deal guarantees it), desperation
creates mistakes. EV1 was headed by a business incompetent. Novell had just had
Hovsepian parachute in with a desperate need to impose his authority despite a
shaky understanding of the business.
Seeing a pattern yet... only screwed up companies went for the deals. Knowing
that its real hard to take SCOX or MSFTs few success's totally seriously."
Come to think of it, scox was heading towards certain bankruptcy before msft got
involved. And let's face it folks, Linspire was never much of a distro.
The real Linux heavyweights: Redhat, Debian, Ubuntu, etc. Have flatly stated that they have no interest in msft's patent deals.
Mark Shuttle gives excellent commentary on the scam . . er, I mean deal, in this interview [mybroadband.co.za].
The patents are an afterthought (Score:5, Informative)
Re:That's really funny (Score:4, Informative)
Even funnier is the fact that Red Hat released replacements to the common TT fonts [redhat.com] under a GPL license. The full-hinted versions will be released circa September 2007.
Where the fuck are all the other companies in sponsoring stuff like this?
Re:The LInux business community... (Score:4, Informative)
Ubuntu went so far as to create a "restricted driver manager" that tells you when you're using binary drivers, why you shouldn't, and what you can do about it.
If you call this "peddling proprietary shit", then I don't think you understand more than one of those words.
Re:Its because they can't attack Ubuntu directly . (Score:4, Informative)
But more importantly look at the details of the deal. So far as I can tell, this stuff only covers the use of proprietary stuff with GPLed/third party offerings. Outside the idea of a GPLed program potentially using them, it won't effect the GPLv3 status at all _IF_ the agreement is specific in what code or IP the patent protection covers and that code isn't inside a GPLed program.
I think this might be another case of jumping the gun on too little details. The reaction to Novell's deal was way overblown and once the details were released, it appeared to no cover anything that would competing with microsoft blah blah blah. People said Novell got screwed. Well they did, by the GPL leaders who reacted over a bunch of misplaced hype. None of this was about the potentials of contaminating OSS. it is all about dealing with Microsoft. You don't even know the specfics of the deal and are accusing "Microsoft attacks" already.
At best, this just shows MS's effort to fracture the GPLv3. When enough companies need to stick around that projects will be forked or uninformed people implode over using the GPLv3 while having deals like this and become angry enough to make an ass of themselves it will be their doing. MS is likely attempting to do a divide and cause conflict within as their strategy of dealing with OSS and it is going to be highly successful.
Re:Doesn't Apple have the patent for TrueType font (Score:3, Informative)
However, Adobe subsequently opened up their formats, and Apple pretty much lost interest in improving TrueType further. They shipped QuickDraw GX (based on TrueType), but pretty much killed it immediately by refusing to license any of it back to Microsoft. It has been replaced with Apple Advanced Typography (AAT, the system on OS X), which supports PostScript as well as TrueType, just as OpenType does.
http://mac.wikia.com/wiki/Apple_typography#QuickD
Re:Well isn't that special? (Score:1, Informative)
Slightly more on-topic: If one of Linspire's claims to fame is hardware compatibility (and a painless install that goes along with that), how come Linspire 5.0 has such poor compatibility with most of your hardware? Is your stuff just that bleeding edge? Or is Linspire's reputation not in fact well earned?
Re:Its because they can't attack Ubuntu directly . (Score:3, Informative)