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Microsoft Patents SuSE Linux

Microsoft Extending Linux Patent Deal With SUSE 68

darthcamaro writes "No big surprise, but Microsoft has now officially extended their patent, interoperability and Linux resale deal with SUSE. This was the deal that Novell had originally signed. Now, with the Attachmate sale, Microsoft is bringing the deal back to SUSE. The deal is being extended until 2016 and Microsoft is set to invest another $100 million into SUSE Linux Enterprise Server certificates. This is on top of the $300-million-plus they've already brought since 2006."
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Microsoft Extending Linux Patent Deal With SUSE

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  • by Anonymous Coward

    The past Novell-Microsoft interop agreement, the one being renewed now, called for Novell to attend OOXML committee meetings in ISO, to implement OOXML, etc.

    How much of that continues now?

    I'm more than a little concerned that Microsoft now has its fingers in LibreOffice, at least by proxy. From the Membership Committee members who pick who can and who cannot join the Document Foundation, to the small number of engineers who control write access to the master source code repository, LibreOffice is dominat

    • LibreOffice is a continuation of Go-OO which was already led by Novell/SUSE and LO was initiated when the first MS deal was still ongoing. Everybody joining LO knew that. This deal renewal changes nothing in this respect.

      As for OOXML: The guy helping OOXML was a former Novell employee who didn't even work anymore for Novell when he joined the OOXML committee on behalf if the GNOME Foundation: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/07/10/28/175215/GNOME-Foundation-Helping-OOXML [slashdot.org]

    • Um, is it not a good thing that more companies are offering Linux support, no matter how vile you think those companies are? It lends credibility to Linux as an enterprise and small business solution (and let's be honest - Linux is king of the datacentre but when it comes to in-house servers, they're still primarily Windows. If Microsoft wants to erode their own market share, why are you complaining?)

      • by Jerry ( 6400 )

        If Microsoft wants to erode their own market share, why are you complaining?

        Microsoft is NOT replacing Windows servers with SLES servers, they are replacing RedHat and other Linux servers with SLES. So, they are NOT "eroding" their own market share, obviously. How does it benefit Microsoft to replace RH servers with SLES servers that they've donated? RH servers are set up as "Master Browser" servers. The SLES servers that replace RH servers are NOT configured to be Master Browsers and are more e

        • Microsoft's voucher program for SLES does not demand that RHEL is installed in the first place. And they are offering services to migrate to SLES. So what? It's not like Red Hat does not offer similar migration options.

          Red Hat will still be healthy even if a few customers migrate to SLES.

  • As it turns out... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by fuzzyfuzzyfungus ( 1223518 ) on Monday July 25, 2011 @03:24PM (#36875262) Journal
    This is actually Microsoft's strategy to obtain enough linux licenses to run their "Azure" services on, without losing face...
    • Your post is "Insightful" ... were you being funny, or serious? (honest question... I'd read an article if you had one :) )
      • I was shooting for some cheap "funny". If OS cost were actually a problem for them, MS could either come up with some funny-money internal invoicing scheme that made each copy of Windows Server effectively free for their cloud division, or they could just run CentOS...
    • Why would Microsoft need to obtain Linux licenses? They can freely download, distribute, or even fork it, or they can choose from a number of BSD Unixes. They don't need a "license" to run any Linux back end.

      I see this more as Microsoft working a little bit with Linux for now, since they see the light at the end of the tunnel, only in Microsoft's case it's a high sped freight train bearing down on them. It can't hurt them to be closer aligned for Linux, so they can jump on the UNIX train if the need arises

      • Learn to get a joke when one was made...

  • by amorsen ( 7485 ) <benny+slashdot@amorsen.dk> on Monday July 25, 2011 @04:24PM (#36875958)

    The original deal and its extension are the only cases I know where someone has said "You're violating my patents. Here, have $300 million and let that be a lesson for you!"

  • so that this patent shit can be settled once and for all.
    • I am an EFF member. I would recommend you join us. Its cheep and you can purchase some nice hats and keychains or just donate. i have purchased a cool cap. I donate and every time i see EFF in the news I donate more. We need to talk less and do more. And we can do more by supporting EFF. Contributions are tax deductible. Also when you are signing up you there is place on where you can tell them the reason you are donating. mine? "Protect software freedom and fight for the right to run Open So
    • by yuhong ( 1378501 )

      Yea, I once read that the GPLv3 patent provisions cover renewals to the MS-Novell agreement.

  • IMHO this renewal is not so bad as when Microsoft fanboy Miguel De Icaza was still with Novell/SUSE. He was the one who pushed the interoperability deal so far to even recreate Silverlight as Moonlight and make it depend on a proprietary codec package from Microsoft. Moonlight in turn is based on Mono and I find the injection of Mono (into GNOME etc.) to be one of the biggest threats to FOSS.

    Now that De Icaza and his team were fired, all that's left from the deal is that SLES is certified to run on Hyper-V

    • by nzac ( 1822298 )

      From my knowledge Mono is too slow to be used for anything more than user level applications which are not really a threat to gtk/gnome. Having alternatives that use mono is not really a threat to FOSS. If having .NET on Linux was such a damaging thing Microsoft would have done it far better ages ago.

      On a side note the following command should comfort you
      $ zypper rm *mono*
      it leaves you having to install shotwell and your choice of music player but its not that bad.

      • Mono was accepted as external dependency of GNOME long ago.

        • by nzac ( 1822298 )

          Its not a dependency for the desktop environment just its applications. Yes its right though gnome but if your package manger is any good you should be be able to cut it off at the libmono-2_0-1 dependency and have it clean up the rest. There are at least gtk alternatives for all mono applications.
          When mono starts killing off non mono applications you can start to worry but until then .NET compatibility is good for Linux adoption in enterprise and banshee, eye and do can be uninstalled in seconds.

          If Microso

    • After 7 years, Mono have still yet to be sued by Microsoft, Oracle or anyone. It seems that you have a bigger chance of your tinfoil hat falling off your head than Mono threatening FOSS.

      • The Mono project was not sued by MS because Mono was run by Novell.
        Oracle is currently busy suing anything to do with Android. Oracle may sue Andorid later (or not. We don't know).

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