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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Really? When I mix hot and cold water I get warm water. Why do you expect matter-antimatter annihilation from everything?
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This is what Open Source gets for Building Bridges!!!
Now SUSE's interest in LibreOffice makes sense... (Score:2, Interesting)
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
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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]
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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?)
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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
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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.
Re:Come on butthurt fanboys (Score:4, Interesting)
Embrace, extend, extinguish. You can pretend that MS never actually used that strategy - but it's historically true. Today, they have to be a bit more sneaky.
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http://mashable.com/2011/03/21/microsoft-sues-barnes-noble/ [mashable.com]
There are hundreds of hits for "microsoft sues". I grabbed the first one that looked remotely relevant. I insist that Microsoft's grand strategy hasn't changed - it's just slower moving, and sneaky. They still dream of being the only operating system on earth, or at least having every other operating system paying them royalties.
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I'm confused. Someone who doesn't even work for Microsoft sueing is somehow Microsoft's fault? Wow. I'd say that's a stretch even for you, but I can guarantee you'd spin some bullshit about how Microsoft funds and pushes for IV's lawsuits despite having absolutely no evidence other than your LSD-induced-level paranoia anyway.
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Apple has a litigation page [wikipedia.org] too. Your link does not really show much out of the ordinary. Every large company who has a portfolio of patents will most likely have a history of lawsuits. Is there any evidence of Microsoft having a disproportionately large number of patent disputes for its size?
If anything, its willingness to provide licenses for their IP shows a preference for keeping disagreements out of the legal system.
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The link you provide has nothing to do with this article other than it's Microsoft suing another company over IP issues.
While everyone can agree that Microsoft is aggressive with their IP catalog, I haven't seen any evidence that the patent deal between Microsoft and Novell or SUSE is part of their embrace, extend, and extinguish strategy.
Re:Come on butthurt fanboys (Score:5, Interesting)
Go read the publicly available part of the terms then. Or have a lawyer read it for you.
They didn't promise ANY indemnity against anyone who made money off of their work, or shared the source code, unless that source code was included in Novell's Suse. Presumably that now will apply to Attachmate's Suse...but since the promise is essentially worthless (e.g., you aren't indemnified if you submit the work to Suse, and they decide not to use it, or if you don't submit it to them, but put it on sourceforge, etc.) it really doesn't matter who you would need to get to approve your work.
Then there are the parts of the agreement that aren't public. Since the publicly visible parts are so appalling (I'm supposed to be grateful for THAT!!??) I find it hard to imagine what the rest is like. Probably services that Suse must perform for them in return for the agreement. (Which does, let's admit it, pay Suse, or it's owning company, a bit of cash.)
Since I saw an analysis of the agreement, I've refused to have anything to do with Suse.
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No, you should have been using a Unix-like system that hasn't been corrupted by Microsoft. Your fourth post can be blamed on a fourth-rate operating system.
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As it turns out... (Score:4, Insightful)
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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
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it is impossible for 3rd parties to make a statistic of this, sinc
Re:1% Linux Marketshare (Score:4, Interesting)
In "cloud computing" Microsoft's market share is nearly nonexistent. The back end is all Linux, BSD, and Java stacks. Windows hosting is quite rare.
The PC is waning. Macs, smartphones, and tablets are rapidly replacing conventional PCs for many people, and for almost everyone on the go. Few if any people choose Windows Mobile smartphones, and Microsoft rendered the once-exploding PocketPC platform irrelevant by neglect many years ago. It's an Android + iDevice market on the front end/thin client/client side, and other players may as well not exist. So, with the PC market becoming smaller and smaller, and the server market growing larger and larger, and being based mostly on open-source back ends, Microsoft HAS to be dabbling in the UNIX world if not to embrace it, at least to gain insight into how clients are using and rearchitect Windows to provide UNIX's strength - or simply exit the industry and start something else instead. Maybe they can make mops or something?
Microsoft is involved with SUSE for Microsoft's own benefit, not for the OSS "community," not for Linux users, and certainly not for their own customers (since when does Microsoft give a crap about its users? Money is their golden calf!).
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The share of Linux (and by that I mean any OS executing a Linux kernel) is way more than 1%.
Evidence from the sales of games etc puts the desktop penetration at around 10% (if not more http://tinyurl.com/6fcua8d [tinyurl.com] http://tinyurl.com/3f6mf8w [tinyurl.com] and http://tinyurl.com/3poo5rp [tinyurl.com]).
Something else to consider; in your home you may have one or two Windows PCs. You probably have four or more devices running Linux (often in the guise of BusyBox). Common examples are routers, set-top boxes, printers.
Public-facing web-serv
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Learn to get a joke when one was made...
Payment the wrong way (Score:5, Interesting)
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!"
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Yea, it reeks of the old MS-Corel and the recent MS-Nokia deals, none of which relates to patents, but was still for a similar purpose.
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EFF or FSF needs to sue microsoft (Score:2)
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Yea, I once read that the GPLv3 patent provisions cover renewals to the MS-Novell agreement.
Not much left as Mono was dropped anyway (Score:2)
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
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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.
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Mono was accepted as external dependency of GNOME long ago.
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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. .NET compatibility is good for Linux adoption in enterprise and banshee, eye and do can be uninstalled in seconds.
When mono starts killing off non mono applications you can start to worry but until then
If Microso
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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.
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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).