Microsoft and Novell did a deal to provide better intergration to their customers. I’ve some say that Novell is selling out. I’ve seen others that say that Microsoft is getting ready to sue a member of the Linux community. Me I have my own thoughts.
- 1). Sueing your customers is bad.
- We’ve see this in SCO v IBM, we’ve seen this with the RIAA. Any large users of Linux are likely to also be a large user of Windows too. So Microsoft can’t sue a very large portion of the Linux community because they also happen to be customers of Microsoft.
- 2). Too many eye balls looking for prior art.
- If Microsoft was to sue some one in the Linux community then they would expose their patients to the scrutiny of millions of eyeballs looking for prior art. How long do you think Microsoft’s patients would stand up to that? We have a benchmark: three days! That’s how long it took the community to debunk SCO’s infringing code.
- 3). Patient trolls would be circling.
- Anyone, not just the trolls, would be be checking their own portfolios to see if any of their patents would trump any of Microsoft’s. IANAL, but as I understand it, if you don’t defend your patient you run the risk of losing it in the future.
- 4). Counter patient claims could be crippling.
- Because of the way software patients are written Microsoft does hold patients that Linux infringes, but the reverse is also true.
Microsoft’s Windows infringes patients held by Sun for Solaria, IBM for AIX/Dynix, WindRiver for VxWorks.If Microsoft lost a significant number of these claims then it could find itself paying out more in license fees to third parties then it made on each Window’s sale, and the settlement over past Windows sales would probably stay in the Guinness Book of World Records for all time.I kinda like the idea of Microsoft having to pay for that copy of Windows that came “free” with my laptop and I never used. - 5). A Microsoft win would adversely effect the US economy.
- If using Linux in the USA incurs a new tax then this will only make US companies less competitive to their international counterparts. So ask yourself these questions:
- How many of the web servers on the Internet that run Linux are located in the USA?
- How many of these could be re-located off-short (to the EU or
India)? - How many of the Fortune 500 companies would find it cheaper to lobby Congress to repeal the current US Software Patient laws and replaces them with something more suitable to their business?
This deal between Novell and Microsoft, has not increased the risk of Microsoft suing Linux one bit. It’s a business move nothing more nothing less. If it shows anything it is that Microsoft now reallies that Linux is here to stay and that they need to interoperate with it because that is what their customers are demaning.
17 November, 2006 at 9:54 am
as per usual mr Dobson a good clear and concise retort to the issue of doing deals with MS. Cheers for posting this.
18 November, 2006 at 12:30 pm
Yes, it’s very clear and concise. Unfortunately, it also ignores the history of Microsoft and intellectual property. Please hop over to http://www.groklaw.net for the current round of the SCO vs. IBM lawsuit over the Linux kernel, which is clearly being funded by Microsoft support for SCO, Also look into the history of NT’s origins in stolen intellectual property, namely the hiring of David Cutler and his crew of VMS creators, and the resulting lawsuite from DEC, with the out of court settlements.
This agreement can help protect honest people from unnecessary lawsuits. Unfortunately, it also helps protect dishonest managers at Microsoft from the exposure of their theft, at least from Novell. This is particularly interesting with Novell’s history of Netware, which was a superior network sharing tool to Microsoft’s SMB but has been supplanted by SMB, now CIFS, due to Microsoft’s monopoly power. Novell and especially SuSE now face the legal hurdles of supporting Samba, or of collaborating with Microsoft to include a new proprietary tool that will be protected against patent lawsuits from Microsoft.
Keep a very careful eye on what happens with Samba and SuSE. The agreement is a cheap way for Microsoft to discourage Samba use in a major Linux vendor, and discourage other open source tools in that venue.
19 November, 2006 at 1:41 am
I am a regular visitor to Groklaw, I’ve even posted there from time to time. So my views are, in part, formed from what I’ve read there.
As for SMB/Netware did Microsoft steal the code from Novell? Or did they just wake up one day and say “We need a Netware competitor”. If the later then I don’t see anything wrong. Software Freedom give all the write to develop competing products. I run MythTV rather than an TiVo, OpenOffice rather than MSOffice/WordPerfect/WordStar, and Linux rather than BSD!
As for the Microsoft deal this could be nothing more than Microsoft digging itself out of the hole it dig for itself. I watched the netcast of the anouncment and a lot there was said about interoperablity between Windows and Linux. I think that’s true.
There is a new term being spoken in the IT corridors these days: sovereignty. Any one only gets sovereignty with open standards and interoperabily. Microsoft’s products stack up portly here – they need to do better.
This deal with Novell is problably many things, and I think one of them is a way for Microsoft to get Window’s to play better with Linux without Microsoft having to join the FLOSS community. It’s face saving. A Microsoft lackey, in this case Novell, submits the patches to the GPL code that is needed for Windows to work better with Linux.