OneAndOneIs2

Mon, Jun 04, 2007

Interesting...

After witnessing the huge backlash that Novell suffered for daring to partner with MS and agree to a patent covenant, one can't help but wonder what could have lead Xandros to make a similar deal.

Looks like this one is just an inter-operability deal though.

One also has to wonder what lead Microsoft to make another deal - when their Novell arrangement may well have cost them their ability to make patent threats against FOSS as a whole, you'd expect them to back-peddle and rethink things, or at least wait until GPL v3 is released.

Perhaps it's as simple as MS has realized that the world is switching to open standards, and they have no choice but to open up or fade away? The EU court case is still determined to make them open up their standards too, don't forget.

That being the case, it would be perfectly in-keeping with MS' usual tactics to solve the situation by convincing people to pay today for what it's going to be forced to reveal for free tomorrow anyway.

I'll be interested to see how the community reacts to this one..

6 comments • Categories: Omni, FOSS, In The News, Technology

Comments:

Comment from: hari [Member]

· http://hari.literaryforums.org

I read somewhere recently that Linus is less opposed to GPL v3 now than he was earlier. Is this true? Has he stated this somewhere?

Permalink 06/06/07 @ 12:41

Comment from: oneandoneis2 [Member] · http://geekblog.oneandoneis2.org/

It IS true, he HAS stated it, but I have no idea where. Hang on...

Here were are! Yay Google :o)

I still don't expect to see Linux itself moved to v3 any time soon, but it's certainly true that Linus dislikes it a lot less now than he did before.

Permalink 06/06/07 @ 13:31

Comment from: hari [Member]

· http://hari.literaryforums.org

Thanks. That was interesting.

Permalink 07/06/07 @ 02:28

Comment from: sokuban [Member]

I'm out of the news, but there was a backslash to Suse?

Permalink 07/06/07 @ 12:13

Comment from: oneandoneis2 [Member] · http://geekblog.oneandoneis2.org/

Oh yes - start here and follow all the "Related stories" links and see how some people reacted to the deal.

Rather hypocritically in some cases, I must say - people who've been complaining for years that MS wouldn't do interopability between Windows & Linux heard about the deal and immediately began crucifying Novell for making a deal to improve interopability between Windows & Linux.

It appears that in some minds, interopability is only good if it hurts MS. Which I find rather sad. The same people were huge cheerleaders of a FOSS-community-lead translators between OOXML and ODF (because it would break MS's format lock-in) but scathingly attacked MS when they announced they were supporting a OOXML-ODF translator project (Because MS would be able to use it to get people using ODF to use MS Office)

Ah well. The way of the world, I guess. And it's not like MS hasn't done a lot to make the Linux community hate it...

Permalink 07/06/07 @ 13:31

Comment from: tuxdev [Member]

Hmm, now Linspire is joining the club. Very interesting...

Permalink 15/06/07 @ 23:06