These Things Matter to Me
Sunday, May 13, 2007
The new Fortune Magazine story on Microsoft, Linux, and Patents. Steve Ballmer, you so crazy! But not in a new way.
Yes, Steve Ballmer has said cruise-azy things about Linux and Microsoft patents. Yes it'd be very disruptive if every corporate, private, and government user of Linux had to answer to Microsof. But this story has nothin' new.
Microsoft talks about patents and Microsoft intellectual property in Linux all the time. It most recently came up in relation to the Microsoft/ Novell deal, when in the aftermath of the Linux community's hostile reaction, and the business community's confused reaction, Steve Ballmer claimed that every user of Linux uses Microsoft intellectual property. And people freaked out. Not because they were surprised that Steve Ballmer would say that, or that they were concerned it was true. Most of the drama was because the person who said that was now an ally of a major Linux distribution (the Novell-managed SUSE Linux), and while people were used to Steve Ballmer saying ridiculous things about Linux, they were not-so-used to Linux companies having scary deals with companies run by people who said such ridiculous things.
(deep breath)
And today Fortune magazine has a relatively in-depth summary of Microsoft's Linux patent claims. It's really not that great of a story, and has some misleading references in it, but it has a dramatic title, "Microsoft takes on the free world," and yet another mention of Microsoft wanting compensation for the intellectual property it claims exists in Linux, "...It wants royalties from distributors and users." But Microsoft has said this before. And Steve still won't say he'd actually sue Linux-using customers:
Here's what the interview should have been:
A commenter on Patent Law Blog, Patently-O:
Microsoft talks about patents and Microsoft intellectual property in Linux all the time. It most recently came up in relation to the Microsoft/ Novell deal, when in the aftermath of the Linux community's hostile reaction, and the business community's confused reaction, Steve Ballmer claimed that every user of Linux uses Microsoft intellectual property. And people freaked out. Not because they were surprised that Steve Ballmer would say that, or that they were concerned it was true. Most of the drama was because the person who said that was now an ally of a major Linux distribution (the Novell-managed SUSE Linux), and while people were used to Steve Ballmer saying ridiculous things about Linux, they were not-so-used to Linux companies having scary deals with companies run by people who said such ridiculous things.
(deep breath)
And today Fortune magazine has a relatively in-depth summary of Microsoft's Linux patent claims. It's really not that great of a story, and has some misleading references in it, but it has a dramatic title, "Microsoft takes on the free world," and yet another mention of Microsoft wanting compensation for the intellectual property it claims exists in Linux, "...It wants royalties from distributors and users." But Microsoft has said this before. And Steve still won't say he'd actually sue Linux-using customers:
If push comes to shove, would Microsoft sue its customers for royalties, the way the record industry has?So there is no new story here. Microsoft has claimed IP in Linux before, and has stopped short of saying what they'd actually do about it before. As a Slashdot commenter said, "
"That's not a bridge we've crossed," says CEO Ballmer, "and not a bridge I want to cross today on the phone with you."
Here's what the interview should have been:
Microsoft: It's a fact that Linux and free software infringe hundreds of our patents.Microsoft still won't say exactly what Microsoft patents exist in Linux, so as outrageous as some of the ideas in the Fortune feature are, they're not new. If there's any info here, maybe it's that Microsoft has now specified the amount of patents, (235), but still not what those patents are.
Journalist: Which ones?
Microsoft: Well, the kernel violates 60, the GUI violates...
Journalist (interrupting): which 60? Where is the list?
Microsoft: I'm not prepared to disclose that at this time.
Journalist: Well this is a big [effing] waste of my time, isn't it?
Journalist: I went through this same dance with Darl McBride. Call me when you have something to say, bye
A commenter on Patent Law Blog, Patently-O:
That's like a poker player saying "I win" without showing their cards (code).Recommended or related:
- Tara Hunt's Okay, we won. But what’s the prize? (especially the part about Non-zero Sum Economics)
- Matt Asay's Making sense of Microsoft's open source fetish
- Robert Scoble's Microsoft about to enter into patent war
- James Turner at O'Reilly's ONLamp Looks like Microsoft is ramping up for Son of SCO (I disagree with the "do or die" part, but he's got some great comparisons to SCO here.)
Labels: business model, fortune magazine, intellectual property, ip, IT, law, legal, license, linux, microsoft, patents, steve ballmer, suit, technology, windows
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
These Links Matter to You. Tuesday, January 23, 2007
- wowza. Five kinda serious usability issues with Microsoft Vista. ( really well written)
- very funny podcast with mostly-Mac blog Daring Fireball's John Gruber, and Panic's Cabel Sasser (this was done at Macworld, soon after The Keynote. Lotsa Steve Jobs mocking that comes from a place of love.)
- For real. IBM announced gigantor social software suite, Lotus Connections. This kinda competes with Microsoft's gigantor Sharepoint. Many companies will pay for the privilege of buying these packages, and then learn how to use them and in some cases, if to use them. (see also, Enterprisey) Drupal's Dries Buytaert suggests an IBM/ Drupal collaboration.
- wait. that deserves its own bullet-point. Enterprisey. ("...a derogatory term describing sophisticated software architecture which is claimed to be good enough (robust, flexible, etc.) for use in enterprise applications, but in fact is merely excessively complex...")
Labels: drupal, enterprisey, interface, microsoft, usability, user experience, vista
Monday, December 04, 2006
Parallels to VMware: It's On!
But last Friday Parallels released a new feature that is pretty compelling, and raises the bar for the concept of "abstraction." Rather than having a parent window that hosts all of the guest OS's windows, there is a "coherence mode" option that has each window of the guest OS appear as an individual window in the host OS, making itSO the experience of using an application in the either guest OS or host OS, is pretty darn similar. Certain keyboard commands and drag and drop is supported between the two environments. The video above demonstrates this better than all these words. Check it out!
(demo video via video blogger Michael Verdi and blip.tv)
Wowza... So... Parallels for Mac OS X has been out a for a bit. But it's previously been best described as "...like VMware Workstation for a Mac." In other words, cool, but nothing beyond VMware, and if VMware actually had a product out for OS X, then you'd probably grab that.But last Friday Parallels released a new feature that is pretty compelling, and raises the bar for the concept of "abstraction." Rather than having a parent window that hosts all of the guest OS's windows, there is a "coherence mode" option that has each window of the guest OS appear as an individual window in the host OS, making itSO the experience of using an application in the either guest OS or host OS, is pretty darn similar. Certain keyboard commands and drag and drop is supported between the two environments. The video above demonstrates this better than all these words. Check it out!
Labels: apple, consumer, fusion, information technology, IT, mac, microsoft, os x, parallels, software, sysadmin, virtualization, vmware
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
Novell + Sun. Two ships passing in the night
Wowza... so much hub-bub yesterday about Sun open-sourcing Java. It almost drowned out this news:
Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz writes:
Using patents as competitive tools in the free software world is not acceptable. Novell, as a participant in numerous debates, discussions and conferences on the topic knew this to be the case. We call upon Novell to work with the Software Freedom Law Center to undo the patent agreement and acknowledge its obligations as a beneficiary of the Free Software community.And somehow this gets connected to the Sun Java announcement. Samba isn't the only one bugged by the Microsoft/ Novell arrangement. While Sun already had plans to open source Java, they had not decided on a license. It turns out that Sun decision to use the GPL is directly related to the Novell/ Microsoft agreement.
Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz writes:
... one of the strongest motivations to select the GPL was the announcement made last week by Novell and Microsoft, suggesting that free and open source software wasn't safe unless a royalty was being paid. As an executive from one of those companies said, "free has to have a price."That's nonsense.
Free software can be free of royalties, and free of impediments to broadscale, global adoption and deployment. Witness what we've done with Solaris, and now, what we've done with Java. Developers are free to pick up the code, and create derivatives. Without royalty or obligation.
Those that say open source software can't be safe for customers - or that commercially indemnified software can't foster community - are merely advancing their own agenda. Without any basis in fact.
They're also fighting a rising tide.
Related:
- Ubuntu to include Java, now that it's GPL'd
- Novell stock down after initial bump since Microsoft announcement (via CRN)
- David Berlind correctly predicted Java going GPL, before it happened
- Novell blog addresses open source community's negative reaction to Microsoft/ Novell agreement
- Sun's Tim Bray on the internal discourse and resistance and encouragement, of the open sourcing of Java
Labels: copyright, gpl, law, legal, license, microsoft, novell, patents, software, strategy, sun, technology
