Wyrtual Life

Apparently, some artists are more able to step up with the times they live in than their labels. Paul McCartney just joined the raign.

Novell, Xandros, Xerox, Samsung, LG - what do all these have in common? They are part of what might me the biggest disturbance in the flourishing of free software so far. They all signed non-sueing agreements with Microsoft over alleged MS intellectual property (aka patents) in Linux.

The interesting thing is what separates them:
Novell nowadays has it’s head entirely wrapped up in Linux.
Xandros is a Linux distribution.
Samsung is a hardware vendor, with systems capable of running Linux in their product portfolio.
LG is perhaps the world dominating electronics manufacturer, from washing mashines to mobile phones, but they only had two products so far actually featuring or being based on embedded Linux.
Microsoft itself has nothing to do with Linux whatsoever.

So why is Microsoft making deals with other companies about something that isn’t theirs, that they have nothing to do with at all? This is what puzzles quite a few people these days.

Novell started it all and the Novell deal among all seems the greatest mystery to me. What did Microsoft want from Novell? FUD? Scaring customers?

Let’s look at the others.

Xandros was born with a mission statement to enable proprietary MS technologies in a Linux desktop. For Xandros to sign a patent treaty with MS just confirms this commitment. For MS, to sign a treaty with Xandros means one controllable Linux distribution. Furthermore, a distribution that enables their own proprietary technologies, exactly what a huge part of the Linux community is trying to counteract on. Furthermore, groklaw tells us that

Xandros will make royalty payments to Microsoft based on shipping products

. And then there is BridgeWays, which Xandros develops to interact with MS servers and which is closed-source software. Apparently, BridgeWays includes licensing for MS network protocols.
To summarize, Microsoft sells Linux through Xandros. Yes, whenever Xandros will sell this distribution, MS will get a little patent tax, not based on actual patents, but based on Xandros signing non-disclosed patent allegations. How often did your mother tell you not to sign something you didn’t read? And you don’t think Xandros pays this tax, do you? Nope, it will be routed through to the customer…that’s the usual practice.

That actually brings me to Novell. Wasn’t the Novell deal about interoperability as well? Wasn’t there some royalties payment involved as well? Even if not…so Novell wants to interact with Microsoft products…and Microsoft gives permission to do so. The Novell deal was partly celebrated as a recognition of Linux in the business world. But did anyone realize that it was also a “yes” to proprietary technologies from Microsoft? Indeed, well done, Novell.

Let’s look further…Samsung, Xerox, LG. How much did they ever have to do with Linux? As good as nothing. Instead, Samsung and Microsoft are happy technology partners on a wide range of fields. But all could potentially be. So what’s good in this deal for them? Well…at least for the LG deal we seem to know that MS payed LG a one-time payment for the treaty, while LG is supposed, once more, to pay per implementation royalty fees to MS. So LG gets some money…and since they don’t produce anything Linux anyways, who cares about the royalty fees. So a win-win for LG?

Remember that nice chess tactics where you place your tower, queen or runner in a single line with one of the opponents figures AND the king? This could be exactly what MS does. As soon as LG wants to implement Linux in their devices, MS will ask for royalty fees. So, for LG, Linux isn’t as cheap anymore as it used to be. Or then LG could route that tax further to the customer, making the product more expensive. Again, Linux isn’t as cheap anymore as it used to be. So, don’t move, LG.

And the more vendors sign contracts of this type with MS, the more Linux will get a price tag attached - in the business sector. And the price is made by Microsoft. And the profit goes to Microsoft. For something they had nothing to do with at all. For something they just claim violates their non-validated (as groklaw and other sources tell us) patents - if they even have them.

Thanks and congratulations, Xerox, Samsung and LG. You just locked yourself out of what Microsoft sees is becoming the cheaper fully viable alternative. And thanks Novell and Xandros, who by doing so, disrespect the authors of the software you are selling, and intellectual property itself, by circumventing the stated intentions of the GPL. Who else wants to chip in?

Apart from that, of course there’s the whole GPLv3 story…which, conveniently, just adds to the same issue. If GPLv3 doesn’t allow those deals, everyone MS manages to persuade into one, excludes themselves from Linux and ties themselves up to MS. I guess this is how vendor lock-in works in times of interoperabilty.

It was always a bit of an issue for me that wordpress can’t autotranslate my postings into the language you want to read it in. Of cause the real problem here was that incident with the babel tower. In neither case i have the power to do something about it. Hence i just decided to do it the Salvatore way (The name of the rose) and write in whatever language suits me at the moment. I’d love that to be finnish, but i’m afraid i won’t…so you’ll mostly read english here, spiced up with a good ounce of german salt.

Welcome to the brand new “Nicht egal” category and it’s first post. I would have liked to give it an english title, but what i associate with this category most is just another Kettcar line: “Nur weil man sich daran gewöhnt hat, ist es nicht, noch lange nicht egal.” Or short: “Nicht egal.” To say it in other Kettcar words, this is to reflect a bit on the times i live in. If you like it’s the political corner of this site. All about the great phenomenas of our times…the big anti-terror-charade, digital rights mismanagement, patent ridiculousness and so on.

And thanks Microsoft for lending itself as the opener. Who would have made a better fit, really? Yes, Microsoft is back…with Windows Vista and Office 2007…and a good bunch of ridiculous accusations,
pissing off the competitions community and members of their own community.