Bonum Certa Men Certa

Media Coverage of the Red Hat-Microsoft Deal Includes Microsoft Talking Points and Moles, No Discussion About Patent Aspects

Summary: A review or a survey of media coverage about the Microsoft-Red Hat deal, which was generally appalling and very much misleading, not just deficient in the sense that it added nothing new

WE are very frustrated to have found very poor coverage about the Microsoft-Red Hat deal. It's disappointing to go one article after another and find almost nothing new. It's just echoing (or parroting) what the companies are saying. There is no real effort to do journalism, reporting, in-depth investigation. Media coverage about the EPO tends to be the same in the English-speaking media.

Katherine Noyes, who used to work for the Linux Foundation, wrote that "Microsoft finally ties the knot with Red Hat for Linux on Azure" (maybe this headline is the editor's, not hers).

Microsoft finally ties the knot with Red Hat? Come on, what is this, a wedding? It's hardly even a shotgun wedding. In an effort to go lyrical they're turning this into a sham and a mockery. The article itself does not really add anything new. It says nothing about the patents [1, 2, 3] because it's a soft piece, not investigative journalism. This article is complete with quotes from Microsoft mouthpieces like the Gartner Group and IDC (part of the employer of the writer, IDG).

“Red Hat, despite asserting they don’t believe Microsoft has any patents that read on their products, included a standstill agreement in the deal. Sources tell me it is carefully phrased to comply with the GPL. If Red Hat felt they had to do that with their new partner, there’s no doubt everyone else remains at risk.”
      --Simon Phipps
We have been having a bit of a deja vu today (and yesterday) because a lot of what's said about the Microsoft-Red Hat deal deal is pure marketing. Shallow and inaccurate, with very few exceptions (usually not in the mainstream media).

Simon Phipps wrote some hours ago that he had "updated [his blog post] to include the patent standstill" (a crucial addition). To quote the amended text: "Red Hat, despite asserting they don’t believe Microsoft has any patents that read on their products, included a standstill agreement in the deal. Sources tell me it is carefully phrased to comply with the GPL. If Red Hat felt they had to do that with their new partner, there’s no doubt everyone else remains at risk."

Yes, exactly. Red Hat has just sold us all out, just because it can help Red Hat attract some customers. This is selfish and even -- if one dare say it -- malicious.

Florian Müller, who used to work for Microsoft (for a while) after he had campaigned against software patents, wrote: "One could argue that challenging all those patents allegedly infringed by Linux in court would have done FOSS a greater service than a deal."

He also wrote: "One *can* be more demanding than @webmink: Red Hat could have brought declaratory judgment actions against MSFT patents on that Chinese list [...] Simon Phipps applies a high standard to "MSFT loves Linux": love should include giving up all related patent rights" (source).

Müller is actually right in this case and this agrees with what we wrote about Red Hat about half a decade ago. For those who forgot, here are some reminders:



The corporate media is full of complete nonsense (no depth at all) about this deal. Watch the coverage in the financial press, calling it ""Co-Location” Partnership" or a "Microsoft Tie-Up". It's more like a sellout.

A lot of such propaganda we have been seeing today while making a partial record of it. Why are the people who cover these issues not familiar with Free software and patents for instance? They're clueless because their critical skills require some knowledge of the topics covered. They're just so easy for marketers to bamboozle. These people should be told by their editor: If you don't grasp it, don't write about it. Just repeating what PR spokespeople and press releases (from notorious liars like Microsoft) say isn't journalism. Sadly, a lot of people who do just that call themselves reporters.

Klint Finley, writing for a large publication, uses words like "Frenemy" and says this: "As recently as 2007, Microsoft was threatening to sue Linux users for patent infringement, though it soon backed down."

With all due respect, this is nonsense. It's revisionism and it's a lie. Microsoft didn't back down, it sued TomTom for instance and it still uses patents for extortion, even under the current leadership. Examples include Samsung, Kyocera, ASUS, and Dell.

Adrian Bridgwater, sometimes a Microsoft apologist (with the openwashing and all), chooses to go with "Microsoft Loves Linux" in his headline (also with an image at the top along those lines, just like Katherine Noyes). This isn't journalism, it's more like Microsoft marketing; why are these people helping Microsoft lie to the public? Do they think it's just fun or funny? It's very irresponsible 'journalism'. Just like Noyes, Bridgwater quotes IDC, but to make matters worse, he quotes "IDC software analyst Al Hilwa". Does he even know who Hilwa is? Did he check? Hilwa used to work for Microsoft, but there is no disclosure of this obvious conflict of interests and he habitually comments on Microsoft as an "analyst" without explaining that he actually came from Microsoft. Bridgwater's article is shallow and nothing about patents gets mentioned. What is the reader supposed to conclude from it? The headline says "Microsoft Loves Linux", the image at the top says "Microsoft Loves Linux", and the article quotes as an 'expert' a person from Microsoft who pretends to be independent. What a coup!

One of the better articles we have found on this subject came from Sam Varghese and was titled "With Microsoft and Red Hat in bed, what happens to SUSE?"

To quote Varghese: "The Microsoft-Novell deal — SUSE was then a part of Novell — was initially signed in 2006 and, after its initial five-year term, was renewed in July 2011 for a further five years until the end of 2015. It has hardly two months left to run.

"There has been no word from either SUSE or Microsoft on what happens next. SUSE's leaders are currently in Amsterdam attending the company's annual national conference."

It is a good article and it makes some valid points. It is rather reassuring to know that some real journalists still exist out there. They may not be loved by all (far from it), but therein lies a yardstick for success. Journalists who never piss anyone off are probably just cowards who don't do the job they're supposed to do, which is unearthing new information, not repeating talking points packaged and delivered in bite sizes for so-called ambitious 'journalists' to paste into a Microsoft Word document, then dispatch to a self-censoring editor (censorship based on the publisher's sponsors' expected reaction). Real journalism can hurt people's feelings; 'safe' 'journalism' (puff pieces to appease or invite advertisers) does not.

Finally, as well as the important/enlightening quote below, we wish to remind readers that patent 'peace' with a company like Microsoft does not protect any entity from satellites of this company, e.g. patent trolls. Remember that shortly after Novell had signed its patent deal with Microsoft both itself and Red Hat got sued by the Microsoft-connected Acacia for patent infringement. It wasn't the last time, not even from this one single satellite (there were settlements down the line even as recently as 2 years ago).

"In a world where there are $500 million dollar patent infringement lawsuits imposed on OS companies (although this is not completely settled yet), how would somebody like Red Hat compete when 6 months ago they only had $80-$90 million in cash? At that point they could not even afford to settle a fraction of a single judgment without devastating their shareholders. I suspect Microsoft may have 50 or more of these lawsuits in the queue. All of them are not asking for hundreds of millions, but most would be large enough to ruin anything but the largest companies. Red Hat did recently raise several hundred million which certainly gives them more staying power. Ultimately, I do not think any company except a few of the largest companies can offer any reasonable insulation to their customers from these types of judgments. You would need a market cap of more than a couple billion to just survive in the OS space."

--SCO's Strategic Consultant Mike Anderer



Recent Techrights' Posts

Microsoft's Big Lies Regarding This Week's Mass Layoffs Have Already Begun (and They're Already Being Spread by Slopfarms)
Microsoft is the "market leader" in slop
They Made Technology Scary and Taught Us That It's Innocent, Friendly, Even "Social"
Rejection of all this "apps" and "gadgets" and "Smart" (whatever that means!) status quo isn't a rejection of society
 
Our Desktops Are Not Your Experiments, X is Not an Experiment
Breaking what already worked
Summer Plans in Techrights and Elsewhere
massive layoffs at Microsoft
Explaining the Full Story of SLAPPs From Microsoft Staff
For every action there is a reaction, for every attack there will be proportionate consequences
The Openwashing Shills Initiative (OSI) - Part III: IRS and Status of OSI
"They lied to the US IRS and there’s a paper trail"
IBM Red Hat's Dogmatic Fanaticism Under a Thin Veil of "Modernism"
IBM now has the audacity to paint people who don't agree as "nazis"
Microsoft's Share in Guatemala Fell From 97% to 14%
Eventually Microsoft will get stuck in a loop of layoffs, layoffs, and more layoffs
The Media is Under Attacks Partly Because There's Little Other (Remaining) Press to Speak in Its Defence
The biggest danger here is that when there's very little press or no "opposition media" left it becomes even easier to crush critics because there aren't many people left to speak about the matter
If Your Web Site is Run by Bots, Eventually Nobody Will 'Read' It Except Bots (People Don't Want to Read Slop)
Eventually people learn from mistakes
Links 29/06/2025: Microsoft Releases False/Fake Benchmarks, "Google Wants You to Watch Ads or Take Surveys to Read Articles"
Links for the day
Links 29/06/2025: Data Breaches and Online Censorship
Links for the day
Gemini Links 29/06/2025: "The Price Of Eggs" and Gemini 3D Tic Tac Toe
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, June 28, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, June 28, 2025
The "News" You Saw About Canonical is Misleading, It Made Only 18 Million Dollars Last Year and Barely Paid Any Taxes
Lies are the norm these days...
Pushing Wayland Using Straw Man Arguments
phoronix.com has long promoted the talking point of "Wayland people" (for at least a decade already)
Australia: Windows Fell to All-Time Low, Even Lower Than iOS
There's a good reason why next week there will be so many Microsoft layoffs
Slopwatch: Linuxsecurity, WebProNews, and Google News Boosting Slopfarms as 'News'
People who don't recognise the slopfarms and don't know which sites are fake would struggle to understand what's really going on
Links 28/06/2025: Hardware/GPU Wars, GAFAM Throws Money (Borrowed Cash) at Hopeless Slop Pipe Dream
Links for the day
Gemini Links 28/06/2025: Shellshock and Network UPS Tools
Links for the day
Links 28/06/2025: The Age of Integrity and FreeBSD Foundation Added John Baldwin as Board Member
Links for the day
Fedora 44
IBM now does to Fedora what it did to RHEL
Microsoft Already Shaved Off Costs Anywhere It Could. It Was Not Enough.
Office and Windows aren't "selling" (licences) like they used to
Scheduled Maintenance Next Week
Our community is alive and well
BetaNews: We're Publishing LLM Slop About LLM Slop
Beta version of a slopfarm?
3-Month Updates on Our Complaint to the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA)
In short, the complaint remains open, updated, and is advancing
IBM Red States Hat (Project 2025): Our "New Thing" Replaces This "Old Thing"
The new replaces the old. That's how IBM frames it.
Start X
Just because something is old does not mean it is bad
Slopwatch: Linuxsecurity, Google News Slopfarms, and Linux Journal (LJ)
Today we take a quick look at 3 slopfarms
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, June 27, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, June 27, 2025
Links 28/06/2025: "CC Signals" Virtue-Signals to Slop Ponzi Schemes, North Korea Aims for Tourism
Links for the day
Links 27/06/2025: International Tensions and Contentions Over Plagiarism Perfumed as "Hey Hi" and "Fair Use"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 27/06/2025: Poetry and Censorship by Social Control Media Centralisation
Links for the day
Links 27/06/2025: Journalists Under Fire and Microsoft Has Serious Slop Problems
Links for the day
X is Dying, But Not XServer/X11. Twitter X.com is Dying.
People or businesses or government officials (and departments) that still rely on Social Control Media are playing Russian Roulette with their future online
Wayland is About Less Choice, About Removing Choices, It's Not About Freedom
IBM insists that it cares about "diversity"
Keeping Things Accessible
Gemini Protocol seems to be growing
Escaping Colonialism (or 'Hegemony') Requires Abandoning GAFAM, Microsoft in Particular
Europe is already in the process of abandoning Microsoft
Microsoft Will Shut Down More Studios This Week, Its Media Operatives Will Tell Lies About the Magnitude of the Shutdowns and Layoffs (They Always Do)
Many people who get counted as "workforce" are "temps" or similar
Not Much Better Than LLM Slop: Linux Foundation-Funded 'News' Site Writes Linux Foundation 'News', Composed by Linux Foundation Operative, Quoting Linux Foundation Staff
...they get paid (sponsored) to produce this spam. Then they call it "journalism".
What Linux Foundation 'Research' is: Paid Marketing
What is Linux Foundation 'Research'?
Annual Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE 22x) 'Bought' by Microsoft and Microsoft Exceeded Sponsorship Limits by Giving Double the Maximum Permitted Amount
When people get bribed they tend to forget how to utter a simple word: "No."
No, IBM Does Not Care About People With Disabilities
"Aktion T4" did not seem to bother Watson
Microsoft's Financial Problems Mean Shutdowns, Not Just Mass Layoffs
If the original rumour is true, then expect almost 30,000 Microsoft workers to be let go this year
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, June 26, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, June 26, 2025
The Netherlands: GNU/Linux Measured at All-Time High
Are any Dutch cities going to announce dumping Microsoft?
Gemini Links 27/06/2025: "Interstitial Existence" and Autocorrect
Links for the day