Comments

• John Drinkwater

  2007-08-16 22:27:58

  “secret deal between Sun Microsystems and IBM”
  
  Er, I thought this was Boycott Novell :P Seriously though, there is little evidence for a *secret* deal. IBM has been certifing OpenSolaris for a few of it’s platforms! (see Sun’s CEO blog post today), and both companies share similar interests when it comes to ODF. There are places they disagree too - IBM wasn’t impressed when Sun release Java as GPL. That is all.

• Roy Schestowitz

  2007-08-16 22:33:32

  > Er, I thought this was Boycott Novell
  
  Yes, I know, but I couldn't help mentioning it because it sounded like a big thing. Details here: http://www.johnmwillis.com/?p=178
  
  I meant to say "'secret' deal" because a word leaked before the actual announcement. It was reminiscent of the Novell/Microsoft deal. The Citrix-XenSource acquisition also came to The Register's attention a day before the announcement (amid rumours).

• Florian von Kurnatowski

  2007-11-16 15:02:40

  Roy,
  
  can you explain a bit further why you believe that the Scalix acquisition by Xandros has eliminated us from the list of Microsoft's competitors?
  
  I - in the role of Director of Product Management for Scalix - have supported the move all along, and after the first 100+ days under new ownership, I can certainly say that we've gained competitive strength, see more customer interest than ever and are better positioned to compete with Exchange ... and there's more to come! :-)
  
  Cheers, Florian.

• Roy Schestowitz

  2007-11-16 17:50:51

  Hi Florian,
  
  At the time, the developments in Europe served as an open door to free use of protocols, which ought to have been standard in the first place.. The idea of licensing protocols is also a route to crippling Free software. The same goes for Samba.

• Roy Schestowitz

  2007-11-17 03:28:06

  Florian, I've gathered some articles which I recommend that you read. I hope these will be helpful and I fear that many companies approach the Microsoft offers without sufficient information.
  
  What the Microsoft/Xandros deal means for Linux
  
  

  Warming up to his theme, Woodford continued, "So far Microsoft hasn't revealed any legitimate claims of intellectual property infringement. Their strategy appears to be to coerce weak players in the Open Source space to fold. This is reminiscent of the play made by SCO a few years ago, which some say was financed by Microsoft. Maybe that was just their trial run."
  
  Then, he launches his main assault on the partnership, "I'm reminded of Neville Chamberlain waiving his agreement with Hitler in the air and declaring peace in his time. Linux vendors should be reminded that, if you give your lunch money to a bully, the bully does not go away. Who will have the cohones to just say no? The Linux community may not like the answer, but the only name that comes to mind is -- Larry Ellison."

  
  
  Xandros Linux signs up for Microsoft patent protection
  
  

  Microsoft will provide Xandros users with a patent covenant that protect users of the software from intellectual property claims. Microsoft will provide the patent license directly to the end user, which allows it to circumvent patent licensing requirements in the General Public Licence (GPL) that governs Linux.
  
  [...]
  
  Co-author of the GPLv3 Eben Moglen has denounced exclusive patent deals with Microsoft as a "divide and conquer" tactic that is designed to break up the open source community.
  
  Microsoft and Xandros declined to comment on the implications of GPLv3 on the deal, pointing out that licence is currently in a draft stage and might still change.

  
  
  Doing the Microsoft patent dance
  
  

  And please, Novell and Xandros, don't whine that Microsoft pulled a fast one on you, and reiterate that open source is clean. No one needed you to tell them that. Innocent until proven guilty in this country. And especially in light of all the evidence that points against such claims.

  
  
  Memo to Xandros CEO: you're better off selling potatoes
  
  

  It's amusing to note that a man becomes a recognisable public figure only after he's signed a deal that could well mean the demise of his company. Strange indeed are the ways of mega-corporations.
  
  [...]
  
  Incredibly, a patent cross-licensing deal was signed without once discussing patents. Now how could anyone imagine that people would talk about patents when they were signing such a deal? Silly me!

  
  
  Xandros layoffs? Just staffing 'adjustments'
  
  

  "About three weeks ago I started to see strange faces pop up in the conference room, and they turned out to be investors. Then one weekend, someone had cleaned out a [seldom-used] room and given it to an investor as an office. A week later we were canned."

  
  
  Mind you, I used to actually advocate Xandros and the same goes for Linspire and others. Even Scalix! I probably wrote about a dozen posts praising solutions from Scalix (culminating in the Specsaver deal which Mark Taylor manage to strike), but that was before the deal.