LXer: Redmond On The Ropes
 

Published at LXer:

That doesn't bother you? When we have dedicated people begging for nickels and dimes so they can get the hardware they need to test their distros and Microsoft is making millions from the sale of Suse Linux? If there seems to be a different tone or pitch to my writing from here-in, it's because I had to get up and take a shower.

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An advertising campaign for Linux. I presume thats a US focused one. I will keep an eye open to see if it crosses the Atlantic, to London, UK :)

Given that advertising campaign and B.Gates and friends in Redmond, it strikes me that we (the Linux community) are in a similar boat as India during the cold war. India was very successful in playing the super powers against each other. They kept friendly with Soviet Union buying wapons from them, but kept enough of a distance to keep on good terms with USA as well and kept good market access. Both thought India was on their side while they kept their options open and their indepencence.

Linux exist in a market place and has powerful backers too as SCO found out. It might well be that the deals with Novell and others is opening shots in a patent centred fight (rather then the previous copyright centred one). I don't think MS is earning anything on the deals with Novell and others. Novell is the one getting the money, and gives MS the chance to play interoperable with Linux. Unlike SCO MS will take on the smaller players first and will not go for a big fish like IBM early in the fight. They might use these deals somehow later on though.

Of course as soon as they come clean and names the patents that is supposed to have been infringed, the people at Groklaw can check the legalities and if they hold up it will not take very long for the Linux community to change the code in question.

I am not too scared of MS, they know their case is very thin and will prove costly. Also I guess the legal strengthening in GPL3 might be a good idea in order to keep Linux' independence from al of these powerful fighters. At least as long as it doesn't make it more difficult to earn money by using Linux. After all this is a capitalist system, however much some hippies around FSF and elsewhere would like to think otherwise.

Before the next war I think we should celebrate the likely victory in the previous one though. Then we'll see how eager MS is afterwards...