LXer: The End of the Penguin is Not Nigh

LXer · 11-22-2010, 01:30 PM

Published at LXer:

First off, don't panic. We don't know for absolute sure that somewhere in the $2.2 billion acquisition of Novell by Attachmate and the “concurrent sale of certain intellectual property assets to CPTN Holdings LLC, a consortium of technology companies organized by Microsoft Corporation, for $450 million in cash” that those unidentified IP holding were, in fact, Novell's ownership of UNIX.

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H_TeXMeX_H · 11-22-2010, 02:05 PM

Meh, Novell has been sold out to M$ for a while, so I doubt anything will come of this. I mean M$ could have bought Novell 10000000 times over long ago, but they didn't.

The worst that could happen is M$ could sue and if they pay the judge and jury enough, Linux will be declared illegal in the US. I doubt it tho, because I don't think they can prove anything, and I don't know if they are willing to take the chance in bribing everyone, someone is gonna squeal.

Jeebizz · 11-22-2010, 02:39 PM

Well remember Microsoft did try to claim that Linux was 'illegal' already through SCO, but since SCO never produced any 'evidence' that Linux infringed on their patents, SCO obviously lost, so Microsoft will try a different trick out of their hat, we just have to wait and see.

TobiSGD · 11-22-2010, 04:23 PM

Wouldn't it bring down the internet in the United States, maybe world wide, if all the Linux servers would be declared illegal?

Amdx2_x64 · 11-22-2010, 11:12 PM

s this anything to be concerned about with Linux in general? I mean going by all that MS has done in the past (80's, 90's, etc.) Is this another attempt to grab a hold of open source, squeeze it dry and then pretend MS came up with it?

H_TeXMeX_H · 11-23-2010, 06:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TobiSGD

Wouldn't it bring down the internet in the United States, maybe world wide, if all the Linux servers would be declared illegal?

That is a good question, because I think most servers do run Linux.

Probably they will claim they own Linux, and therefore it is illegal for anyone to run Linux and not pay royalty to M$. Diabolical indeed.

Hangdog42 · 11-23-2010, 07:55 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TobiSGD

Wouldn't it bring down the internet in the United States, maybe world wide, if all the Linux servers would be declared illegal?

Not gonna happen without a big fight. Too many humongous companies like IBM, Oracle and Red Hat would get into the fray if Microsoft made any attempt to pull the plug on Linux. Microsoft isn't stupid, they're making much more money with much less effort by their Linux extortion scheme than they ever would by trying to force all Linux distros to pay.