The one thing Microsoft must do - but won't - to gain open-source trust

onebuck · 03-19-2016, 11:00 AM

Hi,

The one thing Microsoft must do - but won't - to gain open-source trust

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Opinion: It can stop forcing companies to pay for its bogus Android patents. Right. Like that's ever going to happen.
By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols for Linux and Open Source | March 16, 2016 -- 12:12 GMT (05:12 PDT) | Topic: Enterprise Software

I've been a Linux and open-source software user since the early days. I'm writing this story using LibreOffice 5.1 on a Linux Mint 17.3 desktop. And I don't just believe -- I know -- that Microsoft has changed its anti-open-source ways.

Look at Microsoft's leadership. In 2014, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella shouted that Microsoft loves Linux. Even former Microsoft CEO Steve "Linux is a cancer" Ballmer, now thinks Microsoft working with open-source software is a good idea.

Personally, I do not trust Microsoft's leadership or policies since they have been putting down Open Source and Linux for a long time. Open Source cannot be ignored any longer since the software created does provide the means for the community to have great software packages without dishing out bucks to MS. LO & OO are hitting Microsoft in the wallet. Maturation for the LO/OO software provides a stable useful suite for the user. I have been using Gnu/Linux for a long time. I started with Patrick J. Volkerding's first Slackware release and have remained a loyal user for almost 24 years.

I have used Microsoft's products for a lot longer. I could not abandon MS because of the Universities commitment to use MS thus required me to use their products. Even with UNIX throughout our LABS, we had Personal/LAB computers that were bound with MS products.
The Linux Desktop could not compete with MS in the early days of Gnu/Linux but the maturation of Gnu/Linux now provides a nice Desktop with useful free Open source packages that can compete with MS thus allow a user to have equivalent software.

Knowing MS history brings some doubt to MS ever marrying with Open Source nor leave it alone. Even though Bill G & Steve B are not at the head we will never see a true Open MS that reveals the inner working for any of their software. Trust me! MS will never reveal anything near what we have in the Open Source community. Microsoft wants to patent and close everything. Look at the ANDROID world as to MS patents infringes that platform;

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Microsoft vs. Android

If you can't beat them, sue them.

By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols for Linux and Open Source | March 21, 2011 -- 18:30 GMT (11:30 PDT) | Topic: Laptops

t’s pretty clear that Microsoft, a many-time failure at mass-market tablets has decided that if they can’t beat Apple and Android at popular tablets, they’ll sue them instead. That’s my only explanation for Microsoft suing Barnes & Noble, Foxconn, and Inventec over their Android e-readers.
Microsoft, we now know, from Microsoft’s Horacio Gutierrez, Deputy General Counsel for Intellectual Property & Licensing, that Microsoft was trying to win by litigation even before Microsoft commercially released Windows 7 tablets. Gutierrez wrote, “We have tried for over a year to reach licensing agreements with Barnes & Noble, Foxconn and Inventec. Their refusals to take licenses leave us no choice but to bring legal action.”
Now, I’m no lawyer nor am I a patent expert, but Microsoft’s patents strike me as the kind of bogus software patents that are a perfect example of why software patents are a horrible idea. The patents cover such “patentable” ideas as “Loading Status in a Hypermedia Browser Having a Limited Available Display Area” and “Selection Handles in Editing Electronic Documents.”

Old article but MS is still enforcing their patents so manufactures find it easier to pay the bounty verses suing MS and dropping millions into lawyer fees.

MS will not change it's spots!

My opinion is that Gnu/Linux and Open Source for the future will remain a viable stable alternative to MS.

rokytnji · 03-19-2016, 11:26 AM

I've always thought Windows liked Gnu/Linux like a serial killer likes hookers.

Like is involved. The hooker ends up on the bad side of the relationship in the end though.

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we’re at the “embrace” stage of embrace, extend, extinguish” (E.E.E.).

Somewhere, can't remember where though. Microsoft is suing for patents lately.
The news is not broadcasting it though.

I think Found it. But not sure there are others recently.

http://techrights.org/2016/02/10/ext...-with-patents/

sundialsvcs · 03-21-2016, 07:16 AM

To a company like Microsoft, virtually the entire "consumer market" (that you are probably the most familiar with ...) is simply a "long tail." There are a lot of people in it, but not a lot of money in it, because the people in question are not deriving revenue from their machines. (At best, they are merely obtaining "wages.")

Microsoft's strategy, like IBM's, is to sell a tightly-integrated "the whole shinola," all of it sitting on an MS-Windows foundation. They derive a dis-proportionate amount of their revenue from a few hundred extremely profitable clients ... many of whom may make extensive use of Linux also.

So, "gaining open-source trust" might or might not be on their corporate radar.