French Linux vendor Mandriva is the third Linux operating system company in a week to say it's not interested in a licensing deal with Microsoft to avoid possible patent infringement claims.

"We also believe what we see, and up to now, there has been absolutely no hard evidence from any of the FUD propagators that Linux or open source applications are in breach of any patents."

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/inde...SS&NewsID=9812

As if such a deal would not bork their rights to gpl anyway. The ax will fall soon on the less intuitive distros like Xandros.

This fills me with great hope that most linux distro's have backbone.

See, the weak distros are falling, that is some what good for the user because then you will know you are using a linux distro thats made by people, who won't suddenly abandon it, Its survival of the fittest

Aye, nicely put.

I have Tested out Mandriva Spring 2007.1 very nice, and Texstar and The
ripper Gang have brought out PCLinuxOS 2007 based on Mandriva. Microsoft can't take the heat, so they are trying to scare off others with this, or buy them out. Vista is taking hits left and right now, and losing share to lots of Independent Distributions. Standing on Two feet Linux will take the behemoth down, Finally Everyone will be free and able to really get something done, and not have to battle Virus or Malware, even those darn Registry entries that bloat up and slow a system down with things that are not there anymore, Gosh I un installed that program, why is there still remnants of it all over my hard drive??

Got to Love my Linux!!

I used to use Xandros, being Canadian myself. However, I always felt like I was using the little linux that wanted to grow up to be Windows.

Mandriva for me now.

I have used Mandriva since Mandrake 7.2.

Why? No particular reason. I bought 7.2 in a store (where it sat next to Redhat, SUSE, and some others). 7.2 was rough around the edges, which gave me a motive to dig into it (which I like to do anyway).

Since it suited me, I kept using it. I have never reinstalled since then; I have always upgraded (which sometimes became entertaining). Now, as of 2007.1, I have to say that Mandriva is all grown up and I now am recommending to those who ask that they deploy Linux instead of Windows - unless there is a particular reason they have to have Windows.

Good to see that Mandriva told Microsoft "no"; if they hadn't, I would have had to change distros on my workstation.

Monday Kids Mandrake Powerpack 2007.1 BOXed will be on my 64 Bit AMD and because I have been using the Free obne, its just going to be that much easier to setup and get running. A 2 week bash of installs configures crashes re--installs and more its been something of a lot of learning for me, coming from Slackware to this. Much more fun too

Mandriva is a OSS based corporation, and IMHO it has it's fists up and ready for the fight. That's good, as it will provide evidence of the strength of the Open Source model.

yes am am glad there going to too. I am patiently awaiting my Mandriva BoX with DOCs I got and the DVD and will get it on my 64 Bit system ASAP when it gets here. Also had Windows Total hose down, stealing the 120GB partition I setup for Mandriva taking it to a wopping 40GB partition, something I have never seen before but it did, making me Hate M$ even more every day. Changing Motherboards seems to make the M$ crap choke then ask to revalidate it, bnot with any Linux, just run makedav at the prommpt and let it find all the new things easuy if the Kernel does not go into -panic, then its just reinstall remembering to make the CD or DVD backups of your data first.

Very nice. I hope others will do the same too, so MS will have to re-think their position; their money can't buy quite everything.

Money by far can't buy everything

The way I see this is it's like natural selection, as someone above said it's the weak distributions that are signing the deal like Linspire and Xandros. The strong dominant distros like Ubuntu, Mandriva and Red Hat will just laugh at the prospect of any kinda deal with MS.

I am still puzzled by the Novell deal though....

Although MS like to say a number of companies have signed patent deals with them they are mainly Asian electical manufacturers such as LG and Samsung, not exactly business class software vendors.

I say we re-create the Show Us Your patents web site and put presure on MS to declare exactly what patents we infringe. i would image that we might have another SCO case on our hands and as much as I would like to see MS share price fall by over 70% I don't see it happening.

I have to agree with you, I got my Mandriva Power Pack today and been configuring it, gosh too bad I did not write my steps down to get Beryl working correctly. Oh well anyway had to redo it cause of a White Screen of Nothing from it. Its a rock solid Distribution by far, and If AW would get off it and recode the progream for native linux then I could dump windows forever. There is so much in Linux tht its astounding, and I think thiws is what M$ is afraid of,l the packages you get with Linux and the Bare nothing you get with Windows IE Outlook, some cheesy games and a couple tools, no programming no real games, no really nice utilities. With Amarok I can listen to my 6200 or so MP3's and be happy for weeks. since the RIAA Sound Exchange and CRB hav e messed up my Stream and now they are causing even more ruckus, so the 200.00 or so I spent on SAM broadcaster Amarok makes great listening, if I used Gnome then gstreamer would be there, but I am a KDE user. Loves the things it offers and the desktops I have. One day maybe Active Worlds will get the picture and follow Second Life with a Linux client. Oh well too many imbeded in M$ crap. Got to Love ,y Linux Systems, and Windblows for only the last remaining things I use. Till one day its no more. Oh well, at least Linux has a home here. Lets see a whole year interspersed from distros for me. finding PCLinuxOS and now Mandriva it['s only a short time before windows is history forever. Oh and Today I even got Skyp on Linux to work right, woohoo.