Is Microsoft Rattling the Linux-Patent Sabers?
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Microsoft Corp. is denying that its CEO Steve Ballmer told Asian government leaders on Thursday that Microsoft believes that Linux violates more than 200 software patents.
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NOVEMBER 18, 2004 (REUTERS) - Microsoft Corp. warned Asian governments today that they could face patent lawsuits for using the Linux operating system instead of its Windows software.
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Plans by Microsoft Corp to charge royalties on a library of patents are looking uncertain after the US Patent and Trademark Office rejected a key software patent claimed by the company.
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(InfoWorld) - Think Novell is sending more money to Microsoft under the vendors' intellectual property agreement than the other way around? Think again, a Novell executive said at the TechEd 2007 conference in Orlando, Fla., on Monday. As part of a multifaceted arrangement forged in November 2006, the two companies agreed not to sue each other's customers over IP issues. Included in this understanding was a series of payments going between the companies pertaining to this matter. It might seem that Microsoft, with its recent complaints about open source and Linux allegedly violating 235 Microsoft patents, would be getting more money from the deal. But that is not the case, said Justin Steinman, director of product marketing for Linux and Open Platform Solutions at Novell. "Actually, Novell gets more money," Steinman said.Â  Even when discounting Microsoft payments to Novell for access to Novell's Suse Linux, Novell still gets more, he said. Steinman attributed the disparity to Microsoft simply having more customers than Novell.Â  "They're paying for coverage for more customers," Steinman said. He said he did know the difference in the amount of money changing hands. Steinman recited the often-repeated mantra that the deal with Microsoft was what customers wanted. They wanted the IP issue to go away and they want Linux interoperability with Windows, he said. Microsoft, in a statement, said the dollar amount of the arrangement will vary. "Both Microsoft and Novell have patent portfolios, and as part of the patent agreement, each is paying the other for access to these patents. There is an upfront payment from Microsoft to Novell," Microsoft said.Â  "Then, Novell will pay Microsoft on an ongoing basis. The total dollar amount depends on how big certain Novell businesses grow over time. It is impossible to say how all payments will net out until Novell's business performance over the next several years is factored in." Microsoft under its agreement with Novell is selling Suse Linux subscriptions certificates to Microsoft customers wanting Linux. Other parts of the agreement have had the companies working to support virtualization of each other's operating systems. They also are aligning on standards-based systems management and directory and identity interoperability. Additionally, the companies are ensuring document formatting compatibility between Microsoft Office and Novell OpenOffice documents. Asked about the Novell-Microsoft agreement, an industry analyst Monday said he did know its financial details. "I don't know what the numbers work out to," said analyst Al Gillen, research vice president at IDC. But he said the contract makes sense in that customers would not want Microsoft suing them over IP issues. "In that context, from a customer's perspective it's good," Gillen said. "I realize the [open source] community dislikes it." Xandros and Microsoft announced a similar arrangement regarding Linux at TechEd on Monday. In other developments at TechEd Monday, Microsoft's Steven Martin, director of product management in the company's Connected Systems Division, stressed Microsoft's prominence in the SOA space. "What we're doing is we're helping customers understand the use of Windows Server, the .Net Framework and BizTalk Server to build service-oriented applications that differentiate the business," Martin said. Microsoft is touting its on-premise software as well as its hosted BizTalk Services platform, which provides for SOA across the Internet, said Martin. While companies such as Sun Microsystems, BEA Systems, and IBM perhaps have been more visible in promoting SOA, Microsoft is a player as well, Martin said. "We've been very active in service orientation going back to 1999, [when] we partnered with IBM to build the Web services specifications (known as WS-*)," Martin said. We haven't latched onto all the buzzwords but weâve been very active in helping customers build service-oriented solutions for many, many years. We were pioneers in this space," said Martin. Microsoft at TechEd also said the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack for Software Assurance, or MDOP, will mostly be ready in July. The product set enables better management of Windows desktops. "We're trying to address the deployment and the manageability issues that our customers told us they were having in managing their desktops," said Winni Verhoef, senior product manager for Windows product management at Microsoft. Most components will be generally available in July, including the Windows Vista versions of SoftGrid Application Virtualization, for turning applications into centrally managed services, and Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset, for system repair and data recovery. Also part of MDOP are Advanced Group Policy Management, for change management and versioning, and System Center Desktop Error Monitoring, which identifies the impact, probable cause and resolution for failures in system crashes. Another component, Asset Inventory Service, providing inventory data via a hosted service, will be released in a beta version July 1. General availability is planned for fall. MDOP requires that users be part of the company's Software Assurance program and costs about $10 per desktop per year. A server running Windows Server and A SQL Server database also are needed. A Microsoft official at TechEd also explained the Visual Studio Shell, planned for inclusion in the upcoming Beta 2 of the newly named Visual Studio 2008 development platform. With Visual Studio Shell, Microsoft partners and developers can build versions of Visual Studio customized to specific application areas and bearing partners' brands. Microsoft's previous solution in this area, Visual Studio Premier Partner Edition, did not allow custom branding, said C. Joe Marini, group product manager for Developer Marketing in the company's Visual Studio Integrated Partners group. The shell features base capabilities for developers to build their own tools and lacks Microsoft development languages such as Visual Basic of C#. Enterprise developers also could use the shell. "The whole idea is rather than building your tool IDE, you use ours as a starting point," Marini said. Microsoft benefits in that its Windows and .Net technologies are promoted, Marini said.
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Last year's surprise partnership between software titan Microsoft Corp. and leading Linux distributor Novell Inc. was supposed to be a kind of peace treaty. Instead, it's brought the open-source software community to the brink of civil war, over a provision that could help Microsoft sue other open-source software companies for patent violations.
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The worlds of Open Source and proprietary software have collided once more with the news that Debian - builder of a version of the GNU/Linux operating system - announcing it cannot live with the terms of Microsoft&#39;s licence for its technology in the
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Blog: Microsoft patent law expert says patent licensing, the new tool of choice for safe collaboration, will spur rapid innovation and new financial models.
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Will the company's next PC look like a Christmas tree? A patent filing sheds some light.
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Users of the Linux operating system will get patent protection and access to updated Windows Media technology.
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Microsoft also narrowed its patent applications for the underlying technology in an effort to appease open-source critics. By TechWeb.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft has signed another Linux distributor to a patent-licensing and collaboration deal similar to theÂ one it struck with NovellÂ last year. Xandros, which offers desktop and server versions of Linux, has agreed to license Microsoft intellectual property (IP), said Bob Muglia, senior vice president of the Server and Tools Business at Microsoft. He dropped the news in the middle of a keynote Monday at the company's TechEd 2007 conference in Orlando. Muglia shed little light on specific details of the agreement, saying only that it follows the same model as the Linux and Windows interoperability and licensing deal Microsoft struck with Novell last year. "Xandros has taken a license to our intellectual property," he said. "They've taken the position of helping customers to ensure that when they use open-source software, that the IP the industry has created is a part of that." A news release the companies made available Monday had more details, confirming that the deal includes "covenants" to protect customers using Xandros software from anyÂ potential patent-infringement claimsÂ from Microsoft. Microsoft said recently it would aggressively seek royalties for patents it says it holds in open-source technologies such as Linux. The company acknowledged thatÂ instead of going to courtÂ it would rather sign back-room patent and cross-licensing deals with open-source distributors. Muglia acknowledged that in the past year Microsoft has stepped up efforts to ensure its products are interoperable with competitive offerings, and working with the open-source community has been a big part of that. "Over the last year, you've seen Microsoft take a number of steps that ... demonstrate a change of approach for us," he said. "You've seen partnerships you might not have expected Microsoft to be a part of." Muglia mentioned partnerships with Xensource, Novell and JBoss as examples of the company's new attitude. In addition to the licensing component, the five-year deal between Xandros and Microsoft also will include collaboration between the companies to make their Microsoft System Center and Xandros Systems Management products more interoperable. Xandros also will join the efforts to standardize and use Web Services (WS)-Management protocols, which Microsoft supports. As part of the deal, Xandros will license Microsoft server communications protocols so Xandros Server will work better with Windows Server in IT systems. The company also will join the effort to build translators between rival document formats Open Document Format, an international standard favored by open-source companies, and Open XML, Microsoft's default format in Office 2007. Finally, Microsoft will endorse Xandros desktop and server Linux OSes as the "preferred" distribution for its customers, and company engineers will be trained to support the software to help channel partners offer both Microsoft and Xandros software. Â
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Linux maker hints it may convince Microsoft to honor its patents, as with other Linux vendors.
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Microsoft is not the realÂ patent threatÂ Linux and open source developers should be worried about, said Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth. In fact, the software giant will itself be fighting against the software patents system within a few years, Shuttleworth predicted.
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Ziff Davis - The number of enterprises migrating from Windows to Linux is a growing concern for Microsoft. But it's not a one-way street. Some companies&#151;unhappy with their open-source experience&#151;are making the switch back to Windows.
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Blog: Novell takes a lot of heat for its patent deal with Microsoft and rightfully so. But there is much that the company is doing to advance the cause and state of open source in the industry.
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Blog: Novell takes a lot of heat for its patent deal with Microsoft, and rightfully so.  But there is much that the company is doing to advance the cause and state of open source in the industry.  In this second installment of the "Open Source @" Series, I talk
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Plans to provide umbrella from patent-infringement suits to outsiders using or developing the OS--a move to counter Linux.