No Microsoft-Ubuntu deal in the works, says Canonical CEO
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Blog: Canonical CEO Mark Shuttleworth says 'no thanks' to patent protection deals like the ones Microsoft has signed with other Linux distributors.
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Microsoft is interested in striking a deal with Red Hat, but the Linux vendor isn't interested.
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Microsoft (Quote, Chart) CEO Steve Ballmer urged Asian government leaders not to take sides in the Linux versus Windows debate. &quot;We recommend to all governments that they not get emotionally involved in preferring
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Blog: Microsoft announces at its partner conference that its new server operating system won't have a formal launch until a February event in Los Angeles.
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(InfoWorld) - Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz showed up Thursday evening at the Burton Group Catalyst Conference and declared he would not answer questions about the GNU general public license version 3, but he did disclose his lifelong fantasy concerning open source licensing. The GPLv3, which is expected to be released at noon on Friday, has been the focus of a public exchange between Schwartz and Linux creator Linus Torvalds over the future of open source licensing and the relationship between OpenSolaris and Linux. Schwartz, who briefly stopped to talk to reporters, said he wants licensing to be kept simple. "I want to get to uniform licenses for everything we do," Schwartz said. "So if you look at Sun you say 'Oh, I know you. I get you.'" Schwartz did not say which license he was considering. Sun has developed its own open source license, Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL). Then he added, "One of my great fantasies in life is that the number of people with opinions on open source licenses will come roughly into balance with the number of people who have read them." "Go read the Mozilla license," he said. "It is very difficult for an international company to use it because it is for the [United States] only. What do I tell people in China? Sorry, if you have a gripe you need to come back to Santa Clara," he said with a laugh. Schwartz then took the stage and joked with the audience, thanking them for Sun's fourth-quarter revenue. He then talked about helping customers to condense their infrastructure by consolidating workloads, to run virtualized infrastructure at scale, and to develop compelling services. He singled out identity as one of those services. He then laid out Sun's position on open source software and licensing. "The core value of Sun comes down to a basic set of things," he said. "Everything we build will be built in the open source community, it will be built with a community of partners around us and, with all deference to my friends from the Linux world, under a coherent license that we can draft, ideally in concert with Linus, so we end up with a common platform and a common opportunity." "We're every way thinking to combine the communities because we think that gives us the critical mass to go after the big opportunities in the marketplace." Shortly afterward Schwartz welcomed questions from the crowd, but added "just not about GPLv3, please." Earlier this month, Torvalds used the Linux Kernel Mailing List to slam Sun in responding to a post about Sun and open source licensing: "You are making the fundamental mistake of thinking that Sun is in this to actually further some open source agenda." He then launched into a "cynical prediction" slamming Sun's licensing interests around the OpenSolaris kernel and GPLv3, and predicting Sun would use licensing to protect patents on its ZFS file system rather than make it freely and widely available to the open source community. The Linux kernel is licensed under GPLv2, and kernel developers have said there is little chance the Linux community would move to the new GPLv3 because it is not significantly better than GPLv2 and could take six months or more to convert all the components of the kernel. "A GPLv3-only release [of the OpenSolaris kernel] would actually let [Sun] look good, and still keep Linux from taking their interesting parts, and would allow them to take at least parts of Linux without giving anything back (ahh, the joys of license fragmentation)," Torvalds wrote. A day later, Schwartz responded on his blog in a friendly tone disputing Torvalds contention the Linux hurts Sun and saying Linux was not the enemy. Schwartz, writing on his blog, addresses Torvalds personally: "We want to work together, we want to join hands and communities -- we have no intention of holding anything back, or pulling patent nonsense. And to prove the sincerity of the offer, I invite you to my house for dinner. I'll cook, you bring the wine. A mashup in the truest sense." Like the licensing, there also was no word Thursday night about dinner.
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Redmond says it's not a party to the new license. And those Suse Linux coupons won't get you any support guarantees.
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Itâs funny how circumstances can change your perception of whatâs possible. A few months ago, key Microsoft architects were telling me that it would be impossible to decouple the Avalon presentation subsystem from the Longhorn OS.
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Firm set to release its first Linux desktop package since acquiring SuSE Linux and Ximian. Will it unseat Microsoft Office?
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Xandros CEO Andreas Typaldos said Thursday his company did not agree that its Linux distribution violates any Microsoft patents nor did the software giant ask Xandros to do so as part of theÂ patent cross-licensing dealÂ the two signed Monday.
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The saga continues. On Monday, Novell distanced itself from comments made by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer about Redmond's motivation for entering a massive partnership with Novell.
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Software giant denies abusing its market position and says it has no intention of unbundling IE and Windows.
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Microsoft has no plans to add HD DVD capabilities to its Xbox console, despite rumors to contrary.
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Computer giant Microsoft will not appeal against an EU order forcing it to provide a stripped-down version of its Windows operating system.
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Microsoft has rejected the idea that its deal last year with Novell ties it to the new General Public License Version 3 (GPLv3).
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(InfoWorld) - Xandros CEO Andreas Typaldos said Thursday his company did not agree that its Linux distribution violates any Microsoft patents nor did the software giant ask Xandros to do so as part of theÂ patent cross-licensing dealÂ the two signed Monday. But he says feedback from the Linux community has been on the order of âyou shouldnât really be talking to the devil.â Typaldos told Network World that at no time did Microsoft reveal to Xandros, which develops Linux desktops, servers, and management tools, any of the 235 patents thatÂ Microsoft says Linux violates. Microsoft has yet to detail publicly specific patents violated by Linux and some critics think the statement is a smoke screen in order to undermine the open source community. âWe did not discuss patents [with Microsoft] and we donât think Linux violates any patents and we were not asked about it,â Typaldos said. âIt is a non-issue for us.â Linux and open-source advocates believe it is a big issue and say the Xandros deal, and another signed by Novell with Microsoft last year, erodes open source licensing provisions especially around intellectual property issues. Indeed, the Free Software Foundation isÂ rewriting its GNU General Public LicenseÂ (GPL) 3.0 to prohibit such patent deals in the future. In terms of the forthcoming GPLv3 and its changes, Typaldos said, âWe do not enter into agreements if we don't believe we can handle them. We plan to honor whatever agreements we have in GPLv2, and will have under GPLv3 or with whomever we are licensing stuff from. When you create agreements you cannot anticipate the future, but you have to be comfortable you can deal with whatever happens one way or another.â He added that since GPLv3 is not yet completed (the final version is due June 29) that he canât really comment on the impact it will have on the Xandros/Microsoft deal. â[Our deal] is a forward looking thing, we are licensing certain technologies,â said Typaldos. He said the technologies will help Xandros integrate its Linux-based server and management software with like software from Microsoft. But he acknowledged that customers have concerns they could be hooked by patent claims and may want some insurance to protect themselves. âLinux says it does not infringe on patents, Microsoft say otherwise. But customers say let me buy some insurance because if there are any flying sparks I donât want to be caught in the middle of that.â Typaldos says that was the genesis of Mondayâs deal with Microsoft that covered interoperability and IP licensing and included âcovenantsâ to protect customers using Xandros software from any potential patent-infringement claims from Microsoft. Microsoft said last month it would seek royalties for patents that it says are being infringed upon by open-source technologies such as Linux. The company, however, said it would prefer to sign patent and cross-licensing deals with open-source distributors rather than seek payments via litigation. On Wednesday, Microsoft inked aÂ patent deal with LG Electronics. It also has signed patent contracts Novell, Samsung and Fuji Xerox among others. NovellâsÂ patent cross-licensing deal with MicrosoftÂ is nearly identical to the one Xandros signed Monday.Just like Typaldos, Novell said its agreement was in no way an acknowledgment that Linux infringes upon any Microsoft intellectual property. Novell made that statement in a Nov. 20 open letter to the open source community after being accused of caving into Microsoftâs patent threats. In the same letter, Novell highlighted that the agreement was focused on developing new technologies and standards in server management, virtualization and document file format compatibility. Typaldos says Xandrosâs motivation in dealing with Microsoft was to license technology beyond basic protocols in order to ensure interoperability between the pairâs server software and Xandrosâs BridgeWays management tools and Microsoftâs family of System Center management tools. Xandros also will develop connectors for better interoperability between Microsoftâs Open XML file formats and the Open Document Format. âIn the last six months, we have been delivering BridgeWays and the focus is to tell customers, who really do not want to be boxed into Windows or into one version of Linux, that they have freedom of choice. And to manage all of that stuff, they don't need to learn a different product every time,â said Typaldos. âAs we move up on the food chain in that area, then interoperability is more of a coupling of the lower levels of the products and the need to know how to open up the hood and fit all these things together.â Typaldos says the deal with Microsoft ensures that management tools from the two vendors are a perfect fit. He says that sort of value has to be delivered to customers for Linux to be successful in the market and to quicken the pace of adoption. âYou have to recognize you have a Windows world out there,â he said. âThe customer in the market place is dictating what we are doing, not my engineers, not my private views of Microsoft vs. Linux, it is customers that say I have Windows over here, Sun over there, this over here, and I donât want to worry about Windows or Linux. They want to run their business with single pane of glass management.â
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There's a Novell idea Xandros has become the latest Linux distro to hop into bed with Microsoft, announcing a five-year deal for joint development.â¦
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LONDON and SAN DIEGO, Feb. 8  /PRNewswire/ -- Canonical Ltd, the lead sponsor of the popular Ubuntu operating system, and Linspire, Inc.