[TriLUG] LG Joins Microsoft's Open Source Protection Club

[sholton at mindspring.com]

Tim Jowers <timjowers at gmail.com> writes:

>   I'm uninformed probably. Can you explain Gates' strategy a little more?
>Basically, what I understand from your post is he wants to create a new
>category of Linux which cannot run Free software but is encumbered to a
>license agreement to him. 

The category is 'Enterprise Desktop'. Microsoft owns it. A bunch of
technologies are encroaching. Some of those are based on Linux. 

Microsoft would like to get all of these paying royalties to them.

It's not clear to me if they care about anything beyond the desktop
at this point. It's possible to them Linux == Desktop and the rest
is lost on them. I wouldn't count on that.

On the other hand, 'Enterprise Desktop' == encumbered, even if we 
aren't talking about Windows. From the large enterprise point-of-
view (the only ones worth going after for Microsoft) the environment
cannot be maintained if the devices are allowed to be free. So 
to someplace like DaimlerChrysler doesn't matter if the software
 is Open Source or proprietary, as long as there's some vendor 
(a Novell or a Red Hat) supporting it.

So that "category of Linux which cannot run Free software but 
is encumbered" already exists. And of course they want a piece
of it. So they go after the distribution channels. 


This smacks of the sort of license agreements
>companies like CSC (formerly PMSC) used which generally made it illegal for
>anyone to modify the installed software except for the vendor. The new
>category may be an evolution of the "official repo sites" which today only
>have FREE software as in absolutely clear of patent infringements as far as
>can be assessed.

Makes sense to me. If you're paying me to support an enterprise
desktop deployment, I'm gonna stipulate I only support it if
you got it from me, and if it's patched my way. 

>   I'd really like to know more about the restrictions of these deals these
>companies are signing. From your post I suspect the restrictions will
>back-fire because being locked out of OpenSource is a death knell.

Branding like this is one way to lock your customers into your product,
even if it is Open Source software. If you deploy Suse and get fed-up
with Novell, you can't (even patents aside) just cut a deal with 
Red Hat. You'd also be swapping-in RHEL, which could have an impact
to your enterprise if you've build-in dependencies on any Suse'isms.

The downside (for a Red Hat or Suse) is that if none of your users
are allowed to use a fix, it won't matter that they can see the code.
They won't bother building or fixing unless you pay them.
Now we see the cluefulness of RHEL's Fedora twin. 

Another interesting point I hadn't considered. It used to be that a 
Linux advocate response to "Windows is better" would be "Linux is almost
as good, and it's Free (as in speech), too". 

Business are speaking; they're saying even if it *isn't* free, it's 
as good as or better than Windows. And they're putting their money
where their mouth is.  No wonder MS has soiled their undergarments.



-- 
sholton at mindspring.com
Innovation is a wildflower. You cannot choose where it will blossom; you can only choose where it will not.