14 DAY TRIAL // Recently, Microsoft has learned a really tough ? I could say ? lesson from the open source community. It proved an iron stubbornness while trying to make people believe that Linux infringes a couple of hundred patents but when it saw all the efforts were actually in vain, it decided to switch the operating tactics and now started claiming for Linux's friendship.
This innocent "getting friendly" tactics actually initially seemed very well-intended to me and the interoperability issue that MS usually invokes once with every intent of closing a partnership with another Linux vendor sounds like foreseeing promising results. I say it seemed well intended, and not is as I'm not so sure up to what extent MS is actually only after what it claims. If you take a look at any partnerships MS closed with some Linux vendors, Novell, Linspire or Xandros, you'll notice the part related to patents and IP. Through its offer, MS insists on the "unspecified patents" protection it would offer to the users, which, let's be serious, is not exactly the most important matter. It actually carries no weight, as even Mark Shuttleworth said in one of his posts.
Last week, Microsoft's general manager of interoperability and standards, Tom Robertson, said Microsoft is eager to extend those types of arrangements I've told you about earlier to other Linux and open-source companies, calling it an "issue of coexistence". Coexistence or not, the thing is that those Linux companies did not fall for Microsoft's tricks and gave it a big NO for an answer. Companies such as Canonical, Red Hat or Mandriva were not at all enchanted with MS' patents protection offer.
After the announcement of Microsoft's Novell contract, Red Hat said it would not pay an "innovation tax" to Microsoft. Today it maintains the same position as Leigh Day, Red Hat's director of corporate communications, says: "We continue to believe that open source and the innovation it represents should not be subject to an unsubstantiated tax that lacks transparency."
Mandriva company is also on the same side of the barricade with Red Hat, as Francois Bancilhon says in a post on Madriva Blog: "... we don't believe it is necessary for us to get protection from Microsoft to do our job or to pay protection money to anyone." Even though neither does Mandriva consider the current patent system as very good or productive, it definitely does not see a solution in Microsoft's proposal either. Regarding the much-invoked interoperability issue, Mandriva official wrote:
"We also believe the best way to deal with interoperability is open standards, such as ODF which we support strongly and we are ready to cooperate with everyone on these topics."