14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft is continually upping the stakes in its constant face-off with the free and open source industry. In its latest move, the Redmond company's Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer aimed the patent gun at Linux distributor Red Hat. According to Ballmer, all users of the Red Hat Linux have an obligation to pay Microsoft for its intellectual property that is included in the open source operating system. Back in 14 May 2007, Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith and Vice President of Intellectual Property and Licensing Horacio Gutierrez claimed that free and open-source software violates a total of 235 Microsoft patents. The Redmond company had produced claims of patent infringement before, but never revealed the extent of the issue. However, Microsoft is until this point still reluctant to specify exactly which patents free and open source software is actually violating.
In November 2006, Microsoft and open source distributor Novell, inked a Windows and Linux technical interoperability agreement that also expanded into the field of intellectual property assurance. Because of that partnership, Novell customers using the company's distribution of Linux, are protected, by paying Microsoft, from patent infringement lawsuits. Following the deal with Novell, the Redmond company stated that additional members of the open source industry were also welcomed to sign similar agreements. Red Hat was one of the companies that Microsoft gunned for in order to repeat the partnership with Novell, but with little success. Now Ballmer is expressing Microsoft's position in relation to Red Hat Linux.
"I think that it is important that the open source products, also have an obligation to participate in the intellectual property regime. That's why we've done the deal we have with Novell, where not only we are working on technical interoperability between Linux and Windows, but we also made sure that, for the appropriate fee, we can provide Novell customers with the rights to use our patented intellectual property. And I think it's great the way Novell stepped up to kind of say: "intellectual property matters." People who use Red Hat, at least with respect to our intellectual property, in a sense have an obligation to compensate us. Getting an intellectual property interoperability framework between the two worlds, I think, is important," Ballmer stated. (emphasis added)