14 DAY TRIAL // There is a short trip from Lindows to Windows and to Linspire. But a path less traveled from foe to friend, from getting sued by Microsoft over trademark infringement to interoperability and intellectual property assurance. Back in 2004, Microsoft and Linspire settled a legal action over the Lindows distribution of the Linux operating system. The Redmond Company paid Linspire a reported $20 million to protect the Windows trademark and even facilitated the integration of Windows Media codecs into the open source operating system.
On June 13, 2007, Microsoft announced that Linspire is the latest addition to its collection of partnership trophies over Linux interoperability and intellectual property assurance. "Linspire has always been about choice, and this announcement continues our tradition of offering options for improved interoperability, enhanced functionality and confidence," said Kevin Carmony, chief executive officer at Linspire. "Over the years, in an effort to expand choice, we have entered into dozens of agreements with commercial software vendors. It certainly made sense to collaborate with Microsoft, one of the most important partners in the PC ecosystem."
"Delivering interoperable solutions for our customers is an important priority," said Bill Hilf, general manager of Platform Strategy at Microsoft. "Through our ongoing collaborative relationships with commercial open source companies, we are demonstrating our commitment to delivering the value and increased interoperability customers want. Covering features from document formats to instant messaging and digital media, our announcement today with Linspire is an important step for our mutual customers."
The agreement between Microsoft and Linspire covers additional aspect on top of interoperability and IP assurance. According to the Redmond Company, Linspire will join the crowd of developers working on OpenOffice (ODF) and Microsoft Office (Open XML). The partnership will also transition to the two company's instant messaging platforms, between Linspire's Pidgin IM client and Office Communicator and Windows Live Messenger. Moreover Linspire has committed support for Windows Media 10 and for the Microsoft TrueType fonts. The Linux distributor will use Windows Live as the default search engine in its Linspire 5.0 operating system.