[Article] MS, Novell bury the hatchet

[Mark Newton]

Glen Turner wrote:

> The title to Groklaw's article is "Novell Sells Out". I originally
> thought that this was too strong, but as more detail appears it looks
> like PJ's headline might be spot on.

Why's that?

So there's an agreement between two parties, in which one of the parties
agrees not to pursue lawsuits against some subset of the population.

If you're not a member of that subset of the population, that means
there isn't any agreement to avoid suing you.

... which is precisely the same situation you were in yesterday,
before the agreement was inked in the first place.  We've always known
that MS would love it if they could use patents as a battering ram
against free software developers, and the sky wasn't falling yesterday
and it still isn't falling now.

If you're a member of the group of "individual non-commercial open
source developers and users" who are protected by the agreement, then
you won't get sued for patent infringement.  As I read it, that covers
folks like Samba, Mono, and other groups of individual non-commercial
open-source developers and users.  If the agreement protects them from
lawsuits, then it's arguably a step forward.

So I see the agreement as a thing which divides the population of
the world into two groups.  One of those groups receives a benefit,
and the other group receives the status quo.  Even if the group receiving
a benefit is infinitesimally small, it's still a step forward.

How's that a bad thing?

I view this as MS's first baby-steps towards abandoning their
scorched-earth policy against free software, which has always looked
desperate and stupid because everyone else in the world has been
perfectly happy to live in heterogeneous environments, and MS has been
the lone campaigner in favour of a homogenous single-provider software
world.  The arrogance of the breathtaking scope of their misunderstanding
of the software industry has been almost funny to watch.  Losers.  Rich
losers, but losers all the same.

We've spent the last few years saying, "First they ignore you, then
they laugh at you, then they fight you."  Now we're in the process
of working out that we win.  It's going to take MS a while to find the
acceptable way to lose because they're a big company with a lot of vested
interests who can't change direction overnight, but I think the outcome
here is inevitable.   Anyone want to place bets on how long it'll
take before they forge a similar agreement with RedHat?  A year?  Two
years?  No more than a handful of years, surely?

Geez, guys:  Microsoft is actually going to be /SELLING LINUX/, which
means they've finally, after all these years, acknowledged that their
dreams of total domination of the world's IT infrastructure have been
unattainable fantasies.  That's pretty amazing, isn't it?

   - mark

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I tried an internal modem,                    newton at atdot.dotat.org
      but it hurt when I walked.                          Mark Newton
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