Mandriva: We will not go to Canossa
We also believe what we see, and up to now, there has been absolutely no hard evidence from any of the FUD propagators that Linux and open source applications are in breach of any patents. So we think that, as in any democracy, people are innocent unless proven guilty and we can continue working in good faith. So we dont believe it is necessary for us to get protection from Microsoft to do our job or to pay protection money to anyone."
Posted Jun 20, 2007 13:40 UTC (Wed)
by ipes (guest, #43384)
[Link] (2 responses)
So now, if they say no patents are violated, are they going to include full multimedia support in the core Mandriva? Or is it already included? What about libdvdcss?
Posted Jun 20, 2007 13:53 UTC (Wed)
by pharm (guest, #22305)
[Link] (1 responses)
What about libdvdcss?
They almost certainly can't include libdvdcss in the US due to the DMCA. In the EU, things are a bit different, especially since the Finns have declared that CSS is not an effective protection system (and a legal argument can be made that it therefore no longer falls under the EU equivalent of the DMCA).
Likewise, full multimedia support depends on your attitude to the mp3 related patents that (IIRC) Fraunhofer claims to hold. Again, the US and the EU differ in this respect: it might be perfectly legal to distribute lame (for instance) in the EU, but not in the US. Things might be different again in other parts of the world. You'd be correct if you concluded from this that deciding what you can and can't legally put in your Linux distribution is a hard problem.
Posted Jun 20, 2007 20:48 UTC (Wed)
by eru (subscriber, #2753)
[Link]
That was a decision from the lowest level court ("käräjäoikeus") that is of course being appealed to the next level ("hovioikeus"). It is anyone's guess
how it will fare there. I suspect it will be appealed all the way to
the highest court ("korkein oikeus"), and if that decision is favourable,
only then you really can say we have a firm precedent.
Posted Jun 20, 2007 14:25 UTC (Wed)
by marduk (subscriber, #3831)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Jun 20, 2007 14:32 UTC (Wed)
by corbet (editor, #1)
[Link]
Posted Jun 20, 2007 15:36 UTC (Wed)
by coriordan (guest, #7544)
[Link] (4 responses)
Mandriva doesn't say it won't do a patent deal with MS, they just say "we dont believe it is necessary for us to get protection from Microsoft".
Didn't Xandros also say it wasn't necessary, even after they did their deal?
These no-MS-deal statements are getting weaker and weaker.
Posted Jun 20, 2007 16:15 UTC (Wed)
by ajross (guest, #4563)
[Link] (3 responses)
Honestly, the world was always too small for all the niche distro companies out there (not the niche distros -- there will always be room for Debian, even Gentoo -- but there is only so much linux revenue to go around). Microsoft is just taking advantage of a failure mode already present.
Posted Jun 20, 2007 16:24 UTC (Wed)
by coriordan (guest, #7544)
[Link] (2 responses)
If Mandriva gave a firm commitment, then they should be commended, but this statement isn't a firm commitment on anything. This is just some passing comments about the World.
Posted Jun 20, 2007 18:28 UTC (Wed)
by dlang (guest, #313)
[Link] (1 responses)
now if microsoft were to prove that there was an issue the distros would either remove the offending items or pay for it (and pass the cost on to the users)
note that this is exactly what the situation is with things that are known to be covered by patents like MP3
Posted Jun 21, 2007 9:47 UTC (Thu)
by coriordan (guest, #7544)
[Link]
On the issue at hand - spineless and shameless friends paying MS for patent protection - Mandriva has just repeated Xandros's position. That doesn't give me much hope for Mandriva.
People had doubts whether Mandriva would be the next to sell out, and I'm glad those doubts have been resolved once and for all.Mandriva: We will not go to Canossa
Mandriva: We will not go to Canossa
especially since the Finns have declared that CSS is not an effective protection system
Don't count on it yet
So in one corner we have Novell, LG, Xandros, and Linspire. And in the other we have Red Hat, Ubuntu, and Mandriva. I guess we could also throw in IBM. I don't see IBM signing a Linux patent agreement with Microsoft. Personally, with the exceptions of LG and Mandriva, I'm not surprised.Mandriva: We will not go to Canossa
I would guess (guessing only) that IBM has had a patent cross-licensing deal with Microsoft for many years...
Mandriva: We will not go to Canossa
Flaccid words
If you're a struggling company, it's very difficult to say "no" to a deal with cash attached to it. And Microsoft has more cash than they know what to do with.Flaccid words
I'm disappointed at the limp words of Mandriva, but my main point was that the news relayers are misreporting this and the community in general is celebrating too quickly.Community reaction
I read this as a fairly strong response. it's one tiny step from accusing microsoft of extortion.Community reaction
We can get strong anti-MS sentiment out of free software companies any day of the week.Community reaction