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Red Hat CEO says he talked patents with Microsoft (eWeek)
eWeek
reports
on licensing talks between Red Hat Inc. and Microsoft Corp.
"Red Hat Inc. Chief Executive Matthew Szulik said his company last year held talks with Microsoft Corp. over a patent agreement that broke down before the software giant signed a deal with Red Hat rival Novell Inc.
The developer of Linux software, has yet to sign such a deal which could see Novell, its biggest rival, woo customers away from Red Hat and work on product development and sales with the world's No.1 software maker."
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Red Hat CEO says he talked patents with Microsoft (eWeek) Posted Jun 29, 2007 4:11 UTC (Fri) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link] "" ...patent agreement that broke down before the software giant signed a deal with Red Hat rival Novell Inc. ""
* Rival ?? *
They share the same enormous pool of GPL software!
So they obviously *CAN'T* be rivals in Software Development. Sure they are rivals at software selling, but so was i, to both, when i sold a CD of GPL software collected from the Net for roughly $ 10... just for the trouble... me and perhaps tenths of thousands of others like me...
Wonder if Microsoft wants to make a deal with me !?
Its so good to be a partner in development with them!... being able to inter-operate flawlessly with their stupiditly obsolete SMB/CIFS technologies, developed when we could still see a four CPU machine almost the size of a freezer...
...and now that every kid is going to have one not much bigger than a shoe box, i gonna need their patent protection and cooperation to make lots of money selling the great-grandfather of LAN based network file transfer to them. He!... who wants to lose time seeking tremendously better alternatives like FUSE/ZFS, Microsoft could retaliate for such a nasty business model( the end of a lock-in)!...
...Active Directory ? Who needs LDAP and better shared directories including the old Novell one ?...
... and their .doc and .xls file formats ? OOo has very good filters. Pity they can only arrange a way to sabotage that, but to change the billions of already saved documents around the world. They could have had legally managed that if it weren't for ODF appearing on seen, with a much better solution for users, save from MS large legal army.
Yes!, life can be rosier and dundee with Microsoft cooperation... if it weren't for their nasty habit of deliberately changing protocols and messing APIs without notice and documentation... like changing the lock-in keys... and their huge FUD army always pointing the finger at the other side.
Thousands of reviews would appear over night, as if they were ready for the occasion, saying that mmarq systems didn't work on a MS based LAN, that i should work harder, that they can point to several possible flaws, that perhaps is my too loose approach based on the OSS model...
gsshh!... i would lose my only costumer... precisely when i was making money!( now image hundreds if not thousands of costumers for RH or Novell)
** me thinking in a far future **
" How could that have happened ? Surely it could not have been Microsoft fault. Their technology was more than tested and proved... even obsolete... i must have done something wrong... "
** after i catch Alzheimer and end up drooling in some asylum **
Nevertheless i'm gonna phone Microsoft tomorrow, to see if they want to make a deal with me, if for nothing else for the very good and positive initial reviews already on the pipeline, about how as now mmarq systems have a chance, about how magnanimous Microsoft cooperation is... how good patents(for obsolete stuff) peace is for the industry!...
Red Hat CEO says he talked patents with Microsoft (eWeek) Posted Jun 29, 2007 8:04 UTC (Fri) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] > "" ...patent agreement that broke down before the software giant signed a deal with Red Hat rival Novell Inc. ""
> * Rival ?? *
> They share the same enormous pool of GPL software!
> So they obviously *CAN'T* be rivals in Software Development. Sure they are rivals at software selling, but so was i, to both, when i sold a CD of GPL software collected from the Net for roughly $ 10... just for the trouble... me and perhaps tenths of thousands of others like me...
I think that they would be considured 'rivals' in the area of software support. That is providing support contracts and such things.
> Wonder if Microsoft wants to make a deal with me !?
Sure; buy a copy of Suse Linux. Just don't give anybody else any of the source code or binaries and you'll be fine.
> Its so good to be a partner in development with them!... being able to inter-operate flawlessly with their stupiditly obsolete SMB/CIFS technologies, developed when we could still see a four CPU machine almost the size of a freezer...
CIFS is what Windows uses, so it's what everybody uses, because everybody uses Windows. You can't get away from it. There is no escape. If you can't work with Windows you have no place in a lot of large orginizations.
> ...and now that every kid is going to have one not much bigger than a shoe box, i gonna need their patent protection and cooperation to make lots of money selling the great-grandfather of LAN based network file transfer to them. He!... who wants to lose time seeking tremendously better alternatives like FUSE/ZFS, Microsoft could retaliate for such a nasty business model( the end of a lock-in)!...
Last time I checked Fuse/ZFS doesn't do network-based file transfer protocols. Also it doesn't work with Windows. so it's not superior at all. Apples and Oranges.
> ...Active Directory ? Who needs LDAP and better shared directories including the old Novell one ?...
Active Directory is easy to use. It's cheap. And it makes it easy for small companies to setup a LDAP directory and Kerberos Domain. This is something that would give most seasoned Linux administrators huge headaches to do with aviable open source software. It's so difficult that it's actually kinda rare to try to do with Linux. Most people just use Samba with Winbind or something along that angle. With AD and Windows that's what _everybody_ does. In fact there are bugs with Windows server that cause things to break when your not using AD. It's standard from small business to mega enterprise.
AD is standard. It's easy to do use. People are trained in school to use it. There is no escape.
Novell offers a effective replacement for it, which is nice. But not as many people know how to use it. Plus it's just as expensive and proprietary as the Windows stuff.
OpenLDAP or Fedora Directory combined with Kerberos can take care of the networking and basic functionality, but still your lacking any sort of sane user interface or anything that a average admin can cope with.
A huge part of what makes Active Directory so effective is the administrative tools and tight integration into the Windows desktop. LDAP/Kerberos is just part of the issue.
Probably the most promising solution to all this is Samba 4.
Samba 4 possibly cracks the Active Directory egg for us. It provides Windows compatability and would provide a LDAP and Kerberos solution in a neat package. For large scale stuff you'd still integrate it with something like OpenLDAP and MIT Kerberos, of course. But that just makes it that much of a better way of doing things.
I imagine that a effective solution would be for a small orginization to buy a single Linux server running Samba4 to act as a domain controller for Linux and Windows desktops. A dedicated headless box you would buy from Dell or HP or whatever. Run everything through a web interface.
For larger orginizations you would have various individual Samba 4 controllers for various work groups or departments then tie they all together using a larger master directory service and authentication sceme.
Sure sure this would mean that your got all that 'Windoze' compatability stuff in your server, but hey.. it's not like you can get completely away from Windows any time soon. Plus LDAP and Kerberos, which Active Directory uses, is Unix originated stuff anyways. So it's not like your actually ripping Microsoft off or copying them or anything.
If you ever have setup something like a secure OpenLDAP and Kerberos network using open source software versus working with Active Directory then you'd know exactly what I am talking about. It's not easy and it's hard to do right. Having a nice neat package for doing it on a small to medium scale would be very very cool.
The SAMBA developers running away from Novell when Novell did the patent agreement with Microsoft was a very very smart thing for them to do.
Although I don't hate Novell or anything. I think a lot of what will make Samba 4 (and related stuff) possible is directly due to the work that Novell helped put into it.
Red Hat CEO says he talked patents with Microsoft (eWeek) Posted Jul 3, 2007 21:27 UTC (Tue) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link] "" Sure; buy a copy of Suse Linux. Just don't give anybody else any of the source code ""
Why isn't Suse Linux GPLed ? Oh! because of the M$ deal ? The "hell" with M$.
"" CIFS is what Windows uses, so it's what everybody uses, because everybody uses Windows. You can't get away from it. ""
SURE I CAN. I get away nicely at home/office with NFS. Sure windows is everywhere, but... if you have windows systems just try nLlite ( http://www.nliteos.com/ ). Clean the crap out of it!. My vmWare windows systems don't have anything from M$ but the windows itself in a embedded like form. Automatic Update i even use Autopatcher ( http://autopatcher.com/ ). I even tryed an ext2 driver for windows ( though not stable).
"" Last time I checked Fuse/ZFS doesn't do network-based file transfer protocols. Also it doesn't work with Windows. so it's not superior at all. Apples and Oranges. ""
ZFS IS a distributed file system. So so much for the OLD notion of file transfer. Sure there isn't native support for Windows... neither for Linux... so use FUSE. and there is an experimental FUSE on Windows (http://asbjorn.it/blog/2007/01/fuse-for-windows/ )
I'm not against the Samba team and i believe their work is still valid in some form or another if some form FUSE/distributed file system gets to be the next wave. Only that there will be no next wave if people don't try to break those M$ lock-ins.
"" In fact there are bugs with Windows server that cause things to break when your not using AD. It's standard from small business to mega enterprise. ""
See!!!... That is my whole point.
No, no bugs... deliberate malfunctioning. And if it gets turned around somehow, they will get others... because AD is their lock-in. It will be better if Linux vendors get the responsibility to take all in their hands, make Samba to support FUSE filesystems, help implement Fuse on Windows and other stuff that will break M$ dependability.
Red Hat CEO says he talked patents with Microsoft (eWeek) Posted Jul 8, 2007 14:59 UTC (Sun) by mmahut (guest, #45550) [Link] >>> * Rival ?? *>>> They share the same enormous pool of GPL software! >>> So they obviously *CAN'T* be rivals in Software Development. Sure they are rivals at software selling, but so was i, to both, when i sold a CD of GPL software collected from the Net for roughly $ 10... just for the trouble... me and perhaps tenths of thousands of others like me... >> I think that they would be considured 'rivals' in the area of software support. That is providing support contracts and such things.
Novell is a rival, but not at all the biggest.
Red Hat CEO says he talked patents with Microsoft (eWeek) Posted Jun 29, 2007 5:45 UTC (Fri) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link] ... speaking of FUD army as above...
Full of poison and inaccuracies, obviously Mr Jim Finkle is writing from a paper given to him... more than obviously...
Nevertheless we can see that 'they' have scaled the tone...
Is Microsoft going to sue someone ?... or are they playing chicken ?
Are you afraid now RH ?... after so bravely stepping forward about the Mad Darl's SCO affair ?
And if MS sues how long it will take to counter-sue, even for more money ?... a couple of days ?... because the community can be trusted, and has patents at their disposal too, right ?... doesn't that would look good to stockholders about a leader ?
Microsoft has not innovate for a long time. Vista does not bring nothing new, that hasn't been developed elsewhere and better. Their 'only' filesystem is roughly 10 years old now. Their network technology is also too old and obsolete. OpenExchange is beter. KDE kontact and Gnome Evolution are better or equal, OOo can be better soon. IE cant match Mozilla in features and security. Google is laughing. If it were a product, it could be said correctly that their administration have already passed their validation period also a long time...
'OSS' IS MORE PROFICIENT. Every OS now owe something to the long time legacy from the first 'C' machines and the consequent wave of first Unixes or unixes like OSes. GPL have proved rock solid at copyrigths. GPL v3 will bring the share and share alike to patents, and end the present 'status quo'
** Having survived for so long now, who needs now Microsoft patents and technologies ?... AND WHAT IS TO BE AFRAID OF ?? **
Their strength are lock-ins and deliberate introduced incompatibilities like in IE, in spite of court orders and international regulatory bodys condemnation of it.
So Microsoft survives because of their political protection, enormous money, and the huge FUD machine that surely is not exclusive of their own, but has to have 'something' more powerful than Microsoft behind... or that or just FUD as make us look at Blue and say that it is Green.
Legal fix needed Posted Jun 29, 2007 7:26 UTC (Fri) by eru (subscriber, #2753) [Link] Is Microsoft going to sue someone ?... or are they playing chicken ?This is really something that should and could be fixed by a very short law: If anyone makes public claims about a patent infringement, they must be accompanied by a precise reference to the patent claims and also how the accused is supposed to infringe them. Otherwise the accuser loses all rights to pursue the infringement case. Ditto for copyright infringement claims. Microsoft and others who so vehemently claim to protect their IPR rights should have no problem with legislation like this, right?
Legal fix needed Posted Jun 29, 2007 8:32 UTC (Fri) by kripkenstein (subscriber, #43281) [Link] "This is really something that should and could be fixed by a very short law: If anyone makes public claims about a patent infringement, they must be accompanied by a precise reference to the patent claims and also how the accused is supposed to infringe them."
New laws are generally a bad idea if old laws already serve similar-enough purposes, in my opinion. Basically, this would fall under defamation: Microsoft are saying that Linux is 'deficient' in some manner (vulnerable to patent lawsuits), which is basically slander that can harm the business of Linux vendors.
However, IANAL. And even if this were true, to sue Microsoft for slander would be *extremely* risky. In fact, this might be just what Microsoft wants: were Microsoft to sue a Linux vendor, we would see protest (and not just from Linux users!) as well as potential antitrust considerations, whereas if Microsoft is sued for slander, they can (1) reveal their patents and get them (or some of them) potentially 'validated' by a court verdict, and (2) countersue, claiming 'they started' (in childish terms, which sadly are not all that irrelevant to these matters).
Red Hat CEO says he talked patents with Microsoft (eWeek) Posted Jun 29, 2007 8:43 UTC (Fri) by bni (subscriber, #27103) [Link] What really confuses me is this quote:
In an interview with Reuters, Szulik declined to say whether his company is now in negotiations with Microsoft over signing such a patent agreement.
"I can't answer the question," he said.
Red Hat has had "never in a lifetime" or someting like that plastered over their homepage about the likelihood of entering a patent deal with Microsoft.
So wich one is it? Or just a misquote/FUD.
Red Hat CEO says he talked patents with Microsoft (eWeek) Posted Jun 29, 2007 9:04 UTC (Fri) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] I doubt it's a misquote. Probably just framed incorrectly.
I would expect that Redhat has talked to Microsoft about it.
In fact I would like Redhat to enter into a patent agreement with Microsoft. A patent agreement were they get Microsoft to F-off and allow all open source software that Redhat distributes to be free from MS patent threat in return for money or Microsoft being safe from Redhat's patents or something like that. Not just Redhat's customers.. but EVERYBODY using that software or developing on it.
Of course I expect that to be VERY unlikely to happen. :)
Red Hat CEO says he talked patents with Microsoft (eWeek) Posted Jun 29, 2007 14:51 UTC (Fri) by allesfresser (subscriber, #216) [Link] I would expect that a company would at least talk to someone that offered them an agreement--it's just being civilized after all. That doesn't mean that the negotiations will necessarily end with an agreement, but it's better for your legal and PR standing to be seen as having dealt in a civilzed manner where it became apparent that an agreement would not be in line with the goals of your company, than to have petulantly slammed the door in the other party's face. Even if that's really what you'd like to do. ;)
Red Hat CEO says he talked patents with Microsoft (eWeek) Posted Jun 29, 2007 15:25 UTC (Fri) by mspevack (subscriber, #36977) [Link] Disclosure: I work on the Fedora Project. I am employed by Red Hat, but I am not in corporate communications. However, here is the official statement that was issued by that group:
"Red Hat has only recently been able to see some of the terms of the original Microsoft/Novell deal, due to the belated and redacted SEC filings that were made. Based on what we have seen, the deal is not interesting to us. Red Hat continues to believe that open source and the innovation it represents should not be subject to an unsubstantiated tax that lacks transparency."
My own thoughts, that are not necessarily those of my employer:
CEOs have to be very careful about what they say in public, especially in this day and age in the US business world. Sometimes a "no comment" is the only safe answer. Personally, I do not believe Red Hat would ever make a Novell-style deal. I can't even begin to express how angry and disappointed I would be with Red Hat, and Mr. Szulik, if such a deal were to ever happen. But I don't stay up at night worrying about it, because I trust Red Hat's CEO and top management to do the right thing.
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