In 1998, a series of memos were leaked from Microsoft that became known as the Halloween
Documents (
www·catb·org/~esr/halloween/
). The sudden publication of these memos
forced Microsoft to acknowledge their authenticity. The documents fueled animosity and suspicion
about the intentions of Microsoft regarding Linux. In that light, you can see how some regard
the recent Novell and Microsoft Patent news as simply fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD). As of
September 2007, no specific patent infringements have been pointed out by anyone.
To many in the Linux community, statements from Microsoft in which Microsoft threatened to sue
Linux developers, users, and customers who don't pay a fee to Microsoft (for code that Microsoft
had no part in creating) are viewed as extortion. The result has been to divide open source propo-
nents into either the camp for the Novell/Microsoft deal or against it. However you look at it, the
battle lines have been clearly drawn.
The U.S. Justice department claimed that Microsoft used the phrase "Embrace, extend, and extin-
guish" as its policy toward dealing with companies or technologies that it saw as a threat (
http://
en.wikipedia·org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish
). By embracing SUSE Linux,
Microsoft has already divided the Linux community. It has announced plans to extend SUSE Linux
to better interoperate with Windows. You can only guess what might happen to SUSE when
Microsoft's five-year deal with Novell is up and much of the open source community isn't working
with Novell anymore.
But it's not all gloom and doom for Linux. Major Linux vendors such as Red Hat, Inc. and the
Free Software Foundation have been gearing up for this fight for years. At the time of this writing,
it looks like they have a couple of aces up their sleeves as well:
GPLv3 -- As of the end of 2007, the final text of GPLv3 was released. Most of the free
and open source software community (including the Linux kernel developers) license
their software using GPL.
Open Invention Network (
www·openinventionnetwork·com
) -- With sponsors such
as Red Hat, IBM, Novell, Philips, Sony, and NEC, the Open Invention Network was
formed as an organization for gathering patents to protect open source software. Instead
of using those patents as a royalty stream, however, those patents are seen as a defense
against someone who might seek to assert patent rights against open source software. It
seems to be like an arms race, where it is hoped that no country will attack another since
both have ammunition that could inflict damage.
Open source community -- So far, there have simply been pleas from the open source
community to Novell to abandon the patent portion of its agreement with Microsoft.
Projects such as the Samba project have come out publicly against the agreement, but so
far no one has taken action. Some believe, however, that many open source projects will
not be willing to work with Novell, given the aspects of the alliance with Microsoft that
seem ready to punish open source developers who do paid work for anyone other than
Novell.
It's hard to imagine how any major Linux distribution could survive without assistance
from the upstream projects that feed it. So, being set adrift from the open source commu-
nity is surely not something Novell wants to have happen.
28
Linux First Steps
Part I
