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[News] Mark Shuttleworth's Interpretation of the Novell Deal

A conversation with Mark Shuttleworth over fine food and fine football

,----[ Quote ]
| Microsoft's patent game is designed to force open source to compete
| on its terms. Mark made a hugely salient point on this: Microsoft has
| been a disruptive force in the software industry by building complex
| software and essentially giving it away for peanuts.
| 
| In turn, it is being challenged by open source, which is free.
| The difference, as Mark said, between $0.00 and $0.01 is huge. And
| that difference is not flattering to Microsoft, even despite its lower
| price points than its fellow proprietary competitors.
| 
| But if Microsoft can place a patent tax on all open source software
| or, at least, the open source software most threatening to its
| business, then it provides an effective way to inhibit open source
| disruption. (See above: this applies most forcefully when an open
| source vendor goes 100% open source and, hence, 100% disruptive.
| "Free" is the best tool to pound Microsoft with, not "mostly free.")
| Take "free" away from open source, and you remove some of its allure,
| and much of the distribution benefits it has.
| 
| In other words, Microsoft's patent tax is not designed to protect
| its intellectual property, but rather to protect its preferred,
| comfortable way of doing business. Novell was its dupe in this
| charade. Hopefully, others won't follow suit, and Novell will
| pull out of the agreement. There is no way that this patent
| agreement is good for anyone; it is only good for protecting
| 20th Century software business models.
`----

http://weblog.infoworld.com/openresource/archives/2007/04/a_conversation.html

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