Linux Camp Divided on Microsoft Deals

Computerworld - The Linux community is splitting  right down the middle, at this point  over Microsoft Corp.s controversial claimsthat the open-source operating system infringes on patents it holds.

Last Tuesday, Paris-based Mandriva became the third Linux vendor within five days to say it isnt interested in signing a licensing deal with Microsoft to avoid possible infringement claims. A blog posting to that effect by Mandriva CEO Francois Bancilhon followed similar declarations by officials at Red Hat Inc. and Canonical Ltd., which oversees Ubuntu Linux.

But earlier this month, Micro-soft announced collaboration agreements with Xandros Inc. and Linspire Inc. that included patent covenants absolving them of any charges that their Linux distributions infringe on Microsoft intellectual property. Those deals were similar to the highly publicized agreement that Microsoft and Novell Inc., the developer of SUSE Linux, signed last fall.

Broward County Public Schools in Sunrise, Fla., uses Linux throughout its operations. CIO Vijay Sonty said via e-mail that the split between Linux vendors over dealing with Microsoft is not good for open source and could give Microsoft an advantage in pressing its patent claims.

Sonty added that he thinks Microsoft is lining up partners to go against Red Hat and Ubuntu, which he sees as the companys biggest threats in the Linux camp. The battle is just beginning, he wrote. We dont know what is underneath the iceberg yet.

But Colt Jackson, a systems engineer and AIX technical expert at health insurer CareFirst Inc. in Owings Mills, Md., said in an e-mail that there are two sides to the Microsoft vs. Linux story.

On one hand, its a sexystory to portray this as a bit of aDavid vs. Goliath [battle], or a shakedown, Jackson wrote. On the other hand, if a company does not defend its patents, it will effectively lose control of them. 

CareFirst is the parent company of CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield, which insures 3.1 million people in Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia. Jackson, who runs some utility applications on top of SUSE Linux at CareFirst, said he isnt worried about any fallout from Microsofts patent claims. But, he added, if I were running a highly specialized application on a smaller [distribution], I might be concerned enough to have a contingency plan.

Deal or No Deal?

The intellectual property issue came to a head after Microsoft executives asserted last month that Linux and other open-source technologies infringe on 235 of its patents. The Microsoft officials said that they wanted to sign more deals like the one with Novell, which agreed to pay Microsoft a share of the revenue from sales of SUSE Linux.