I haven’t written about the latest interesting development in the Operating Systems realm yet, but I think I should explain this a bit, mostly for the benefit of my non-technical audience. The following opinons will almost certainly bother some folks, which is alright, I’m just saying up front that I hear ya.
Microsoft recently entered into an agreement with Novell (vendor of SuSE Linux), whereby Novell and Microsoft will create a Linux compatibility laboratory for Windows. This was annouced with much of the usual MSFT fanfare and bluster. The Open Source community instantly smelled a rat and waited to see how Microsoft was to turn this into the next attack on Free Software and Linux in general.
Let’s go back in time a bit to Microsoft’s last big try at taking down Linux. The short version of the story is Microsoft funded a small company called SCO, which bought up some remnants of old UNIX intellectual property and then proceeded to sue the pants off of IBM, Auto Zone, and whomever it thought it accuse of putting their newly acquired UNIX code into the Linux kernel. Over five years later, the IBM case still drags on and SCO hasn’t shown any offending code. There never was any. Along the way, SCO tried to cash in by selling licenses to use Linux “the clean official version” as it were, that had been approved by SCO. No one bought. SCO is in ruins and everyone now knows the ploy failed, embarrasingly badly at that. SCO is now an industry joke. Microsoft funded the whole stinkin thing, denied it, then was outed and forced to admit it, embarrasingly, at that.
Now, let’s return to modern day. Now, Microsoft and Novell are going to sell you a ‘legit’ Linux operability kit. Microsoft is trying to control the linux market now, by choosing a favored vendor/partner and forcing everyone to play by their rules. Because, now, Microsoft says it has patents to the stuff inside Linux, and well, you’re going to have to get indemnity by using the Microsoft/Novell linux stuff or they’ll sue the pants off of you. Same game, different name. The problem is, the general public doesn’t know about the GPL license that the Linux work is released under. The upshot is that Microsoft can’t make that stuff their property and sell it to you like Windows, it’s illegal. Now there is likely to be another dragged out court challenge to all this. Microsoft says they found a legal loophole in GPL. We’ll see.
Why should you care? Because if Microsoft gains this kind of legal control over Linux, then all of our computing environments will be toast. Microsoft’s products are already of dangerously poor quality and security. They’d get worse and worse without the stiff competiton of the Open Source world. Your choice of computing environments would be gone, and you’d be stuck with whatever crap MSFT rolled out. This could be compared to everyone being forced to drive a Buick because Buick somehow claimed to have the patent to internal combustion. The only cars would be Buicks, which would suck really bad, except, well, most folks would really just be happy with _any_ car, as long as it worked most of the time. That’s more or less what we’re facing here. Look, if Microsoft executives had their way, every UNIX and Linux server in the world would be replaced with a Windows OS. That would be utterly horrible and lame for reasons I don’t have space to indulge here. Why would you ever trust something as essential as the world’s computing platform to a private company that has demonstrably practiced every evil business practice in the books and invented a whole new class of evil business practices to meet the changing technological landscape? Uh, I don’t think so.
The good news: It won’t work. Firstly, the GPL is pretty explicit. Whether MSFT claims to have found a legal loophole (as they claim) or not, it has stood the test in the courts every time, and let’s remember it can also be modified very quickly. The F/OSS community is not about to let Microsoft steal or kill the fruits of their decades of labor, all of which was perfomed under unceasing assault by Microsoft itself. Ridiculous. The only way this even begins to work is if the public is too lethargic or stupid to care. If the public buys into the Microsoft fear campaign, then it could be more difficult for the truth to come out in the end. But, really, even the biggest luddite knows that Microsoft and Linux aren’t the same thing, and I just don’t think that this latest Microsoft play to kill off Linux will work. Linux is just too resilient and now it’s too well established. It won’t be taken out by some mere trick of corporate law or ‘gamesmanship’. Perhaps the best testimony to the success of the GNU/Linux Operating System is how hard Microsoft is still trying to find a way to kill it off. Don’t think that others haven’t noticed. Sun Solaris used to be an extremely expensive UNIX Operating System. Now, it’s totally free and open source. Sun knew that it needed to be released ‘into the wild’ to survive, and smartly decided to let it go. Linux proved that Open Source community property works and even Microsoft , with all of its resources and evil tactics can’t stop it. But I wish they’d stop making it so difficult.
