Cutting Through The FUD: Patents and Trojan Horses

[dann]

The past few years have been pretty heated with regards to patent and intellectual property complaints. In the FOSS community nothing has touched off a firestorm to the likes of KDE vs Gnome as the whole Novell and MS agreement. It seems that two thirds of the deal is well received by most (better interoperatiblity and promotion), the patent covenant has left a bad taste in just about everyone's mouth.

In the past few months OOXML has been at the time of the fire heap. And now, big news coming down about Moonlight which drums up the old Mono bruhaha.

At the center of all this is Microsoft; a company who, unlike any other, seems to have earned the ire of many people. To that extent, is it possible for the FOSS community, maybe not as a whole, but a significant group; to accept MS as a technology contributor?

Speaking specifically on Mono and Moonlight - While C# is a published standard, MS has led the way to promoting C# through it's MS .NET framework. Mono strives to create a similar framework but released under the GLP and LGPL. Mono was birthed largely by Miguel who is employed by Novell which works closely with MS. Miguel has spoken highly of MS developers and at times seems to speak highly of the company as a whole (or at least many opinions on the web seem to indicate that).

Moonlight sounds like a fantastic project. A Free implementation of Silverlight for the *nix systems running Mono and at the blessing of Microsoft. This could be a serious contender to FLASH down the road. And that is what has a lot of people worried.

Mono, Moonlight, and Novell by extension with their MS collaboration scare a lot of people in the FOSS community who believe, and maybe rightly, that MS support comes as a trojan horse. By adopting Mono technologies into the core of Gnome (a true possbility) we are setting ourselves up to be beholden to the generosity of MS who later on down the line may cry IP infringement.

What happens when the Novell MS agreement runs out in three years. Waht happens to that protection?

Furthermore, as MS sponsored technology gets further entrenched into internet and cross platform tehcnologies; what happens when MS decides to include value added enhancements that only work on MS systems? Should Silverlight gain a significant market share of rich internet technologies; MS enhancments could jeopardize the "openness" of the web.

It's easy to look at parts of a company and see good things. The MS developers seem to be willing to collaborate. Hell, I'll admit, MS's whole Xbox division is awesome. I'd love to have an xbox 360; next to Nintendo they seem to be doing gaming right! But then looking at the company as a whole, there are some serious black marks that leave a bad taste in one's mouth.

The whole OOXML standards push came off very ugly for MS. They seemed to be cheating the system and bullying their way. So far they have been stopped.

But is this impression more so because I am on the FOSS side of the fence? I suspect there is a taint. It's a tough call. I'm very interested in looking at both sides here and finding the respectable middle ground.

The wtf? thread has a great link which I will repeat: http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/2985

I found some interesting arguements to both sides on this page.

[Chess]

Yes, Microsoft has been doing some interesting things:

OO XML with Microsoft-approved plugins;
Microsoft submitting some of their licenses to the OSI for approval;
The creation of http://www.microsoft.com/opensource to talk about how much they interoperate;
Deals with several Linux distributions, with promises of working on interoperability and licensing codecs and fonts;
and now Silverlight and Moonlight.

This all sounds great, right?

Well, frankly, and I might be in the minority here, but I think all of these things are part of a coordinated and very clever implementation of their famous embrace, extend, and extinguish philosophy. Based on Microsoft's track record, I do not trust them. And I believe these things will come back to bite us.

[dann]

Chess, I see what you are saying, and I agree. But can the old embrace, extend, exterminate tactics still work with regards to open source. Should MS collaborate with Linux developers to produce functional software, doesn't this chance to errode their user base in the long run? They could go back and offer extended functionality and break interoperability but if there is enough of a user base not using the MS product, this could cause further problems for MS. I don't know.

[Tsuroerusu]

Hey Dann, you ought to take a look at this: http://boycottnovell.com/2007/09/10/moo ... ly-novell/

Yes, Microsoft has been doing some interesting things:

OO XML with Microsoft-approved plugins;
Microsoft submitting some of their licenses to the OSI for approval;
The creation of http://www.microsoft.com/opensource to talk about how much they interoperate;
Deals with several Linux distributions, with promises of working on interoperability and licensing codecs and fonts;
and now Silverlight and Moonlight.

This all sounds great, right?

Well, frankly, and I might be in the minority here, but I think all of these things are part of a coordinated and very clever implementation of their famous embrace, extend, and extinguish philosophy. Based on Microsoft's track record, I do not trust them. And I believe these things will come back to bite us.

I completely agree. You drop troops in behind enemy lines to do sabotage that makes a full on assault possible. That's the sort of strategy I think Microsoft is using.

[Chess]

But can the old embrace, extend, exterminate tactics still work with regards to open source.

It doesn't have to be an all-or-nothing proposition. True, there is no way to literally completely destroy community-driven F/OSS projects. There will always be hackers and geeks out there doing their own thing.

But I think Microsoft recognizes this and has shifted the battle. I think now what Microsoft really wants is to be able to drive _where_ and _how_ Linux is adopted on a grand scale, especially in the enterprise, but possibly in the consumer desktop market as well. I'm not saying they will be successful, but IMHO, this is where they are trying to get. I envision their goal of having maybe a handful of Microsoft-allied distributions (a la 'puppet dictators'?) where Microsoft hopes the bulk of enterprise deployment occurs. And imagine if Linux ever really does catch on in the mass-market, but it's one of the Microsoft-friendly distributions, then where we be? It's hard enough trying to get people to choose Linux over Microsoft, but imagine having to convince them to choose Linux A, which is more 'free' and community-driven, over Linux B, which is Microsoft friendly?

Microsoft has the cash and the resources to determine, if it so chooses, the _where_ and the _how_ of truly widespread Linux adoption. And to me, that's a scary thought.

Eh, but what the hell do I know? Maybe I'm just paranoid.

[Chess]

Maybe another way to look it is this: Microsoft isn't going to extinguish free, community-driven operating systems entirely, but maybe they are trying to extinguish the possibility of free, community-driven operating systems reaching the mass market. Microsoft is all about control -- controlling the desktop, controlling the enterprise market, controlling our file formats, controlling our audio/video codecs -- and maybe they are trying to take control of mass-market Linux, or at least trying to head it off at the pass. If Linux mass-market adoption is inevitable, I suppose they would rather it be a Linux that is controlled, directly or indirectly, by Microsoft than not.

[jturning]

I'm with you Chess.

The simple truth is you can't have a partnership with a criminal. They will always do what is in their best interest and eventually their best interest won't be good for you. Microsoft hasn't conducted themselves with honor in the past, so why would anyone think things have changed now.

I think the whole OOXML thing is just a clever way to maintain format control and product lock-in with the illusion of an open standard. From expert analysis the standard they have given isn't complete and depends on their existing office technology. The only reason they are getting votes has to be due to heavy lobbying and probably under the table deals. On merits alone they shouldn't have gotten the votes they have received so far.

I think the Novell deal is a way to try and build up Novell and SUSE to compete with and harm Redhat, while keeping everyone dependent on Microsoft technologies along the way. And the other distro deals help that goal by making businesses more comfortable with a version of Linux that does have Microsoft IP protection instead of chancing future legal action. We all have dealt with management types, so we know they play it safe and don't always have the best understanding of technical details.

Rest assured, Microsoft has a well crafted strategy they are executing, and making money and the future of Microsoft is at it's heart, not honoring partnerships or doing what's best for customers and users.

Bugz