02.29.08
Red Hat’s Stance on Taxoperability Revisited, Licence Incompatibility Explained
Nobody is buying it, except for the press
A couple of new articles are worth recommending. The first one from Sam Varghese deals with Red Hat’s response to Microsoft’s Taxoperability Program (Gartner calls it a patent trap).
At times like these, when proprietary software companies and turncoats from within the FOSS sphere are actively engaged in a battle to dominate standards, it is good to have a company like Red Hat on-side.
[…]
But looking at Red Hat’s reaction to the recent Microsoft announcement about interoperability, it is easy to see that the North Carolina-based company is not a one-dimensional firm. Few companies would react to a statement from the biggest and most powerful proprietary software company - and one which is actively trying to steal its lunch - with anything resembling these words: “Red Hat regards this most recent announcement with a healthy dose of skepticism (sic).”
The second item is more of a blog post which dissects Microsoft’s deliberate compatibility problem. It’s an offer that was designed to turn Free software into fee software, but spun as a case of Microsoft playing nice. Remember this classic:
“If you can’t make it good, at least make it look good.”
–Bill Gates (Microsoft’s CEO at the time)
Anyway, from the post:
So, a software created under the Microsoft Open Premise may not be licensed under a free license, if it violates, or may violate a Microsoft patent. In other words, one should excercise extra care when FOSS-licensing such a software. MOP is only partially compatible with the free licenses, and it could be safer to regard it as generally incompatible with them.
This ‘openness’ from Microsoft brings more harm than good. Again, it’s about turning Free software to fee [sic] software (using software patents). Microsoft should be slammed rather than praised for it. This gift came from the Greek, surely, encouraging costly development of proprietary software at the expense of libre and gratis software. █
Highlight: Novell was the first to acknowledge that Microsoft FUD tactics had substance. Novell then used anti-Linux FUD to market itself. 
Highlight: Xandros let Microsoft make patent claims and brag about (paid-for) OOXML support. 
Highlight: Linspire's CEO not only fell into Microsoft arms, but he also assisted the company's attack on GNU/Linux. 
Highlight: Microsoft craves pseudo (proprietary) standards and gets its way using proxies and influence which it buys. 
Highlight: The invasion into the open source world is intended to leave Linux companies neglected, due to financial incentives from Microsoft. 
Analysis: Xen, an open source hypervisor, possibly fell victim to Microsoft's aggressive (and stealthy) acquisition-by-proxy strategy.