Ballmer repeats threats against Linux

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y Richard Thurston
Special to CNET News.com
Published: February 20, 2007, 8:35 AM PST
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Steve Ballmer has reissued Microsoft's patent threat against Linux, warning open-source vendors that they must respect his company's intellectual property.

In a no-nonsense presentation to New York financial analysts last Thursday, Microsoft's chief executive said the company's partnership with Novell, which it signed in November 2006, "demonstrated clearly the value of intellectual property, even in the open-source world."

Steve Ballmer
The cross-selling partnership means that Microsoft will recommend Suse Linux for customers who want an environment mix of Microsoft and open-source software. It also involves a "patent cooperation agreement," under which Microsoft and Novell agreed not to sue each other for patent infringement.

In a clear threat against open-source users, Ballmer repeated his earlier assertions that open source "is not free," referring to the possibility that Microsoft may sue Linux sellers. Microsoft has suggested that the Linux operating system infringes some of its intellectual property, but it has never named the patents in question.

"I would not anticipate that we make a huge additional revenue stream from our Novell deal, but I do think it clearly establishes that open source is not free, and open source will have to respect the intellectual-property rights of others, just as any other competitor will," Ballmer said.

"But I don't want to eliminate in your minds the notions of risk of pricing that comes from competition with open source. We are higher-priced, but we bring greater value," he added.

Alongside the renewed threat over intellectual property, Ballmer was also bullish over winning large corporate accounts against Linux vendors.

"We have done very well versus Linux on the desktop and on the server, and I am hopeful that we will build share, particularly in Web servers and high-performance clusters, from Linux in the next year," he told analysts.

Now on News.com:



But Red Hat's chief executive was not impressed. Addressing a Merrill Lynch conference on Monday, Matthew Szulik urged his customers to use up their open-source coupons from the Microsoft-Novell partnership. These coupons entitle them to support and maintenance for Novell's Suse Linux Enterprise Server.

"We certainly expect that there will be those cases where customers will consume those coupons," Szulik said. "We're certainly encouraging one or two customers to consume all of them; let's get this over with."

As of January, Microsoft had already sold 35,000 open-source coupons out of the 70,000 it has committed to make available each year as part of the five-year partnership.

Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse Group and American International Group are among those to take advantage of the Microsoft-Novell collaboration to roll out a mixed infrastructure of proprietary and open-source software.

Richard Thurston of ZDNet UK reported from London.
 
Looks like ballmer is getting desperate after vistas poor sales. :p He does seem to have a history of irrational behaviour at microsoft.
 
marc2003 said:
i hardly think so..... :p

Since when does past success guarantee future success? Look what happened to Ford.

What about when you consider that China (the worlds biggest market) couldn't give a hoot about Windows. Wonder what OS they will produce on the world market in a few years?
 
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the-void said:
What about when you consider that China (the worlds biggest market) couldn't give a hoot about Windows.

So what do they use, or do they just pirate Windows?

HEADRAT
 
Just to remind you of a few facts....
Keeping it as brief and understandable to newer people to computing as possible...
Its been some time since I looked at the history of computer systems, how ever as I recall Unix has been around a lot longer than Microsoft operating systems.

Billy's original operating system was MS-DOS and credit where its due, microsoft advanced the menu system, typical of the time, to a graphical user interface (GUI), which was called Windows 3.1. This was actually running on top of DOS. Window 95 was the first true GUI OS.

And credit again, Microsoft extended the degree of co-operation to the development of the GUI Linux desktop. Without this, Unix/Linux systems may very well still only be command line and menus.

How ever the more relevant facts I would like to highlight are the similaritys between the NT systems and the Unix/Linux systems. The file permissions, user groups, user rights all make NT look like a 'Microsoft Linux' (Dear I say it).

And this year Vista has proved to be yet another step closer to being structured like a Unix/Linux system. ie Being an Administrator and yet still having to elevate your permissions to perform certain tasks.
To me it looks on par with the Linux SuperUser to perform certain tasks.

I find it rather petty that Microsoft can consider a lawsuit against Linux when without Linux/Unix systems Vista would most likely be just an advancement of Windows 95 with a fat32 file system.

Well thats my 2 cents worth, I am sure it is bound to spur some new thinking in some of you.
 
From Linux.com Thursday January 25, 2007

""In fact, China's increase of Linux users didn't impair the use of Windows," Lu says. According to his figures, Windows' share of the operating system market increased from 55.1% to 64.8% between 2003 and 2005. Linux mainly took users from Unix, whose share decreased from 30.9% to 19.8%". The Lu refered to is Lu Shouqun, president of China OSS Promotion Union.

It's easy to quote figures that linux sales have increased by **% to create a inference that MS is in trouble in China if you don't take into account the whole market in China is growing.
 
brucey034 said:
Just to remind you of a few facts....
Keeping it as brief and understandable to newer people to computing as possible...
Its been some time since I looked at the history of computer systems, how ever as I recall Unix has been around a lot longer than Microsoft operating systems.

Billy's original operating system was MS-DOS and credit where its due, microsoft advanced the menu system, typical of the time, to a graphical user interface (GUI), which was called Windows 3.1. This was actually running on top of DOS. Window 95 was the first true GUI OS.

And credit again, Microsoft extended the degree of co-operation to the development of the GUI Linux desktop. Without this, Unix/Linux systems may very well still only be command line and menus.

How ever the more relevant facts I would like to highlight are the similaritys between the NT systems and the Unix/Linux systems. The file permissions, user groups, user rights all make NT look like a 'Microsoft Linux' (Dear I say it).

And this year Vista has proved to be yet another step closer to being structured like a Unix/Linux system. ie Being an Administrator and yet still having to elevate your permissions to perform certain tasks.
To me it looks on par with the Linux SuperUser to perform certain tasks.

I find it rather petty that Microsoft can consider a lawsuit against Linux when without Linux/Unix systems Vista would most likely be just an advancement of Windows 95 with a fat32 file system.

Well thats my 2 cents worth, I am sure it is bound to spur some new thinking in some of you.
You could probably use the same argument to prove Linux is a rip off of Unix (copying Unix and earlier big iron OS structure) and then imitating the Apple Mac/Windows GUI ideas tbh....
 
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