In a move that's going to raise a lot of eyebrows, Microsoft has joined the Open Invention Network to 'protect Linux and other important open source workloads from patent assertions'.
For those who haven't heard of the OIN, their mission statement is quite a simple and honourable one "The Open Invention Network is a shared defensive patent pool with the mission to protect Linux.". To find out more about the OIN see here.
Hold the phone, this isn't gaming news?
Correct. However, this is still very interesting and extremely surprising from a company that has been pretty hostile to Linux in the past. It's the kind of move that could result in some big shifts in the entire industry.
We know Microsoft’s decision to join OIN may be viewed as surprising to some; it is no secret that there has been friction in the past between Microsoft and the open source community over the issue of patents. For others who have followed our evolution, we hope this announcement will be viewed as the next logical step for a company that is listening to customers and developers and is firmly committed to Linux and other open source programs.
Surprising is one word for it! Honestly, I'm in shock at this news. Does this mean we can firmly put the "Embrace, extend, and extinguish" phrase to rest and replace it with Embrace, extend, and protect? With Microsoft joining, they're bringing with them around 60,000 patents.
Moves like that, makes me seriously think about how Microsoft have changed, especially since their previous CEO Steve Ballmer called Linux "a cancer".
I think it also shows how far Linux has come as a platform for all things too, especially with Microsoft having a "Windows Subsystem for Linux" along with their support for running Linux on their Azure cloud computing platform.
What do you think to this?
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Some you may have missed, popular articles from the last month:
The comments on this article are closed.
All posts need to follow our rules. For users logged in: please hit the Report Flag icon on any post that breaks the rules or contains illegal / harmful content. Guest readers can email us for any issues.
If Microsoft wants to "protect" Linux, it's because they think that they can control it. As Linus stated rather famously, the desktop is the ONLY area of computing that Linux does not dominate. On the desktop that would be Windows. Now Linux has matured enough that Windows is about to have competition.
Microsoft bought it's way into the Linux Foundation, and months later there was basically a coup which removed Linus. The LF is calling it a sabbatical, but he's not coming back if they can help it. They have implemented a CoC which directly panders to identity politics over quality of code, which has had the desired effect of splitting the community down left/right lines and could well destroy it. And it's just a coincidence that Microsoft bought their way in a few months earlier. Oh and Microsoft bought Github.
And now this.
Linux will not survive this as Linux. Microsoft will either control it or break it into a thousand pieces. Red Hat and Cannonical might even be on board. Google sure as hell will be.
Linux kernel can survive anything, the GPL license is the guarantee. We may have to change the name (or they may have to change it), but the open source core will be there for ever and for everyone.
Microsoft is doing all this stuff because they know that cloud SaaS is the future for their desktop platform and Linux is thousands miles away at the server side than their current systems. It would have no sense to spend a trillion of money to get NT kernel to the place that Linux is, not to mention the cost of training and propaganda they would need. They know that it's a war that they cannot win, so everything points towards that they will start moving resources from their proprietary software to FOSS.
I don't like Microsoft products and enterprise strategies (not to mention that I don't plan to buy anything from them), but I think it would be stupid to not accept and use the free resource they could provide. In the FOSS (and mostly in the Linux kernel) is quite difficult that they could make any harm.
Anyway, it's still very early to get any conclusion. Not to mention that one thing could be their strategy for Azure and other way more different could be for the gaming department. I still believe that they won't help in anyway to make multi platform DX.
5 Likes, Who?
Well, my lid is officially flipped.
0 Likes
I expect them to turn Windows into a Linux distro + proprietary libraries/API/DE at some point. It will be cheaper for them to maintain, ...
Exactly
(I couldn't get myself to like the comment though)
1 Likes, Who?
YourPalMark Oct 10, 2018
What a crock. Microsoft, like Google, still think they can fool us into believing they have our best interests at heart.
4 Likes, Who?
Mountain Man Oct 10, 2018
Let's put it this way: Microsoft is not doing this because they think it will lose them money and market share. If they can keep or expand both by being good open source citizens, then they will. If they need to grind open source into the dust in order to achieve their goals, then they will.
5 Likes, Who?
entering this consortium has 2 goals.
not sue everyone. (not forcing everyone to pay royalites for your patents)
not being sued by everyone. (not having to pay for others patents)
not sue everyone. (not forcing everyone to pay royalites for your patents)
not being sued by everyone. (not having to pay for others patents)
3 Likes, Who?
Microsoft (monopoly) has damaged IT evolution as whole dramatically. There is nothing Microsoft can do to rewind the hands of time.
Therefore, no trust from me for Microsoft, never, whatever they'll do under this company name, and I consider myself as open minded in comparison to the "no tux no bux" fraction.
Ont thing is for sure: Microsoft will not make open source better than it has become. So please stay away, dear MS parasites.
Edit: typo
Last edited by dude on 10 October 2018 at 8:00 pm UTC
Therefore, no trust from me for Microsoft, never, whatever they'll do under this company name, and I consider myself as open minded in comparison to the "no tux no bux" fraction.
Ont thing is for sure: Microsoft will not make open source better than it has become. So please stay away, dear MS parasites.
Edit: typo
Last edited by dude on 10 October 2018 at 8:00 pm UTC
4 Likes, Who?
Honestly, I feel this is the extend phase of the "embrace, extend , extinguish" model.
Like jarhead_h mentioned , the CoC Linux added seems to value politics over code quality.
Maybe Microsoft smell blood and decided to make their move.
I doubt they are doing it out of the kindess of their hearts or because they had a change of heart.
Like Mountain Man mentioned it all comes down to profits and they don't have to be dicks about it , at least not now.
I wish we had some people working on legal in GOL. Curios how they can bend this to their advantage or if it is just a PR stunt.
Like jarhead_h mentioned , the CoC Linux added seems to value politics over code quality.
Maybe Microsoft smell blood and decided to make their move.
I doubt they are doing it out of the kindess of their hearts or because they had a change of heart.
Like Mountain Man mentioned it all comes down to profits and they don't have to be dicks about it , at least not now.
I wish we had some people working on legal in GOL. Curios how they can bend this to their advantage or if it is just a PR stunt.
6 Likes, Who?
I'm really not sure what to make of this. Some of the suggestions about what Microsoft might be up to that's nefarious make some sense, but others seem a bit unrealistic. Maybe they do have plans to reduce "Windows" to basically a desktop environment a la KDE or Gnome running on top of Linux. And OK, maybe their cloud server business is really so big now, or big enough and so fashionable inside the company (the sexiest department often gets its way) that they're just doing this because they really want to be Linux citizens. Or maybe they'll just not attack Linux with patents themselves, but somehow lend their patents to trolls who will. Maybe maybe maybe.
But none of the takes on it really feels solid to me, I'm quite nonplussed.
One thing I will say: If they are planning something nefarious with this move, I'm not convinced it will work the way whoever is planning it thinks it will. MS have never really wrapped their heads around how Free Software, the GPL etc. work and their plans to mess with it have never to date been entirely effective. They always seem to underestimate or misunderstand Open's ability to work around Closed. I don't see why this time would be different.
But none of the takes on it really feels solid to me, I'm quite nonplussed.
One thing I will say: If they are planning something nefarious with this move, I'm not convinced it will work the way whoever is planning it thinks it will. MS have never really wrapped their heads around how Free Software, the GPL etc. work and their plans to mess with it have never to date been entirely effective. They always seem to underestimate or misunderstand Open's ability to work around Closed. I don't see why this time would be different.
3 Likes, Who?
Like jarhead_h mentioned , the CoC Linux added seems to value politics over code quality.Oh, god, let's not get into that again.
7 Likes, Who?
I'm pretty sure that this is just a rationale long term business decision and that there is no huge conspiracy behind it. I guess Microsoft assumes that in the near future the big money will be earned from cloud computing and not from the silly desktop market. You can't ignore Linux in the server market, let alone try to beat it. So if Microsoft would not make Linux a first class citizen in Azure, most sane customers would go for Google Cloud or AWS and not for Microsoft's own cloud platform. Which OS's are hosted in Azure or even on which OS Azure services runs on are really not important as long as customers pay their subscriptions to Microsoft. This is imho just another move to make Azure more attractive to potential customers, nothing more, nothing less.
"If you can't beat them, join them"
Last edited by jens on 10 October 2018 at 8:31 pm UTC
"If you can't beat them, join them"
Last edited by jens on 10 October 2018 at 8:31 pm UTC
5 Likes, Who?
the CoC Linux added seems to value politics over code quality.
Please stop listening to the trolls. There is nothing in the CoC that says that you must accept code from people, all it dictates is the way you reply when you e.g reject a patch. There is no coup going on in the Kernel either, it's not the foundation that says that Linus is taking a sabbatical, it's Linus himself.
11 Likes, Who?
the CoC Linux added seems to value politics over code quality.
Please stop listening to the trolls. There is nothing in the CoC that says that you must accept code from people, all it dictates is the way you reply when you e.g reject a patch. There is no coup going on in the Kernel either, it's not the foundation that says that Linus is taking a sabbatical, it's Linus himself.
Thanks. Full ack on this.
0 Likes
I'm pretty sure that this is just a rationale long term business decision and that there is no huge conspiracy behind it.You're probably right. Now if only I were clear on the exact difference between those two things.
5 Likes, Who?
I expect them to turn Windows into a Linux distro + proprietary libraries/API/DE at some point. It will be cheaper for them to maintain, will be able to enter most markets Windows can't enter/dominate now, like mobiles/servers, and will still allow them to be top dog, assuming they create a good and polished Linux based desktop OS and make linux-compatible versions of their stuff like Office...Man if Windows becomes a Linux distro it's going to become tricky telling people they should switch to Linux.
5 Likes, Who?
I'm pretty sure that this is just a rationale long term business decision and that there is no huge conspiracy behind it.You're probably right. Now if only I were clear on the exact difference between those two things.
Alright, I should have omitted the second part of that sentence. Sensible topic ;)
1 Likes, Who?
It is a positive development. Gaming department in MS however is still run by lock-in proponents. That's why we don't see Vulkan on Xbox.
3 Likes, Who?
Man if Windows becomes a Linux distro it's going to become tricky telling people they should switch to Linux.
My only concern would be that they start saying: "Linux was difficult, but Microsoft made it easy".
5 Likes, Who?
What I wonder about, is whether exFAT and ActiveSync implementations can be used in Linux distros without patent threats from MS now.
Until now, commercial distros (like SailfishOS) and Android distributors (commonly mobile device manufacturers) had to pay MS for this stuff.
Last edited by Shmerl on 10 October 2018 at 9:43 pm UTC
Until now, commercial distros (like SailfishOS) and Android distributors (commonly mobile device manufacturers) had to pay MS for this stuff.
Last edited by Shmerl on 10 October 2018 at 9:43 pm UTC
0 Likes
What I wonder about, is whether exFAT and ActiveSync implementations can be used in Linux distros without patent threats from MS now.
No: http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2018/10/10/microsoft-oin-exfat.html
Most importantly, the non-aggression pact only applies to the upstream versions of software, including Linux itself. [...] While we at Conservancy were successful in getting the code that implements exfat for Linux released under GPL (by Samsung), that code has not been upstreamed into Linux. So, Microsoft has not included any patents they might hold on exfat into the patent non-aggression pact.
5 Likes, Who?
Patreon
PayPal
See more from me