[ale] Interesting note from the Wall Street Journal today

[H P Ladds]

On 11/6/06, James P. Kinney III <jkinney at localnetsolutions.com> wrote:
>
> Good point. But I am cynical enough to see it from a different
> standpoint:
>
> M$ funded the SCO debacle. They thought they could shut down Linux that
> way. But during the mess, it was revealed that the code SCO is claiming
> they "own" and thus is the core of the infringement is actually "owned"
> by Novell. Thus the M$ interest in Novell is not so much to sway it's
> big buyers into placation by actually offering better interoperability.
> If they are able to leverage a strategic partnership into a co-ownership
> of Novell code, they can require a license fee for the use of that code
> and effectively shut down RedHat and everyone else. Thus M$ can then
> claim the interoperability issue is _caused_ by Linux as they have
> "stolen" M$ property.


Goldman Sach's analysis...

> <snip>
> it is curious as to why Microsoft would make such a large payment to
> Novell...
>
> since the agreement does involve the cross licensing of patents, we
> suspect
> Microsoft's motivations may have significantly been to resolve patent
> related
> issues. Although the two companies did settle patent issues related to
> Netware and anti-trust issues in 2004, this did not appear to resolve all
> outstanding patent issues, and we believe the substance of this latest
> agreement may relate to the resolution of some of the outstanding patent
> issues. The financial arrangement appears too one sided to simply reflect
> joint development activities and royalties to Microsoft for the use of its
> intellectual property in Linux. We are unsure of any specifics at this
> point,
> but we do believe the patent issues of the agreement are the more
> substantives ones.
>

It's possible M$ figured that they might as well buy Novell as opposed to
paying them big bucks to settle intellectual property issues.

More ominously, M$ bought Novell's patents, and intends to enforce them.

Can I call M$ "Microvell" now, or is that a better name for Suse? :)
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