I think that Microsoft finally found a way to potentially slow down the rapid growth of Linux based solutions. Their deal with Novell clearly aims at creating a two tier Linux market. One tier would be the SUSE products, endorsed and protected by Microsoft, and the other would be the rest of “lesser” linux distributions that would be vulnerable to intellectual property lawsuits as normal.
What are they doing here is trying to drive a wedge between SUSE and non-SUSE developers and fragment the community into opposing camps that can’t easily share the code due to legal ramifications. This is a classic Embrace and Extend move.
Ballmer really spells out what are MS intentions here very clearly:
If people want to have peace and interoperability, they’ll look at Novell’s SUSE Linux. If they make other choices, they have all of the compliance and intellectual property issues that are associated with that.
These are fighting words, Mr. Ballmer. He is essentially saying “You either choose our version of Linux or else!” MS artificially creates a sense of uncertainty in the marketplace, and then reaps the benefits.
What is going to happen here is that Novell will most likely start offering their top of the line server setup at comparable prices to what MS will be charging for the super-duper Vista version.
So you are a giant corporation you end up having 3 choices:
- Go with the Microsoft Solution that offers the most bang for the money
- Go with Novell Solution that costs about the same, but [insert usual TCO FUD]
- Go with cheep/free but risky Linux solution that may be tainted with MS IP in addition to [insert compatibility FUD] and [insert TCO FUD]
Either way, this deal will benefit MS and hurt Linux somehow. Otherwise they wouldn’t be doing it. It’s still a little to soon to tell what is Microsoft’s real game plan here but it should become transparent over the next few months… I don’t like this one bit.
[tags]microsoft, novell, suse, linux, ms, ip, intellectual property, indemnification[/tags]