[wplug] Whither Open Source?

[Teodorski, Christopher]

I agree the article is 100% speculation -- and I don't think we should
jump to conclusions.  

However, I would imagine that acquisitions often begin with a casual
dinner between two executives.  

I think an acquisition of Redhat by Microsoft would ultimately doom
Redhat, I don't think it would be the end of Open Source or of Free
Software.  I also believe that it would send a shockwave through the
community -- but in the end we/they would brush off and move on.   




-----Original Message-----
From: wplug-bounces+christopher.teodorski=ddiworld.com at wplug.org
[mailto:wplug-bounces+christopher.teodorski=ddiworld.com at wplug.org] On
Behalf Of Rob Knapp
Sent: Friday, May 13, 2005 9:52 AM
To: wplug at wplug.org
Subject: Re: [wplug] Whither Open Source?

On Fri, 2005-05-13 at 09:35 -0400, Greg Simkins wrote:
> As the author said, it is not clear where it is going, but he did lay 
> out a couple dots about IBM retaliating by purchasing Novelle.  I 
> suppose that would take a lot of wind out of the Open Source sails.  
> We would be left with the die hards like RMS.

I still fail to see how "that would take a lot of wind out of the Open
Source sails.  We would be left with the die hards like RMS."  Red Hat
and Novell are just companies that market open source software, they are
not the open source movement.  That is the advantage of Free and Open
Source software, there is no single company (or group of companies) that
could be acquired.

What part of your concern am I missing?

> I am sure there are good lawyers, but if this whole chain of events is

> caused by some legal concern about old patents, I think grave 
> misjustice will be done.  So, on the whole, we have too many lawyers.


Keep in mind this deal is 100% speculation based on someone observing
two execs having dinner again.  There was no hard-facts based on what
they were discussing.

And why MS would be talking to an exec of a single open source company
about a potential violation,( rather that the heads of the project
themselves, along with all the other major open source companies) is
completely beyond me.

While software patents are not good, I think their threat is to open
source software is highly, highly overrated. There are a lot of
companies, government and educational institutions that are dependent on
open source software. I think if there was a serious threat, you would
see a large number of companies and universities stepping forward to
threaten MS with their patents.  IBM, for example, has a huge portfolio
of patents that it has used as a bludgeon in the past.  It has also put
a lot of time and money into Linux/Open Source...they aren't going to
let that investment die because of a single acquisition. There's also a
number of wealthy individuals looking for a test case for software
patents that could.