Mark Shuttleworth Squashes Rumors Of An Ubuntu-Microsoft Deal
With the flurry of Microsoft-Linux vendor patent deals in recent weeks, we asked you to vote on who you thought would be next to join the ranks of Novell, Linspire, and Xandros, all of which have signed deals with Microsoft which provide patent protection.
“Not Ubuntu” was the overwhelming response to our poll and it would seem that Compiler readers are a savvy bunch since Mark Shuttleworth recently announced on his blog that neither Canonical nor the Ubuntu project are interested in signing any deals with Microsoft.
Although Shuttleworth says he has not spoken formally with the Ubuntu Community Council, he rejects Microsoft’s patent claims on his blog and says, “we have declined to discuss any agreement with Microsoft under the threat of unspecified patent infringements.”
Allegations of “infringement of unspecified patents” carry no weight whatsoever. We don’t think they have any legal merit, and they are no incentive for us to work with Microsoft on any of the wonderful things we could do together. A promise by Microsoft not to sue for infringement of unspecified patents has no value at all and is not worth paying for. It does not protect users from the real risk of a patent suit from a pure-IP-holder (Microsoft itself is regularly found to violate such patents and regularly settles such suits). People who pay protection money for that promise are likely living in a false sense of security.
Shuttleworth does not however outright reject Microsoft’s claims that it wants to improve “interoperability” between the two OSes. “I welcome Microsoft’s stated commitment to interoperability between Linux and the Windows world - and believe Ubuntu will benefit fully from any investment made in that regard,” he writes.
Shuttleworth doesn’t rule out the possibility of a collaborative deal between the Ubuntu project and Microsoft. “I have no objections to working with Microsoft in ways that further the cause of free software, and I don’t rule out any collaboration with them, in the event that they adopt a position of constructive engagement with the free software community.”
However Shuttleworth also calls out OpenXML in particular as an example of Microsoft interoperability that won’t be coming to Ubuntu Linux.
The Open Document Format (ODF) specification is a much better, much cleaner and widely implemented specification that is already a global standard. I would invite Microsoft to participate in the OASIS Open Document Format working group, and to ensure that the existing import and export filters for Office12 to Open Document Format are improved and available as a standard option.
