According to a statement from Microsoft, the company will license SCO’s Unix patents and the source code. That code is at the heart of a $1 billion lawsuit between SCO and IBM, which is aggressively pushing Linux as an alternative to Windows in corporate back shops.
Microsoft’s Windows has a monopoly in the market for desktop operating systems, with a market share greater than 90 percent. Linux, which has been developed by thousands of contributors and can be freely obtained, has caught on as a worthy competitor in the market for corporate servers. In the past two years, Microsoft has repeatedly labeled Linux as a threat to the Redmond, Wash.-based computing giant, partly because of its low cost.
Late Sunday, Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith said acquiring the license from SCO “is representative of Microsoft’s ongoing commitment to respecting intellectual property and the IT community’s healthy exchange of IP through licensing. This helps to ensure IP compliance across Microsoft solutions and supports our efforts around existing products like services for Unix that further Unix interoperability.” The pact was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.
A few months later, in an interview with CNET News.com, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates sought to warn corporate users about the GNU General Public License, which Linux is distributed under. “Some of our source codes are out there and very available, like Windows CE,” Gates said. “Some generally require a license, like Windows itself. We have no objection to free software, which has been around forever. But we do think there are problems for commercial users relative to the GPL, and we are just making sure people understand the GPL.
“Unfortunately, that has been misconstrued in many ways. It’s a topic that you can leap on and say, ‘Microsoft doesn’t make free software.’ Hey, we have free software; the world will always have free software. I mean, if you characterize it that way, that’s not right. But if you say to people, ‘Do you understand the GPL?’ And they’ll say, ‘Huh?’ And they’re pretty stunned when the Pac-Man-like nature of it is described to them.”
Related Posts
- Microsoft: Can we check your software license?
- Microsoft U.K. changes tactics with license dodgers
- Microsoft makes claim on Linux code
- Windows source code released
- Microsoft memo to staff: Clobber Linux
Loading ...
