Wednesday, 10 October 2007

Microsoft Asks Red Hat Users To Pay Up Or Else….

Microsoft chief executive Steven Ballmer dropped a bombshell yesterday by warning Red Hat Linux users that they have to pay royalties to Microsoft for its intellectual property....

Microsoft chief executive Steven Ballmer dropped a bombshell yesterday by warning Red Hat Linux users that they have to pay royalties to Microsoft for its intellectual property.

Speaking at company event in London Ballmer said, "People who use Red Hat, at least with respect to our intellectual property, in a sense have an obligation to compensate us."

Red Hat, one of the biggest sellers of open source software has rejected all attempts to get into a deal similar to Microsoft-Novell partnership that was announced last year.

After SCO, Microsoft has had the second highest number of intellectual property claims against Linux and Open Source.

SCO recently lost a open source claim and now bankruptcy.

Here’s what Ballmer said in London. “I think it is important that the open source products also have an obligation to participate in the same way in the same way in the intellectual property regime.

That's why we've done the deal we have with Novell, where not only are we working on technical interoperability between Linux and Windows but we've also made sure that we could provide the appropriate, for the appropriate fee, Novell customers also get essentially the rights to use our patented intellectual property. And I think it's great the way Novell stepped up to kind of say intellectual property matters. People use Red Hat, at least with respect to our intellectual property in a sense have an obligation to eventually to compensate us.”

Now whatever message this brings out, Microsoft is sure to give sleepless nights to open source lovers and backers.

In November last year, Microsoft entered into a partnership with Novell in which the open source software maker agreed to license Microsoft's intellectual property in exchange for a patent pledge to users of Novell's SuSE Linux.

Ballmer praised Novell at the UK event for valuing intellectual property, and suggested that open source vendors will be forced to strike similar deals with other patent holders.