....said the spider to the fly.
And you know how that ended.
Yesterday, longtime Microsoft observer Mary Jo Foley, divulged that Xandros may have already inked a coopetition deal such as Novell's with Microsoft.
Smart of Xandros, isn't it?
Listen, they are in the business of providing services, not selling software.
This allows them (Xandros) to keep fleecing their customers on (supposedly) value added services while all the time chanting that the software is after all, free.
(Like a coke dealer would give away samples to get victims hooked. But I digress...)
Mary Jo also thinks that the timing of this announcement was off.
While I generally agree with her, I must disagree with her contention that this timing was off.
I was, IMO, the very best time to do it.
Now the big mouths in the distro business know there is a target painted on their backs. Hopefully, they would do the right thing by their respective constituencies, and sign on the dotted line.
If Microsoft was wrong, do you think any other Linux distro vendor would have paid any tribute to them, even if it is peanuts?
No matter what the neo-communistic rantings of Stallman, and the pseudo-legalistic nonsense being declared by Moglen, coupled with the moronic incantations of the cattle known as the open source crowd is, the suits (the actual adults) in the distro businesses, know that they are infringing on Microsoft's IP.
Otherwise, why would they sign these non-aggression pacts?
That slow, hissing sound is the sound of air being let out of the sails of the yum-yums who thought MSFT was kidding when they said 235 patents were violated.
I cannot wait for RHAT to sign; I have a bottle of Cristal champoo chillin' just for that day!
Cue that fine, and apropos song by the late, great Freddie Mercury & Queen, "Another One Bites The Dust"!
Copyright © 2006, John Obeto II for SmallBizVista.com®