A Penguin in the Orchard

Blustering Ballmer

Information Week’s David DeJean nails Steve “Blustering Buffoon” Ballmer to the wall regarding his recent comments that anyone with Linux in the data center, “has an undisclosed balance sheet liability.”

InformationWeek Weblog: Put Up Or Shut Up, Microsoft

It’s time for Microsoft to put up or shut up. No more cheap FUD, please. If the company actually holds patents it thinks cover parts of the Linux code, it should file lawsuits to protect its intellectual property. (There may be some problems with that strategy, of course. Lawsuits against Linux don’t have much of a track record of success. And lawsuits cost a lot more than cheap threats. Microsoft’s stockholder’s might want to consider SCO’s success, as one example.) Otherwise, it should spare us this periodic embarrassment.

Point well taken. It’s clear that Microsoft has no case against Linux users. They’ve sued smaller companies for far less than infringement on the company’s intellectual property crown jewels.

DeJean also puts the calculator to Ballmer’s interpretation of the agreement with Novell.

And just let me make sure I understand Ballmer’s argument here. The agreement calls for Novell to pay Microsoft $40 million for its agreement not to sue Suse customers. Microsoft, in turn, agreed to pay Novell $440 million for coupons entitling Microsoft customers to a year’s worth of maintenance and support on SUSE Linux. So apparently the value of Microsoft’s intellectual property to Microsoft is not just a negative number, it’s a hugely negative number.

I just can’t state strongly enough how bad this whole deal was. Novell grabs $400M net from Microsoft - feasting at Beelzebub’s table, as it were. What in Microsoft’s history would indicate to Novell that Microsoft would be a fair and equitable partner? Novell deserves to be shunned in the community for its sheer stupidity, alone. Microsoft sees the $40M paid by Novell as an admission that there might be MS IP in the SuSE package, and extends that logic to the entire Linux community.

Let this be a lesson that sometimes it’s perfectly okay to play separately.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft, Novell, SuSE, Ballmer, Linux