Blogs

Microsoft today issued a news release to announce a patent cross-license agreement with Amazon. And, the news release, in the lead, explicitly calls out a set of technologies covered by the agreement: the Kindle, which employs open source software, and Amazon’s use of Linux-based servers.

Bringing the Magic to Linux with MeeGo

A few weeks ago, I wrote that the Linux Foundation was going to put its money where its mouth is in order to create more “magic” on Linux. Today the Linux operating system market just got a lot more interesting with the announcement of MeeGo.

Yesterday I watched Apple’s Steve Jobs unveil the iPad. Jobs clearly can create revolutionary products; he can also produce spin like no one else. Yesterday was no exception.

His main message about the iPad was “a magical device at a breakthrough price.” He repeated this many times throughout the pitch and twice at the end. This phrase demands an honest response: how will Linux-based devices compete with the iPad?

The Linux Foundation today announced a free Linux training Webinar series and an expanded set of courses and course locations for its existing training program. There is no coincidence that this shortly follows the Foundation’s recent jobs board announcement.

Open source software development is innovative and exciting. It has produced the software that runs the internet; Linux, Apache, Firefox, and so much more. In addition to being technically innovative it also has turned business models on their head and introduced new software licensing and IP sharing concepts.

As we continue to innovate at the technical level it is equally important to discuss innovative legal concepts to allow the unfettered deployment and development of free and open source software.

Last week, David Coursey reported that Microsoft entertainment and devices boss Robbie Bach made the prediction in an analyst briefing that Linux on mobile will lose. Why? It’s choice is a bad thing for customers and that there is too much Linux in the mobile marketplace

By Bach’s count there are 17 variants of Linux available on mobile phones. He sees this as a bad thing for customers. We, unsurprisingly, see this as a bad thing for Microsoft.

Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal’s Nick Wingfield broke a story on Microsoft selling a group of patents to a third party. The end result of this story is good for Linux, even though it doesn’t placate fears of ongoing attacks by Microsoft.