Shockingly (Shockingly!!!) a Microsoft-Novell-commissioned survey reports that the world would end tomorrow but for the pact. Never mind, as Matthew Aslett notes, that one-third of the respondents had never even heard of the deal. (I guess background knowledge of the deal was not a prerequisite for taking the survey - I thought that was Survey 101, but apparently only if you're trying to get an accurate read.)
And never mind that Microsoft and Novell wrote the survey, and so geared it toward the results they wanted. I'm not implying nefarious intent. I'm just stating a fact: surveys and statistics tend to skew in favor of whomever writes the questions/is interpreting the results. Hence the famous phrase...
Lies, damned lies, and statistics.No, putting all this aside, the real problem with this survey is it indicates a willing blindness to the real issues at stake:
Does the deal benefit customers, and does it potentially harm open source?To these questions I'll answer "No" and "Yes," respectively.
I won't go into depth on why the deal is bad for customers and for open source. I've done that ad nauseum already, as have others (like Pamela at Groklaw).
Rather, I'll add a few questions of my own, some of which have been inspired by comments others have emailed to me (for which I can't therefore take credit, but do accept any blame).
Instead of
Technology companies should create partnerships to ensure that their products work well together.(Now there's a softball of a question!) How about:
Technology companies that lack 1,000+ patents should pay up to those that do for the right to do business with you, regardless of whether there is even a modicum of proof that the patent-less companies have infringed the patent-ful companies' patents.Or how about this softball?
Technology companies, not end users or businesses, should take responsibility for the intellectual property in the products they ship and service.To be replaced with:
Technology companies, not end users or businesses, should take responsibility to compete on the merits of their products and not try to spread FUD about the "safety" of others' products in order to protect $20 billion worth of Monopoly money. [literally!]Or how about this pleasant question from the survey:
I want platform providers to improve the interoperability of their systems.Turned into this:
I want platform providers to open up their source code so that there are no secret APIs or other artificial barriers to achieving interoperability.Another question that could have been asked, but wasn't, is:
Do you believe that you should pay an excise tax on every piece of open source software you buy to Microsoft?Or:
Do you believe that it's a good idea to have only the largest patent-holding companies forever enshrined as your default vendors, protected from competition, by their patent portfolios which provide you no measurable benefit?
It's all in how you frame the question....
Mary Jo Foley also has a few questions to ask (like "Do you have any idea why Novell is paying Microsoft $40 million as part of the recently announced collaboration agreement? Does your understanding (or lack thereof) regarding this payment affect the way you perceive the deal between the companies?"), and I'm sure you do, too. But yours (and mine) aren't part of the survey.
Just questions like "Do you believe in a supreme being, and is his/her/its name "Steve"? All designed to obscure the fact that this deal is one step down a slippery slope toward a universal Microsoft tax on open source innovation.
Don't get me wrong. I like Microsoft, and even like some of their products (quite a bit, in some cases). But let's not allow them (and Novell) to hide the patent issue behind a warm-and-fuzzy interoperability picture. Microsoft has been doing interop deals with open source vendors for some time now, and those were customer friendly. SugarCRM does a deal with Microsoft because 50% of its customers run SugarCRM on Windows. They want to ensure those customers have the best possible experience. I have zero problems with this.
The Novell-Microsoft deal is different, because it introduces the patent canard into the discussion. Do you think it's accidental that Ballmer stated that Linux violates Microsoft's patents shortly after consummating the deal with Novell? Me, neither. It's designed to (gradually) raise a levy on every piece of open source (and, eventually, proprietary - why not?) software sold, so that Microsoft can throttle back the open source threat, rather than embracing the open source opportunity.
Posted by Matt Asay on December 12, 2006 01:07 PM
