Ballmer Repeats His Demand for License Payments from Red Hat Users
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has again demanded license payments from Red Hat users.
In his speech at a company event in Great Britain, Ballmer quotes intellectual property infringements as the basis for claims. "People who use Red Hat, at least with respect to our intellectual property, in a sense have an obligation to compensate us," Ballmer said. This isn’t the first time that the Redmond boss has targeted attacks at Linux distributor Red Hat. In contrast to Novell and other Linux companies like Xandros or Linspire, Red Hat has not yet signed “patent assurances” with Microsoft, although Microsoft is obviously pushing in this direction.
Referring to the continuing attacks by Microsoft, Red Hat Germany boss Werner Knoblich said that the only topic for an agreement that Red Hat could see thus far was that of interoperability between the two operating systems. Red Hat Germany has issued a statement on the subject.
To give customers assurances, Red Hat recently set up a website explaining the legal situation from its point of view. Red Hat points to its "Open Assurance Program" in which it assures customers that it would immediately replace every single line of provably controversial code. Red Hat currently has no information on claims against Linux code: “We are also aware of no patent lawsuit against Linux. Ever. Anywhere.”
In the course of his appearance at the conference, Ballmer went even further and accused Open Source users in general of infringing on Microsoft’s patents. This isn‘t the first time that the corporation has threatened FOSS users with lawsuits. In March 2006, stated that it was his duty towards his shareholders, and the attacks have not stopped despite agreements being signed with Linux companies like Novell (November 2006). In an interview with Forbes magazine, Microsoft lawyer Brad Smith even specified the numbers, stating that Microsoft had ascertained that free software infringed on more than 235 patents.
Microsoft employee Lars Lindstedt published Ballmer’s controversial speech on a British corporate website.
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
![Learn More](https://www.linux-magazine.com/var/linux_magazin/storage/images/media/linux-magazine-eng-us/images/misc/learn-more/834592-1-eng-US/Learn-More_medium.png)
News
-
NVIDIA Released Driver for Upcoming NVIDIA 560 GPU for Linux
Not only has NVIDIA released the driver for its upcoming CPU series, it's the first release that defaults to using open-source GPU kernel modules.
-
OpenMandriva Lx 24.07 Released
If you’re into rolling release Linux distributions, OpenMandriva ROME has a new snapshot with a new kernel.
-
Kernel 6.10 Available for General Usage
Linus Torvalds has released the 6.10 kernel and it includes significant performance increases for Intel Core hybrid systems and more.
-
TUXEDO Computers Releases InfinityBook Pro 14 Gen9 Laptop
Sporting either AMD or Intel CPUs, the TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro 14 is an extremely compact, lightweight, sturdy powerhouse.
-
Google Extends Support for Linux Kernels Used for Android
Because the LTS Linux kernel releases are so important to Android, Google has decided to extend the support period beyond that offered by the kernel development team.
-
Linux Mint 22 Stable Delayed
If you're anxious about getting your hands on the stable release of Linux Mint 22, it looks as if you're going to have to wait a bit longer.
-
Nitrux 3.5.1 Available for Install
The latest version of the immutable, systemd-free distribution includes an updated kernel and NVIDIA driver.
-
Debian 12.6 Released with Plenty of Bug Fixes and Updates
The sixth update to Debian "Bookworm" is all about security mitigations and making adjustments for some "serious problems."
-
Canonical Offers 12-Year LTS for Open Source Docker Images
Canonical is expanding its LTS offering to reach beyond the DEB packages with a new distro-less Docker image.
-
Plasma Desktop 6.1 Released with Several Enhancements
If you're a fan of Plasma Desktop, you should be excited about this new point release.