Affiliate Programs and Affiliate Reviews
Now that Microsoft wants to be Linux’s new best friend, there’s bound to be no end of sweet nothings and touching gestures emanating out of Redmond. After all, we’re pals now, right? Lo and behold! For all you skeptics who doubted the software behemoth’s amorous words, consider a few phrasing changes it recently made in its last two annual financial filings.
July was a Microsoft-filled month, and that trend continued right up until the very end. Case in point? Hard on the heels of Redmond’s little birthday present to Linux a few weeks ago, the Windows behemoth and SUSE announced last week that they are renewing the years-long patent deal originally signed by Novell but due to expire next year.
Those of us who have been around the block a few times here in the Linux blogosphere have seen it many times before: With one hand, Microsoft holds out a small olive branch to the Linux community, while with the other it prepares a new patent attack, posts a "cautionary" FUD-filled video, or perpetrates some other kind of anti-FOSS mischief.
Say what you will about Microsoft and its products, but you have to admit the company has a particular skill at making money. Take Android, for example. Instead of using the wildly successful mobile platform as an example and a model for its own lackluster efforts in that arena, Redmond has apparently opted instead to make its competitor a friend — a money-making friend, that is.
Well, it’s been another exciting week here in the Linux blogosphere, not least because of all the many seismic shifts emanating from the vicinity of Redmond. There was the end of the Justice Department’s antitrust oversight of Microsoft, marking the end of a historic case. There was also its wildly extravagant purchase of Skype, the implications of which still have observers reeling.