Microsoft patent deals: the last home of the dying (Updated)

And then there were two (software patent deals with Microsoft). Today, Xandros made its first newsworthy announcement in 10 years and indicated it has capitulated to Microsoft.

I love how Microsoft tries to blur the lines between its patent folderol and interoperability agreements (notice how it tries to obscure this in the press release, talking about Novell, Xandros, XenSource (no patent agreement), JBoss (no patent agreement), Zend (no patent agreement), etc. They talk about them all as if they’re the same thing, but they’re not. The smart companies are buying into interoperability, not FUD.

Yet Bill Hilf persists:

Customers win when their platform providers build collaborative relationships. We have been working with commercial open source companies to deliver better value to our customers in areas like server interoperability, systems management and office document formats. We believe in and encourage respect for all licensing and development models, and intellectual property is an important component in this environment. Our announcement with Xandros is an exciting step to deliver what our mutual customers have been asking for.

Where did that bolded statement (bolded by me) come from? It has nothing to do with the rest of the paragraph, however much Microsoft might like to pretend to the contrary.

Anyway, I can’t imagine that Xandros had much in the way of patent value to give back to Microsoft.

All of which makes this, like MIcrosoft’s other deals, strange. Microsoft keeps talking about the need to “balance the scale” on the value of its patents. Stephe Walli points out that this is complete rubbish:

Microsoft rightly claims on the order of $7B spent each year on research and development. The PR talking point is that “they want a return on that investment.” The rest of us see a $44B revenue stream and think, “and what part of that revenue stream shouldn’t be considered ROI?” This is what happens when you let lawyers (cost side of the balance sheet) think they can be a profit center.

This isn’t about money. If it were, Microsoft would work with parties that could give it some. But with Novell it gave Novell a wad of cash. No idea on Xandros, but the hush money seems to be flowing out of, not into, Microsoft.

All of which brings us back to the core purposes behind Microsoft’s patent deals: FUD (scare off would-be open source users) and a poll tax (you can’t “vote” in the open source world unless you first pay Microsoft).

Both would be disastrous to innovation. Neither is warranted by Microsoft’s heavy-handed but ill-conceived plot to discredit open source by polluting the market with its anti-open source marketing mucus.