The exact same week that Microsoft issued a press release providing further details about a few of the technological advancements that may outcome through the November 2006 technologies agreement in between Novell and Microsoft, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer informed Wall Street what he actually thinks the deal implies to Microsoft. During a forecast update meeting for financial analysts and shareholders on February 15,
Windows 7 32 Bit, Ballmer reiterated that,
Windows 7 Ultimate Key, to him,
Office Home And Business 2010, the offer is more about Microsoft exerting intellectual house (IP) strain on Novell than anything else. Ballmer didn't talk up technological cross-collaboration. He didn't mention helping customers with interoperability challenges. He didn't mention new sales opportunities. Instead, he said: "The deal that we announced at the end of last year with Novell I consider to be really important. It demonstrated clearly the value of intellectual home even within the Open Source world. I would not anticipate that we make a huge extra revenue stream from our Novell offer,
Microsoft Office 2007 Standard, but I do think it clearly establishes that Open Source is not free and Open Source will have to respect intellectual residence rights of others just as any other competitor will." Ballmer has riled the Novell management team extra than once by hinting that Microsoft believes that Novell and other open-source vendors are violating Microsoft patents. (This past weekend, in an interview with LinuxWorld, former Novell employee and lead Samba developer Jeremy Allison, when asked about supposed Microsoft threats over alleged open-source patent violations, said the rumors were true. "I have had people come up to me and essentially off the record admit that they had been threatened by Microsoft and had got patent cross license and had essentially taken out a license for Microsoft patents on the free software that they were using,
Office Professional Plus, which they then cannot redistribute. I think that would be the restriction. I would have to look quite carefully. So, essentially that’s not allowed. But they’re not telling anyone about it. They’re completely doing it off the record," Allison said.) Until customers come forward and admit these Microsoft threats, it's gong to be tough to prove Allison's contention. But it isn't difficult to see that Microsoft's brass sees the Microsoft-Novell offer as being, above all else, about setting a precedent by getting an open-source vendor to pay royalties for IP.
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