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Turbolinux falls for a patent deal with Microsoft
ASIAN LINUX distributor Turbolinux has become the fourth and latest Linux distribution to sign a patent covenant deal with Microsoft, Beta News reports.
Turbolinux reportedly sees an opportunity to get interoperability information to develop a cross-platform authentication framework with Microsoft. Such a shared authentication service could provide a single-signon capability enabling users to access both Windows and Linux services simultaneously.
Turbolinux could have gained such authentication interface specifications through a simple licensing arrangement. But a cross-licensing agreement holds out the potential of making Windows the logon client for Linux services and vice-versa. It's also easy to suspect that the Vole made signing a mutual patent covenant deal much more attractive to Turbolinux than a one-way licencing agreement.
Turbolinux had previously joined Microsoft's OOXML-ODF translator project last year. The companies said they plan to extend that collaboration, such that Turbolinux will be able to develop a Live Search feature under Linux.
Beta News also speculates that Turbolinux and Microsoft might seek to do something with Turbolinux's Wizpy MP3 player that also contains a complete Linux system in pocket-sized computer form.
The Linux distributors that have previously signed patent covenant deals with the Vole are Novell, Linspire and Xandros.
Each Linux company has been offered somewhat different inducements, variations on the Vole's theme of offering assistance for interoperability with Linux. These different patent covenant deals might have been driven by the varying interests of the Linux distributors, but it seems like Microsoft offered to work with each one in a different area of collaboration.
What seems clear is that these various patent covenant deals will result in fragmenting the capabilities of the participating Linux distributions such that they will wind up offering some features and functions that are diverse and possibly incompatible. And that sounds an awful lot like a cunning Volish plan to divide and conquer. µ
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With Microsoft making a large contribution towards TurboLinux's bottom line.

Microsoft has made one decent deal - Novell is a fairly large player, but the other deals have been with the ants of the Linux movement, and there's no good reason for them.

Unless Voles eat ants.
First, it's an Asian distro. Second it is number 75 out of 100 on distrowatch.com. 

We can all watch it fall off the top 100. Thirdly, it doesn't really matter because this distro is so tiny that it is unlikely that they have any IP to cross license and even if that were the case, because they are an Asian based distro, it wouldn't really hold any water anywhere but in Asia. 

Unless they have US offices and are a US business.

Consider that Microsoft doesn't need Turbolinux for anything, and if they are entering this sort of agreement is more for the press coverage and to snub the Linux industry once again. 

What they are not understanding is that every time they agree and every lawsuit against, the Linux industry gets more free press and people understand it is a viable alternative to Windows and OSX.

For Turbolinux it has to mean a small infusion of cash to start and then essentially a drawn out death. The Linux industry generally ceases cooperation with companies such as Turbolinux, and due to GPL v3 most likely it will just freeze Turbolinux's forward progress (if it really had any anyway). In the end that means that more people will go to better branded and more credibly maintained distros that are willing to protect their users regardless of threats from Microsoft.

What Turbolinux now must worry about is getting sued by that troll patent company shored up by the departing Microsoft execs that recently sued Novell and Redhat. Funny how Microsoft sued Novell by proxy after entering into an agreement to not sue Novell.

As far as the patent goes it is either invalid or outdated. Prior art demonstrates these guys have a loosing hand and will be throwing good money after bad. It really is this Microsoft shill company against a larger world wide entity capable of bringing them to their knees. And bring them to their knees the industry will. You had a company such as SCO brought to its knees and I'm sure they have much more money than this shill of Microsoft has. It also means that this is a win or loose all proposition for them. If they are not successful they have shot their wads so to speak. They will find it much harder to get funding for future lawsuits.

Yeah, this is about Turbolinux, but in reality is about lawsuits against the IP used by the Linux industry. So, it is the same old story. It is simply a proxy war orchestrated by Microsoft.

If you consider that the first IP lawsuit of any note is against a "desktop" feature instead of say a file system, a server protocol, or a kernel feature, you have to be cheering right now due to the fact that it is becoming obvious that Microsoft is very much being threatened by the success of Linux on the desktop.