Mandriva won't pay for Microsoft "protection"

MANDRIVA, the French outfit behind the Linux distro has publicly rejected any advances Microsoft may make in its plan to cosy up to open sourcers.

The Vole has been on the prowl after claiming various Linuxes infringe hundreds of its patents. It has used this stick to hold over the heads of some Linux firms while getting them to sign cooperative agreements.

Linspire, Novell and Xandros caved in and signed up but Ubuntu told the Vole to go take a hike. Mandriva joined in.

As far as Mandriva is concerned, "there has been absolutely no hard evidence from any of the FUD propagators that Linux and open source applications are in breach of any patents. So we think that, as in any democracy, people are innocent unless proven guilty and we can continue working in good faith," wrote Mandriva big cheese François Bancilhon on the Mandriva web site.

While interoperability between the Windows and Linux world is important, Bancilhon notes, he says the best way to deal with interoperability, "is open standards, such as ODF which we support strongly and we are ready to cooperate with everyone on these topics."

"As far as IP is concerned, we are, to say the least, not great fans of software patents and of the current patent system, which we consider as counter productive for the industry as a whole," he continues.

"So we don't believe it is necessary for us to get protection from Microsoft to do our job or to pay protection money to anyone. We plan to keep developing and distributing innovative and exciting products and making them available to the largest number in the true spirit of open source." µ