Intellectual Property Indemnification

See what industry analysts are saying about protecting your company from the risks associated with patent, trade secret, trademark, and copyright infringement.

Novell's response to Microsoft's Get the Facts campaign is located at novell.com . Novell comments upon the Intellectual Property(IP) issue as follows: "recent report by the firm Open Source Risk Management (OSRM) stated that it had identified 283 patents that could potentially be used to challenge Linux users in court. Of these, 98 patents are held by companies like IBM, HP, Novell and others that have a vested interest in Linux. However, 27 patents are held by Microsoft. This report follows the SCO controversy and may be a concern for some customers who are considering Linux and OSS. However, with Linux from Novell, customers need not worry about issues surrounding patents. Reuters and other news agencies recently reported Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer making public references to OSRM's Linux Patent Review. Many of the reports included inaccurate statements regarding the material findings of this report." The report can be downloaded at novell.com

Performance

Examine performance benchmarks on comparable operating system workloads and configurations.

As for IP, Novell talk about performance. The appropriate section states, amongst other things: "The first benchmark with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 and IBM DB2 Universal Database Express Edition set a new world record for best price-performance with $1.61/tpmC (transactions per minute) on an HP ProLiant Server. The result demonstrates the ability of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server to handle corporate customers' requirements in a high-performing yet cost-effective way." and "Tests by IT Week Labs in 2003 indicate "that the latest version of the open-source Samba file and print server software has widened the performance gap separating it from the commercial Windows alternative. IT managers say Samba's better performance means they can use cheaper servers than would be possible with Windows software. And if they run Samba in a completely open-source environment, such as on Linux, they could remove the cost of Windows server licenses.""

The test in question can be read at vnunet.com . Linux was also faster in providing support for 64 bit computing. Arstechnica wrote the following about 64 bit computing at arstechnica.com : "If we think realistically about most of the world's commercial software not as "software" in the abstract but as x86 binary code, then it becomes apparent that improvements to the x86 ISA represent one of the most practical and cost-effective ways to advance and expand the x86 software market. Indeed, Intel's continuing extensions of additions to the x86 ISA prove just this point. Consider the move from 16 bits to 32 bits, the addition of the x87 floating-point instructions, and the addition of integer and then floating-point SIMD instructions. All of these modifications of x86 helped bring new capabilities to the PC, allowing it to find new applications and enter new markets. Thus, the ongoing adaptation of the x86 ISA to ever newer technological contexts has been one of the essential subplots in the past two decades' story of the "information revolution.""

Interoperability:

Read what third-party experts are saying about the interoperability of Windows systems and applications versus Linux.

Interoperability is a very important aspect and I'm glad that Microsoft set focus on it. I do however have to disagree with them that they are the best in the market in it. I mentioned some of the reasons for this in the beginning of the article.

One of the whitepapers in the Microsoft Get The Facts campaign on this subject states as follows: "ObjectWatch (July 2004): "Interoperability Through Service-Oriented Architectures (SOAs)." This white paper outlines the service-oriented architecture approach to interoperability, which delivers excellent scalability, better ability to leverage existing systems and applications, lower IT costs, and improved user productivity. Microsoft SOA technologies are a strong choice because Microsoft developed most Web service standards, offers integrated developer tools, and has a compelling cost/value proposition."

Let us start with the basis for websites, HyperText Markup Language(HTML) and its follower, based on extensible markup language (XML), XHTML. The recommendations are provided by the World Wide Web Consortion, W3C for short.

SOAP Version 1.2 (SOAP) is a lightweight protocol intended for exchanging structured information in a decentralized, distributed environment. It uses XML technologies to define an extensible messaging framework providing a message construct that can be exchanged over a variety of underlying protocols. The framework has been designed to be independent of any particular programming model and other implementation specific semantics. Two major design goals for SOAP are simplicity and extensibility (see XMLP Requirements [XMLP Requirements]). SOAP attempts to meet these goals by omitting, from the messaging framework, features that are often found in distributed systems. Such features include but are not limited to "reliability", "security", "correlation", "routing", and "Message Exchange Patterns" (MEPs). While it is anticipated that many features will be defined, this specification provides specifics only for two MEPs. Other features are left to be defined as extensions by other specifications.

The SOAP specifications can be found at w3.org , in other words, also provided by the W3C.

Interoperability is the primary concern in the ongoing issue between Microsoft and the European Union.

"The European Commission has concluded, after a five-year investigation, that Microsoft Corporation broke European Union competition law by leveraging its near monopoly in the market for PC operating systems (OS) onto the markets for work group server operating systems(1) and for media players(2). Because the illegal behaviour is still ongoing, the Commission has ordered Microsoft to disclose to competitors, within 120 days, the interfaces(3) required for their products to be able to 'talk' with the ubiquitous Windows OS. Microsoft is also required, within 90 days, to offer a version of its Windows OS without Windows Media Player to PC manufacturers (or when selling directly to end users). In addition, Microsoft is fined € 497 million for abusing its market power in the EU. " ( europa.eu.int )

So why can Microsoft claim to be a leader when it come to interoperability? Because they only discuss interoperability between computers based on Windows, something that is very easy to control in a research project, especially when sponsored by Microsoft as the Jupiter Research report, but indeed hard to control in real life when customers need to communicate with business.