While Microsoft has signed up Novell, Xandros, and Linspire to interoperability and patent agreements, Mandriva’s chief executive, Francois Bancilhon, has denied that the company he leads will be next.
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, he wrote on the company’s corporate blog, adding that while the company was in favor of interoperability, it was not convinced by Microsoft’s claims that Linux and open source software infringes 235 of its patents.
At Mandriva, we believe working in heterogeneous environments is essential to our customers. So, interoperability between the Windows and Linux world is important and must be dealt with, and anything that helps this interoperability is a good thing, he wrote.
We also believe 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, he added.
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.
We also believe what we see, and up to now, 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.
Online speculation had suggested that Mandriva would be a likely target for Microsoft given its fragile financial position. The company recently announced that it is developing a new strategy designed to reduce costs and focus its attention following a poor set of financial results.
The Paris, France-based Linux vendor recorded revenue of just 870,000 euros ($1.2m) in its second quarter ended March 31. Revenue for the year to date was just 2.1m euros ($2.9m), down from 3.0m euros ($4.1m) in the first half of 2006.
Despite that, Bancilhon insisted that the company does not need help from Microsoft. 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, he wrote.
Earlier this week Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of the Ubuntu Linux distribution and CEO of Canonical, its corporate sponsor, also dismissed speculation that it was negotiating with Microsoft. We have declined to discuss any agreement with Microsoft under the threat of unspecified patent infringements, he stated.
