Mandriva and Microsoft

Adam has already unofficially dismissed rumours on François' part, but still I feel like pointing out the obviousness everybody with some real knowledge of Mandriva should've spotted..

Let's summarize arguments against silly speculations about Mandriva wanting to consider any Microsoft deal seen from my perspective:

1. Mandriva is europe based, not such big pressure in the ~only location where such agreements would hold much relevance

2. Mandriva has no proprietary components with any concerns of Microsoft

3. ALL of Mandriva's software published is free and has been released under the GPL, proprietary software is none of Mandriva's concerns, only proprietary software relationships is through partners

4. Mandriva has no patents for Microsoft to buy. Some speculations has been about Microsoft buying out companies through these deals, so far from what I've seen this isn't really the matter, Microsoft has paid huge sums for patents (ie. m$ paid novell several times more than the opposite). Mandriva has no intelluctual property for sale nor would it be possible in the Europe.

5. Mandriva has already declined invitations to "similar" partnerships like United Linux in the past. United Linux consisted of Conectiva, SCO/Caldera, TurboLinux & SuSE which was a collaboration on a common base with too commercial approach. (ie. binary-only, short summary; it's dead with only SuSE & TurboLinux left..) It should give enough indication about Mandriva not joining such this time either. Speculations about TurboLinux & MS might be more interesting though since they already do ship some proprietary software as well it's previous participation in United Linux. Still I wouldn't expect though it as TurboLinux is a japanase company, not US..

6. Mandriva has one of the strongest communities among the Linux distributions, especially with regards to the commercial vendors, signing such agreements with Microsoft could very fell cause a fallout with the community.

So in conclusion from my ramblings, Mandriva would have nothing to gain while everything to loose by signing such an agreement.

By reading the speculations about this so far, it all seems like 99% FUD to me while the only valid reasoning behind the speculations being the fact that a few other vendors has already done so..

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