Microsoft and Panda Diplomacy
China for centuries has been using a tactic called Panda Diplomacy to endear themselves to whichever country they feel the need to. Basically, they loan out pandas (since Chinese law forbids actually giving away pandas to foreigners) for foreign zoos as an act of goodwill. Even the US has received pandas under this policy - President Nixon got two of them. It’s certainly a nice gesture in most cases, but recently it’s been used for more devious purposes. In 2005, after decades of disputes with Taiwan as to whether they were independent or Chinese property, China offered Taiwan two pandas - not under a loan, but as a free gift. This seemed like a very magnanimous move on China’s part, and was even very popular among the Taiwanese public, but implicit in the deal was a concession by the Taiwanese government that Taiwan was in fact a Chinese property, since the pandas were not on loan. Despite the popularity of the gesture, Taiwan’s government did refuse the pandas in the end, thus preserving their dignity as an independent state.
Likewise, Microsoft has just struck a deal with a longtime enemy, Novell, makers of SUSE Linux. On the surface, it seems like an equally magnanimous deal: Microsoft gives Novell hundreds of millions of dollars for SUSE licenses, agrees to support customers running SUSE, and promises protection for patent infringement.
Microsoft and China are both great at putting on these benevolent façades, but just as China had no interest in endearing themselves to Taiwan, Microsoft has no interest in promoting SUSE. This is not a peace: Implicit in the MS-Novell deal is the concession that SUSE, and Linux on a broader scale, does indeed infringe on Microsoft’s patents. Think of the “I’m Thinkin’ Arbys” commercials, except instead of the Arbys logo, there’s a giant blinking sign that says “ULTERIOR MOTIVE!!” floating above Steve Ballmer’s head. In this case, it’s not even speculation as to Microsoft’s intent: Ballmer is notoriously loose-lipped. “only a customer who has Suse Linux actually has paid properly for the use of intellectual property from Microsoft”. Like China’s (arguably false) position that it owns Taiwan, Microsoft is of the (arguably false) position that Linux infringes on its intellectual property.
Taiwan was smart enough to resist the smooth talking, but Novell bit the bait hook line and sinker. This is a terrible precedent for free and open software as a whole - and thankfully companies like RedHat and Samba are openly condemning the deal - but now that Microsoft has seduced a key player in the open source community into submission, their legal bludgeon could carry far more weight in future battles.
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