Ubuntu64

I’ve been really curious to know Ubuntu’s position on the MS Patent Claims Issue. You can read more about them on LinuxInsider if you’re completely oblivious to what is going on with these claims.

On June 14 I decided that I had enough digging around on the internet trying to find out and wanted to ask Canonical about their position on the MS Patent Claim Issue personally. I sent an email to pr@canonical.com (Ubuntu Public Relations) and on June 15, 2007 1:43:18 AM Gerry Carr sent me a reply. Gerry stated that:

thing I can do is point you to Mark Shuttleworth’s blog on this
http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/118

We were asked for a lot of comment on this at that time and Mark has more or less summarised the Canonical view on this topic. Beyond this it is not something we want to comment on.

If you read that you’ll realize that my question wasn’t answered at all which at the time didn’t bother me too much because I know that it’s a complicated subject and when a company states that they are going to put their feet down in the mud and leave an impression it tends to make big news. I was guessing that Cononical wasn’t quite ready to do that.

I can’t say that I go and read Mark Shuttleworth’s Blog every day but Slashdot is a totally different story. About half an hour ago I discovered a post on Slashdot that stated that Mark had decided to publicly announce his position with regards to the MS Patent Claims on his blog!

Of course since I had JUST RECENTLY asked them to do this for me I clicked that link as fast as I could and started reading his comments on the issue.

I was very happy and almost relieved to read comments like:

Neither Canonical nor the Ubuntu project have any interest in signing an agreement with Microsoft on the back of the threat of unspecified patents.

So it is somewhat offensive to be threatened with an allegation of an IP infringement.

You can read the full blog comment on Mark’s Blog. Which was posted sometime between 5am and 6am on June 15.

A little comment for Mark right here… I’d be a little offended if the timing between the reply to my email and the comment on your blog were not just a coincidence.

Update: On June 16th Mark also posted something a little more lengthy about the subject which can be found on his blog here as well.