This is a devils advocate post in response to my original post "Reasons your parents should use Linux". Though my original post intended to explain 5 reasons you should switch your parents to Linux, this post will address what many people have commented on in the past few days. 5 reasons why you should NOT switch your parents to Linux.

Having watched how Microsoft included patents in its deal with then EU (more on this in the next post), it is worth pointing out that the US won’t extend antitrust sanctions, despite rising opposition and the recent decision in Europe.

Over two years ago, Microsoft and Novell signed an interoperability deal. Part of this agreement was a patent deal that suggested that Linux infringed on Microsoft's IP. Since then, Microsoft has signed a number more of these deals with various companies, but the Novell one is still the most famous.

"There has been a lot of press coverage about the Microsoft/TomTom settlement. Unfortunately, so far, I have seen no one speak directly about the dangers that this deal could pose to software freedom, and what our community should consider in its wake. Karen and I discussed some of these details on our podcast, but I thought it would be useful to have a blog post about this issue as well..."

Even though it's a corporation, Red hat has continually placed being a good member of the open source community over being one of the corporate community. Their dedication to open source is outstanding, and yet they receive very little thanks. As a stronghold and *the* prime of example of corporate GNU/Linux, they are an important domino. We have

I've been thinking about something for a few days now. It's about the latest Novell-Microsoft deal that was announced on August 20, where Microsoft agreed to buy another $100 million worth of vouchers from Novell. I was wondering: how come two public companies can make a deal that seems to me to be material and yet keep pieces of the deal secret?

This post was actually meant to be a response to a journalist who asked what I thought about the February 2008 announcement by Microsoft on their "Strategic Changes in Technology and Business Practices to Expand Interoperability". To put into context, this was released on Feb 21st, the weekend before the BRM, so it was not particularly on my mind at that time.

You might imagine that an application for desktop notes would be too commonplace to generate controversy. Yet when Hubert Figuiere created Gnote, a port of the GNOME application Tomboy to C++, controversy erupted immediately.

Microsoft is regretting the way it handled the patent protection deal with Novell and other Linux vendors, according to open-source advocates.