Steve Ballmer is making threats yet again in an effort to frighten the Linux community and those companies that are either selling or considering running Linux distributions.

In a clear threat against open-source users, Ballmer repeated his earlier assertions that open source “is not free,” referring to the possibility that Microsoft may sue Linux sellers. Microsoft has suggested that the Linux operating system infringes some of its intellectual property, but it has never named the patents in question.

“I would not anticipate that we make a huge additional revenue stream from our Novell deal, but I do think it clearly establishes that open source is not free, and open source will have to respect the intellectual-property rights of others, just as any other competitor will,” Ballmer said.

“But I don’t want to eliminate in your minds the notions of risk of pricing that comes from competition with open source. We are higher-priced, but we bring greater value,” he added.

Ballmer repeats threats against Linux – CNet News.com

You know what Steve? There is really one simple way to resolve the whole issue of having your “intellectual property” in Linux. Simply tell us what in Linux is infringing and it’ll get removed. Its really that simple.

Of course, if you did that, you wouldn’t be able to make all these big, bold, “press getting” statements any longer, and that’d just be dangerous for him. They couldn’t continue to beat vendors over the head to try and force them to sign up with them in the same way Novell did.

Was Novell’s course the right course? Of course not! :-)

The problem is that Novell went in there thinking they were holding Microsoft over the barrel and getting Microsoft to acknowledge Novell’s patents that are in Microsoft Windows. They never expected that Microsoft’s PR would be able to masterfully turn the whole thing around and make it look like Novell had something in Linux they wanted to stop Microsoft from suing them over. Oh, and don’t forget that Microsoft managed to get Novell to say they’ll implement OpenXML and make it available in SuSE’s release of OpenOffice.org.

Novell is suffering the effects of their deal with Microsoft. They’ve had several high profile staff defections leave and move to other companies. They’ve also had a pretty significant public backlash against their OpenSUSE platform. Their business powered SuSE Enterprise Linux still sits in basically the same position it did before the Microsoft agreement. Effectively, they’ve had absolutely no benefits at all from their partnership with Microsoft and it has cost them. Not significantly, but enough to hurt.

Will Steve Ballmer get his wish and have other Linux vendors come crawling for a deal of their own? Not likely. Looking across the landscape, the only one I can think of that might do so is Larry Ellison and his Oracle Unbreakable Linux, but he’s not exactly a true Linux vendor. He’s just trying to steal business off Redhat and that would be his primary objective for doing so.

No, any person or company producing a Linux distribution will completely ignore Microsoft’s claims of IP infringement. Would you plead guilty and settle out of court when you don’t even know the charges against you? If Microsoft really wants people to take them seriously they need to make it very clear what patents are being violated by Linux and then they’re likely to get some discussion. They need to be very careful though, because if they do try to sue any Linux company or any person that produces or uses Linux, they’ll find that there is a very large patent portfolio that is likely to be used against them as well.

Ultimately, as I’ve said many times before, including about the SCO litigation, Microsoft needs to put up or shut up. Until they do that, they’re losing face and respect every time they make these kinds of statements. Look at what happened to SCO.