Red Hat, Ubuntu to Microsoft: Go to hell

According to a report from Down Under — this story from ZDNet Australia, to be exact — two of the largest GNU/Linux distros, Red Hat and Ubuntu, have told the death star in Redmond to take a hike.

According to the story, Red Hat referred back to a statement written when Microsoft revealed it was partnering with Novell, saying that its position remained unaltered. Red Hat director of corporate communications Leigh Day added: “We continue to believe that open source and the innovation it represents should not be subject to an unsubstantiated tax that lacks transparency.”

“An unsubstantiated tax that lacks transparency” — you mean like protection money you’d pay to a racketeer?

Canonical’s Mark Shuttleworth said Ubuntu stands to benefit from improving interoperability between Linux and Windows, but finds that the threat of patent infringement Microsoft has made “have [no] legal merit, and they are no incentive for us to work with Microsoft on any of the wonderful things we could do together.” Shuttleworth also finds significant fault with Microsoft’s Open XML.

“I have no confidence in Microsoft’s Open XML specification to deliver a vibrant, competitive and healthy market of multiple implementations,” Shuttleworth said in a blog entry. “I don’t believe that the specifications are good enough, nor that Microsoft will hold itself to the specification when it does not suit the company to do so.”

So to Novell, Xandros and Linspire — oh, I’m sorry, “Lindows” — , that’s how you should have played it.

(Larry Cafiero, editor/publisher of Open Source Reporter, is an associate member of the Free Software Foundation.)

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