“No, really. Our deal with Microsoft will really help the open-source community. Really! Look how much Microsoft has helped the Java cause!”

That is, essentially, what Xandros CEO Andreas Typaldos has frantically claimed, flanked by massive military brutes wearing black shades and windows-logo cufflinks. Under a new deal announced Monday, Xandros and Microsoft agreed to a broad set of joint technology and marketing initiatives. The companies plan to develop software that will link Xandros’ System Management tools with Microsoft’s System Center with plans to give IT departments an easier way to manage their combined environments.

Windows Linux PatentMore troubling, however, is the fact that Microsoft will extend “patent covenants” to Xandros’ Linux customers, waving its right to sue them for using what the company claims is Microsoft technology embedded in Linux. “For users, it’s a way of saying that if sparks fly between Linux and Microsoft, they have insurance,” said Typaldos.

Obviously, the open-source community is pissed. This “deal with the devil” plan all but puts another nail in the argument that Linux does not use Microsoft Patents, as has been argued in the Novell case. In response, they are re-working the GPL license to prevent future deals. Under the third version of the General Public License, expected to be published in final form this month by the Free Software Foundation, similar deals that were not inked by March 28 are forbidden. As a result, it would appear that Xandros will not be allowed to distribute open source code licensed under GPLv3 because of its relationship with Microsoft.

Typaldos doesn’t seem worried, stating “If you are a businessperson, you can’t worry about every eventuality.”

Thus the commercialization of Open Source code has taken another leap forward, screwing everything good about it in the process. No great surprise, I suppose. But that doesn’t make it any easier to accept.