This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Agile Buzz by James Robertson. Original Post: That sound is the other shoe dropping Feed Title: Cincom Smalltalk Blog - Smalltalk with Rants Feed URL: http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/rssBlog/rssBlogView.xml Feed Description: James Robertson comments on Cincom Smalltalk, the Smalltalk development community, and IT trends and issues in general. Latest Agile Buzz Posts Latest Agile Buzz Posts by James Robertson Latest Posts From Cincom Smalltalk Blog - Smalltalk with Rants

Well, we now know one of the things MS got from last spring's Sun bailout - Sun sold out OpenOffice:

The 10K filing, submitted as the result of a landmark, $1.6 billion agreement last April Fool's Day between the two companies, lists three exhibits that deal specifically with the highly publicized Microsoft settlement agreement. The meat of the document states that Microsoft reserves the right to pursue patent infringement claims against OpenOffice.org, but allows for indemnification against such claims against StarOffice. StarOffice is a commercial office suite sold by Sun that is based on the free OpenOffice.org project.

Meanwhile, Sun sounds an awful lot like Dan Rather:

"Sun is strongly committed to OpenOffice.org," May Petry, a Sun Microsystems spokesperson, told NewsForge today. "The patent protection indemnification is a common, standard practice among software corporations," she added.

This is one of the reasons that MS keeps winning these sorts of fights - for all their flaws in writing software, they understand marketing and poker very, very well. Have a look at this, for instance:

For its part, Sun has agreed to license the Windows desktop system communication protocols -- which is interesting in light of all the time and money Sun has invested in the Java Desktop System -- and said it will work closely with Microsoft to improve the interoperability of the Java and .NET platforms. Cross-licensing agreements will be involved, and a Windows certification for Sun's new Xeon-based servers was also announced.

Sun went into these negotiations with a very weak hand, and MS knew it - and took great advantage of it.