By making "intellectual property" deals with commercially oriented distributors of Linux, Microsoft isn't alienating anybody it hasn't turned off already.

So far, the two companies that have inked such deals -- Xandros and Novell -- are focused on selling server operating systems to large businesses. And while they may have community involvement, they're not community-oriented, like the Debian distro from which Xandros is derived, or even the wildly popular Ubuntu (itself a Debian derivative).

So Microsoft is sticking with business-centric companies for these deals, and I suspect the corporate customers of Xandros and Novell will, for the most part, applaud anything that keeps them from being harassed by Microsoft. And that legal pledge of non-harassment now becomes a marketing peg that Novell and Xandros can use to sell more server software. It's dirty business, it alienates the very people who are most passionate about your products, but it just might work for those involved.

That is, unless the GPLv3 -- the new free-software license designed to stop this kind of activity -- keeps it all from happening.

Author and free-software guru Richard Stallman puts it this way:

"Software patents are a vicious and absurd system that puts all software developers in danger of being sued by companies they have never heard of, as well as by all the megacorporations in the field. Large programs typically combine thousands of ideas, so it is no surprise if they implement ideas covered by hundreds of patents. Megacorporations collect thousands of patents, and use those patents to bully smaller developers. Patents already obstruct free software development."

As this story develops, keep an eye on Red Hat and Canonical. Red Hat, the biggest and probably longest-standing seller of commercial Linux product, has not entered into any such deal with Microsoft, and it's not for lack of trying on Microsoft's part (they go for the bigger fish first). And Canonical -- maker of the ultra-popular Ubuntu distro (you know, the one now being shipped with Dell PCs) -- risks alienating its large, active community if it made any deal with MS.

The problem with this whole can of worms is that Microsoft is gambling on never going to court. Once proceedings do start -- and I predict they eventually will -- Microsoft will have to name the patents it claims Linux and the other open-source programs are infringing upon, and then the advocates of free software will be able to challenge those patents in court. That won't be good PR for MS. And the legitimacy of many of these patents -- of which Microsoft is amassing thousands -- is questionable, if experts are to be believed. Among those who think Microsoft has overstepped is Linus Torvalds, the man who began the Linux project back in the '90s.

Where this all leaves the desktop -- i.e. the non-server segment of the market-- is more of a mystery. While corporations all around the world are paying big bucks for supported Linux and for Windows server products, too, the desktop market for operation systems in is a state of extreme flux.

Microsoft is doing all it can to discontinue sales of Windows XP to push the new Windows Vista, even though most of the hardware out there today isn't ready for it. And while Linux is sufficiently mature on the desktop for most users (marshaling more over with the huge amounts of free software that are relatively easy to install and very easy to maintain), there's no real retail market for Linux desktops, meaning anything that Red Hat or Novell is selling is not looking any better than Ubuntu, Mepis or any of the dozens of other top distros that have a desktop focus and which are totally, completely free for users.

At this point, even Ubuntu-maker Canonical knows the money is not in boxed, shrink-wrapped software but in the support of that software -- something Red Hat has been doing successfully and profitably for years now.

That's probably why Microsoft is making its move. It can probably handle shareing the server market with Linux because there are many, many enterprise users who not only won't but can't afford to pay Microsoft server software prices, even if they wanted to move over from Linux. And for the most part, such a move is not something these businesses and other entities are even contemplating.

But on the desktop, the MS Office suite has been under attack from the free Open Office for quite some time. And Open Office can run just as well under Windows as it does on Linux. (If it ever comes to Mac in a form that's as easy to install as it is on PC, look out!) Open Office, the Mozilla-created Thunderbird mail client and even the GNOME and KDE office suites just keep chipping away at the Microsoft revenue base. (And that's why Microsoft is fighting Open Office's open document format in favor of its own "open" standard.)

Once you lose the apps, next thing to go is the OS.

I do a lot of testing of operating systems -- many versions of Windows, many more of Linux -- and I'm not one who says Linux is better 100 percent of the time. Windows has its strengths, along with many weaknesses, and the claims made for Linux are often overblown. I can boot Windows 2000 on machines of questionable vintage and get a lot of things done, seldom crashing (the opposite of the crash-tastic Windows 98), with very forgiving video and audio support. Pity that MS isn't selling Windows 2000 for $20 a disc. I'd love to get XP and do more testing with it ... but one thing remains ...

Windows costs money, especially when you're not using the version that shipped with your PC. And Microsoft structures Windows to, shall we say, suggest that you purchase even more software from them, as well as software from other vendors, for such tasks as security, virus-prevention, file compression, graphic design, backup, recovery, disk maintenance and more.

In contrast, Linux is almost always free, with free upgrades, free utilities and applications (although some do cost money and are often worth it), open sources (letting you see what it's made out of, and letting you and others help fix what's wrong with it) -- and you can make one, 50 or 1,000 copies and do what you wish with them.

The power to try out hundreds of distributions and thousands of applications without paying anything is key. I'm not saying that everything in the world ought to be free, but for software the free way appears to be working just fine.

And if you're a corporation or individual who is uncomfortable with free software (and, presumably, just as uncomfortable stealing it from Microsoft, Adobe, etc.), there are boxed Linux (and other open-source) products out there at retail. And when you do pay, as I've said, you're often paying for technical support, which could very well be worth the money.

All Microsoft needs to do to "beat" Linux is to be better, to do what its customers -- current and future -- want. And isn't being "better" a whole lot better than issuing threats via technology reporters?

Microsoft should cast its eye toward Apple -- a company that uses better design, functionality and, well, Apple-ness to sell more stuff.

Being better -- it's what should be for Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's dinner.