Microsoft and Linspire Collaboration Promotes Interoperability and Customer Choice

REDMOND, Wash., and SAN DIEGO, June 14 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Today Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) and Linux desktop provider Linspire Inc. announced a broad interoperability, technical collaboration that also includes intellectual property assurances. The agreement promotes customer choice and strengthens the bridge between the Microsoft(R) Windows(R) and Linux operating systems.

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Through this agreement, the companies will work to advance office document compatibility, enhance instant messaging interoperability and reinforce existing collaboration on digital media. In addition, Linspire will be providing its customers with the option of acquiring a patent covenant from Microsoft for customers operating the Linspire desktop.

"Linspire has always been about choice, and this announcement continues our tradition of offering options for improved interoperability, enhanced functionality and confidence," said Kevin Carmony, chief executive officer at Linspire. "Over the years, in an effort to expand choice, we have entered into dozens of agreements with commercial software vendors. It certainly made sense to collaborate with Microsoft, one of the most important partners in the PC ecosystem."

"Delivering interoperable solutions for our customers is an important priority," said Bill Hilf, general manager of Platform Strategy at Microsoft. "Through our ongoing collaborative relationships with commercial open source companies, we are demonstrating our commitment to delivering the value and increased interoperability customers want. Covering features from document formats to instant messaging and digital media, our announcement today with Linspire is an important step for our mutual customers."

Enhanced Functionality and Interoperability

Microsoft and Linspire will work together on a variety of technical projects designed to enhance interoperability and expand the functionality of Linspire. These include efforts focused on the following:

-- Document format compatibility. Linspire will join with Novell Inc.,

Microsoft and other companies to develop and distribute open

source-licensed translators that allow OpenOffice and Microsoft Office

users to better share documents. These efforts will enhance customer

choice by enabling effective translation between Ecma Open XML and

OpenDocument Format documents. -- Instant messaging. Linspire will license Microsoft's RT Audio Codec to

promote voice-enabled interoperability between Linspire's Pidgin

instant messaging client and Microsoft's instant messaging clients for

business, Microsoft Office Communicator, and, for consumers, Windows

Live(TM) Messenger. -- Digital media. Future releases of Linspire will now support the latest

Windows Media 10 audio and video codecs, allowing Linspire and

Microsoft Windows users to better share digital media files. -- TrueType fonts. Linspire will license popular Microsoft TrueType

fonts, including Arial, Georgia(R), Times New Roman and Verdana(R), so

Linspire users have improved experiences creating, editing and viewing

files and documents. -- Linspire customers only receive these three technologies (instant

messaging, digital media and TrueType fonts) if they purchase a

patent SKU. The technologies are not shipped with all Linspire 5.0

distributions. -- Web search. Linspire will select the Live Search service of Windows

Live as the Linspire 5.0 default Web search engine, allowing Microsoft

to bring Live Search to a broader set of users and providing leading

search capabilities to Linspire customers.

Intellectual Property Assurance

Through the agreement, Microsoft and Linspire have developed a framework to provide patent covenants for Linspire customers. The patent covenants provide customers with confidence that the Linspire technologies they use come with rights to relevant Microsoft patents. As well, Linspire now joins a growing group of open source software (OSS) distributors collaborating with Microsoft on efforts to establish rich interoperability, deliver IP assurance to customers and build the bridge between open source and proprietary software.

For Microsoft, the agreement is the latest in a series of collaborations with Linux platform and OSS providers. This list of collaborators includes JBoss, LG Electronics, Novell, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Xandros Inc., XenSource Inc. and Zend Technologies Inc.

About Linspire

Linspire, Inc. (http://www.linspire.com) was founded in 2001 to bring choice into the operating system market. The company's flagship product, the Linspire operating system, is an affordable, easy-to-use Linux-based operating system distributed primarily pre-installed on PCs for use in homes, schools and businesses. Linspire also pioneered the CNR Technology (http://www.cnr.com), which allows desktop Linux users access to thousands of software programs, packages and libraries, each of which can be downloaded and installed with just one mouse click.

About Microsoft

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq "MSFT") is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.