Somewhere, lost in all the big news about Sun buying MySQL, Oracle buying BEA, and various and sundries, there was the news that Mandriva and Turbolinux were going into business together. Well, sort of.

In actuality, what the two companies are doing are setting up a joint development lab, cleverly called Manbo, to work on some code together. In the olden times, before the harsh dragon of Microsoft's patented patent agreement with Linux distributors reared its ugly head, such a joint venture would be regarded as cool. Another sign that "coopetition" was alive and well in the open source arena.

In this arrangement, however, that notion has been spoiled somewhat by the fact that in 2007, Turbolinux signed one of those interoperability agreements with Microsoft, which included the infamous "we won't your customers if your stuff infringes on our patents" clause. If you'll recall, Turbolinux was the most recent Linux company to do this, following Novell, Linspire, and Xandros.

During the Age of Capitulation, as I have named it, one company actually took a proactive stance and said "Nuh uh. Not us. No way, José." Except they were more eloquent about it, with cool literary/historical references that I had to Google for, because it was Mandriva and I'm pretty sure the words "No way José" have ever been uttered by CEO François Banchilon.

More Here