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Gates: Microsoft IP Finds Its Way Into Free Software
Andy Tai writes "While speaking to financial analysts and commenting on the SCO lawsuit, Bill Gates made the claim that Microsoft's IP is also included in Free/Open source software. Without being specific, he said "There's no question that in cloning activities, IP from many, many companies, including Microsoft, is being used in open-source software. When people clone things, that often becomes unavoidable." Considering Microsoft's claims of ownership over technologies like CIFS, does this mean Microsoft may also launch SCO-style attacks against Free Software/Open Source?"
Well, I guess this is the new FUD Wars. MS and its friends will be spreading this "Linux stole some copyrighted code/idea" propaganda to slow down adaptation of Linux. Strange that we didn't see it in a Halloween Document, this must be stuff they kept a tight secret about.
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
Although OSS does try to clone Windows "Look and Feel" (KDE themes etc..) and even Windows features in the form of WINE, the community is very pedantic on making sure they do not use Microsoft code or break any laws.
If developers of Open Sauce software disregard IP laws they are shooting themselves in the foot, because the whole paradigm of Free software relies on users sticking to the IP/Copyright laws and complying with the licence.
I believe this is the regular Microsoft FUD, trying to kick Linux when it is "down" .
There is no god
Wouldn't Apple then be able to claim that the Windows GUI is their IP, and then Xerox could claim that everyone's is theirs?
What about the guys who invented the Abacus? Shouldn't they get a cut too?
Sound waves should be free!
I was wondering when the intellectual property attacks would come. It's really the only place open source is vulnerable. I'm really just surprised it took this long.
Any takers on a pool for how long before our good buddies at Microsoft start some legal action?
this is a perfect example on why you should use the GNU/GPL license instead of BSD or other open source models.
It means that big companies will find it more difficult to steal and bury.
* Carthago Delenda Est *
Besides, using the term "clone" is so vague as to be meaningless. There's a big difference between copying something directly and achieving the same results through reverse engineering.
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
With the garbage that gets a software patent there is certainly IP from microsoft in Linux.
Then again, there's cetainly IP from microsoft in first year programming assignments, "Hello world" probably violates microsoft's IP by now.
Actually, this is exactly what Bill would say at this time. When Gartner says to hold off on Linux development, the business world pricks up its ears. When a few days later, Bill makes a casual statment that Microsoft code has been SCO'd, all of the sudden this is a trend. Linux has major IP problems, is what business will hear.
Bill won't probably ever give details about what IP he's talking about--he doesn't have to. The value of his statement is that it highlights MSFT's long shadow looming over OSS. Specific threats would be refutable--his statement is not.
Net effect? A wonderful chilling effect (in Bill's eyes) on open source development with no costs for MSFT.
I'm much funnier now that I'm a subscriber.
If any manager or businessman begins an assertion with "There's no question", "Clearly", or "It's obvious", that assertion is nothing of the sort. It's a wild-assed guess at best, and a lie at worst. They say these things to give their statement a false measure of authority, and because they can't stand not appearing to know everything all the time. These are the phrases that shift my BS meter into overdrive...
Well, there you have it.
MS recently paid SCO a liscense for UnixWare. Why? Well, I'm no Microsoft PR Troll, but if I were them, and planning on a new "Linux users are dirty lousy thieves" campaign, I'd do my best to let the little freaks at SCO be heard, even if everyone who has the slightest bit of knowledge in the subject knows SCO's full of it. Just long enough to be heard by most people, and get the community whispering in doubt in places. "SCO keeps shouting that Linux stole their IP, what if they're right?"
Because now MS can run "Us too!" ads and FUD Linux in interviews at will. It doesn't have to be true, or even slightly true, all they have to do is put the idea out there and the PHBs of the world, already a bit put off by the SCO mess, will buy it hook, line and sinker.
It's not like the various Open Source people (ESR, the FSF, etc) are given nearly as much press time in contrast to Gates.
How to fight this? Demand MS put up or shut up. Loudly. Whenever anyone is within earshot. Fight their FUD with honest, biting truth -- Linux is open source, we have nothing to hide, and is MS thinks we've stolen something, they're welcome to show some proof. Mention Kerebos, HTML 3.2, and whatever other instances of IP that MS has "Shifting Standardized" or "Embrace and Extended" into being a royal pain in the arse to use.
Of course, this is all assuming that Gates won't sneak some GPLed code into Windows now, and just claim that we stole it from him instead... Which is a decidedly more frightening prospect.
They can't beat us technology wise, they can't beat us pricing wise, but they can lie about us until everyone's too scared to use us.
If we look back at the early suits involving Microsoft and Apple, there may be indicators of how this might turn out. In that case Apple was suing Microsoft for duplicating the look and feel of their GUI but Apple didn't win. I don't know the details of what MS is claiming but does this qualify as a bonafied legal precident?
Gates's main argument here is basically "if you make a clone of one of our programs, it becomes impossible to keep our code out of your program."
Yeah, I remember that time that I made that clone of IE, and then Gates himself showed up at my home, pointed a gun at my head, and forced me to copy and paste code right from IE into my browser. Right...
Last time I checked, it's not illegal for two programs to do the same thing, while having absolutely no code in common.
Let's think about this, anyway: how the hell does MS code get put into linux? MS's code is closed, we can't access it. I bet Linux gets a lot of kernel patches coming from billg@microsoft.com. On the other hand, Linux code is open, you can see all of it, if you want. It would be trivially easy for some coder at MS to see some linux code, and put it into windows without anybody noticing.
If there is any overlapping code in both linux and windows, it's far, FAR more likely that MS stole it from linux, not the other way around. It's also possible that they both came from BSD.
Hay, if they clime open source stole some of their IP, then they'll just have to open up their source codes so we can see if they've stolen any GPL'ed code from OSS.
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One is born into aristocracy, but mediocrity can only be achieved through hard work.
BSD code is in there, in full compliance with the license.
Microsoft actaully does use GPL code as well in some of their unix interopability software. Again, believe it or not, they actually comply with the license.
With the pressure on Microsoft, I don't think they would risk getting caught stealing code. If such an accusation came up and had even the slightest whiff of legitimacy, I'd expect to see several MS developers fired immediately and MS offering a large settlement deal.
If you can't beat them, sue them.
Microsoft is seeing the end. The end is near and they are starting to prepare for it by using the courts as a an offense instead of building a better product. The only defense (instead of building a better product) is to sue the product thats beating the shit out of you and tie them up legally.
This exact thing is happening to me. I created a product that is better than my one competitor out there. I sell it for a fraction of the cost and it's better technology (of course it's based on Open Source). I've taken 20 - 30 new customers from my one competitor in the last six 5 months. Not bad.
Well, what does the competitor do? They pull a credit report on my company, start making "wild claims" (read: FUD) about me and the company to their existing customers, even went as far as changing their product to make it hard for their existing customers to leave. Recently, I'm hearing that they are using lawyers now to find out information about me and my company... It's an ugly world.
What am I going to do? hahaha. Ignore eveything and keep going on. I won't stop. They'll have to show up with the Sheriff's to pull me out of my office. My belief, this is not about winning a court case, it's about "killing the little guy by legally strangling them."
The days of innovation and competition are over.
Under the present IP and patent laws, he's probably right - given MS holds zillions of patents, it would be very surprising if some Linux stuff didn't step on these patents.
However, I don't think he'd be silly enough to try to enforce these patents. Given IBM's love and support for Linux, and given that MS is almost certainly stepping on some of IBM's even larger set of patents, then he'd potentially be setting MS up for a world of hurt.
There's been a gentleman's agreement for years between IBM, MS and many others that sharing their patents via cross-licencing agreements is the only way to advance the industry as a whole. If MS tries to go against this agreement, IBM could give them a world of hurt (and get a lot of pain in return).
If there's "no question" that your IP is being used in open source software, tell us where. If you're not willing to put your money where your mouth is, the world should rightfully assume that your attacks are baseless and without merit.
I hope you continue on with this approach and name a specific distro or Open Source project so they can sue you for defamation.
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
But it's not just the code! That's where you're missing the most critical part of his claim. When you patent softare concepts, you're patenting every array of copying that can happen, and that's the sad part of the matter. Open Source, though only out there for non profit means (until you arrive at Redhat, and the such), has to be aware that it can't trample the rights of big companies, even if it's being sucked dry of all of it's code at the same time.
We live in a capitalistic world, and frankly, an attack like this should be expected. It's a great idea to have people working on open source software for the fun of it, but it has to be original ideas. OSS is like the product of a company. If it's created and it tramples the rights of others, then companies that have been trampled will have the right to come back and request damages from ANYONE that uses the software.
It's a frightening world out there for Open Source Software, but it's a real world. We need not just look past these claims as "Micro$oft hogwash" or anything of the sort. SCO and Microsoft might be making VERY valid points, and it's something the OSS community MUST watch out for.
I love Open Source Software, but I also respect the rights of others, however evil they might be.
...when I saw XP first, was "Finally one of the guys at M$ saw Gnome and understood Windows UI was years behind current standards".
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
windows inet tools use BSD source, many use other open source libs [libpng, zlib, etc...] doesn't phase them. The fact that they rely on them for success...
The BSD TCP source is used by just about everyone, because when it was written it was the best. The 4.4 version is pretty much the reference product. And the Berkeley people had the wisdom to release it under the BSD license, which means that everyone else quickly adopted it and thus followed some sort of standard.
There is no hypocrisy involved. Microsoft's campaigns against open-source are misguided and misleading, but they have made it clear that they think a package like the BSD TCP stack should be released under a very liberal license. It would be a disaster if it had been released under the GPL- companies would have used their own inferior implementations, which would probably end up being somewhat incompatible or would break the standard. Although it's arguable whether Microsoft has played fast and loose with the protocol, I think we can agree that it's far better that they start out with the same implementation as everyone else rather than code their own...
As for libpng, same deal. The PNG team simply wanted to replace GIF with something that wouldn't get people sued, so they release libpng under a BSD-like license. If they hadn't, Microsoft simply wouldn't have supported PNG at all.
From the article:
"One thing about the GPL is that you can't just license IBM Linux, or Red Hat Linux," Gates said. "The way the GPL works, if you license any Linux, you have to license all Linux."
What a bunch of crap. This is disinformation at its best.
- Linux is a Unix kernel clone.
- There is no such thing as Red Hat Linux or IBM Linux. There are IBM or RH distributions that make use of the Linux kernel
- Wtf does "licensing any Linux" and "licensing all Linux" means ? I'm assuming Gates mean licensing any Linux-based distro, in which case you adhere to whatever licensing terms the distro is released under, licensing terms which in turn are compliant with the GPL (since Linux is included).
That blurb from Gates means rigorously nothing whatsoever. But most people aren't even aware of what the GPL is, and when they quickly read something like that, they decude "uuh, Linux is dangerous to my business" or something. That's just ridiculous.
As much as I hate RMS' rants, flamewars and stubbornness, I must admit we need him more than ever today.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
What Gates and people of his mindset continue to miss (or ignore) is the fact that 90% of software developers work on code that is never sold. They work for brokerages, shipping companies, hospitals. For code that is never meant to be sold, licensing is rarely an issue.
The GPL only threatens software companies whose primary source of revenue comes from shrink-wrapped proprietary applications.
MjM
I only mod up...
XKCD:Xeric Knowledge Comically Dispen
Also, copyright covers the right to make derivative works. So if there's an icon or other UI element that was a tweaked Windows element then that's technically copyright infringement. It's awefully hard to prove though (given the Apple v. MSFT precedent.
In short, Gates is right but it doesn't mean they'll start firing lawsuits against open source...They didn't previously sue their other competitors unlike how Sun/Oracle lobbied and/or sued MSFT.
We see it in TimeLine suits, the shafting of SpyGlass Systems, Blue Mountain Greeting Cards et al, the clone wars beteen MS-DOS and DR-DOS, the emBorgment of STAC Systems to settle yet another suit, and so on ad nauseum. Heck the company started by dumpster-diving for printouts of other people's software, and probably also had a copy of the Dartmouth BASIC source in hand while they wrote their 4K ROM BASIC (which they had already sold as pre-existing; ie, their first product was vapourware, the start of a long tradition). This is the company that copied the Mac interface right down to details like throwing away variable-sized elevators in order to look more Mac-like (and got sued for that one too).
This is a severe case of the event horizon casting aspersions about the kettle's colour! "Chutzpah" isn't a substantial enough concept for this, it isn't even in the running!
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
What delightfull fud
The good mr. Gates completely fails to identify the nature of the IP. He completely fails to identify how the IP is protecteted. And, He completely fails to explain how it got away from microsoft.
Lets consider the possibilities
1. Source code copying
The usual suspect. As always its much more likely that microsoft stole from the open source world than the other way around. You can completely discount the historical incidents and still come to this conclusion. Its just to easy for Microsoft to take something thats publicly available and hide it in its code bloat. OSS developers, would have to somehow purloin Microsfts source and include it into existing projects. NOT LIKELY
2. Look and feel
Microsoft more or less destroyed this argument in their lawsuit with Apple. Apple still owns Xerox Parc and is releasing Darwin under GPL.
3. The ever popular patent system
This is where the pain can come from. Our patent system is seriously broken. Between business method patents, Patents for devices that never get built and the ever popular overly broad but legal patent, are microsofts best weapon against OSS. The sheer cost of prosecuting a lawsuit makes it an effective weapon. On the other hand the organizations developing OSS in general have no assets, they have allready released the code to the world, and theres nothing to stop them from reorganizing in saner parts of the world (PGP excellent example).
As usual this type of action makes me happy I am an NRA member and support the 2nd ammendment to the hilt. The reason smaller government is best is because it belongs to whoever is willing to buy it.
In any case, it is obvious to me that there are still a great many hurdles humanity must face before individuals actually have the freedom so many millions of people have died for in the last century alone. Or something... It is just painful to watch as large corporations push smaller companies and people around, all the while receiving the blessing of our "representatives." I don't know what else to do. Vote, write your representatives, protest. Anything we can legally do only marginally works, if that...
"Civilization is only skin deep"
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
I suspect that the IP they're referring to isn't just source code. Off the top of my head, for example, check out this fvwm95 screenshot. I'm sure MS considers the Windows UI as its intellectual property, and though IANAL I suspect they may be right.
If coca-cola brings out a new drink, i do a chemical analysis on it and duplicate it, then bring it out at half the price in a remarkably similar bottle, i'd get sued to death. I don't see why people think the software world should work differently.
Because free software cloning doesn't work that way. When someone write a clone of some Microsoft product, it is assumed that they don't disassemble the original and copy the code (the equivalent of your chemical analysis). The clone is a completely different piece of code with the same capabilities as the originals. Pepsi Cola similarly clean-room engineered their version of sugared water without analyzing the chemical composition of Coca Cola, and they're still around.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
I'm seeing a lot of people saying something to the effect of "put up or shut up". Are you sure you really want that? How would it affect your life if the Samba or Apache projects were shut down for patent infringement? I'm not saying this is likely, or even possible, but just think about it for a moment. MS could cause a LOT of problems without even having a valid legal leg to stand on. They certainly could convince a lot of companies to question adoption of open source. And it's not as if they are exactly convinced about it now...
SCO is the last gasps of a desparate company. Any legal action from Microsoft will be very calculated and a much bigger threat. Remember, $40 billion buys a lot of time from your friendly neighborhood legal team. That's pretty hard to fight, even if you are right.
> Besides, using the term "clone" is so vague as to be meaningless. There's a big difference between copying something directly and achieving the same results through reverse engineering.
And what the heck would we copy anyway? If I am going to clone a MS product would it be any easier to hack their code to change it from using the Windows API to use Qt or GTK+, than it would be to write the whole thing from scratch? Or to use code from the Windows morphodite bastard spinoff of the VMS architecture as part of a UNIX clone?
Get re-al, Bi-ill.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I realize everyone thinks SCO's actions are sleezy and MS is being oportunistic, but I really think this lawsuit is good for linux as a whole and me in particular. Why? The chicks. The current scenario is:
random girl: can I check my email?
me: sure...
girl: your desktop looks weird, I want to go home now. I'm confused...
but if linux does include stolen code it becomes dangerous:
different girl: mmmm, is that linux you're using?
me: why yes... it is (sly smile)
girl: you're so dangerous, take me now.... on the keyboard...
One can always dream :)
(And before you make wild geek accusations, yes I do have a girl friend and this was intended to be funny :)
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
If they were honest in this, they would have released their own protocol implementations under a similar liberal licence. So, where is the library to handle word documents? Or the reference implementation for SMB? What about .NET?
Ciao
----
FB
Can they now close down the MS German office just like they did the SCO German office for making unsubstantiated claims?
I am not sure how smart this is for MS. I would think they would want to be distancing themselves from SCO at this point. SCO has obviously been manipulating the financial system by their outrageous and contradictory claims. If SCO is found guilty for pumping up its stock price by making claims about Linux IP, wouldn't MS then be in a difficult situation? Not even going into anti-trust issues . . .
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
". If it's created and it tramples the rights of others, then companies that have been trampled will have the right to come back and request damages from ANYONE that uses the software."
I'm sorry these rights are a recent fabrication - mostly by America - they did not exist when I entered the business 20 years ago in England.
Why should I recognise them now. I sure as hell didn't vote for them. Did you? I doubt it!
The stack could have been released under the LGPL and accomplished all the benefits you described.
In fact, this GPL FUD Microsoft loves to spread around like a nasty fart always fails to make mention of the fact that significant elements of Linux are in fact LGPLed and available to companies that wish to write commercial software for the OS. Witness the incoporation of khtml into Apple's Safari browser.
There are some very interesting and compelling technologies coming to linux in 2.6 that, in my opinion, obviously have certain competing OS companies running scared.
IP FUD was the expected strategy Microsoft would undertake; Take this statement from Mr Gates:
"One thing about the GPL is that you can't just license IBM Linux, or Red Hat Linux, The way the GPL works, if you license any Linux, you have to license all Linux."
This leaves an un-informed person the impression that they might have to make deals with everysingle Linux vendor/software writer out there. Total utterly dishonest bullshit and a blatant missrepresentation of the GPL.
Do not spread "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" over the internet, thank you.
What do you mean, OSS must die? Did Bill Gates say that anywhere? Oh, you're just arbritrarily deciding what Billy said.
Microsoft has a long history of allowing things like WINE to exist. People have been cloning their products for years into free and shareware versions. As a matter of fact, they are the least litigious company in that department that I can think of.
The only thing they did due was sue for use of the name Lindows, which in my opinion was understandable.
But, of course, Slashdot needed a controversial paint-Microsoft-as-bad article today. So the only thing this article did was take a quite logical quote by Gates--people who clone someone else's products are likely copying their IP in doing so (note that he didn't say anything about code, people)--and end with a question out of nowhere that there was no reason to bring up, and past history contradicts. Oh, and end with the obligatory SCO reference to ensure postage to the front page.
These kinds of articles are formulaic, as are their inevitable responses, as yours illustrates. People fall for it time and time again. "+5 Interesting!"
"Sufferin' succotash."
He's not claiming reverse engineering.
What he's claiming is very interesting for people that aren't familiar with the nastiness of big business, though. Sort of an eye-opener for me a few years back, and tech folks should be aware of this if they're interested in IP.
See, you know how most Free Software folks complain bitterly about (at least some) software patents, saying that it makes things really hard to operate? They aren't lying. Engineers working at big companies ran into the same problem *years* ago. You simply cannot build things in a world with this many tech patents. It's impossible. You'd have to check through huge numbers of patents to do anything.
So big business came up with a solution. They just cross-license *everything*. One company is free to use all of another company's (or organizations...for example, MIT and Microsoft cross-license) patents. Most tech companies with decent IP portfolios do this with their competitors. For example, Seagate, Western Digital, Maxtor, etc, all cross license each others' patents.
This seems, at first, counterproductive. After all, isn't the point of patents to give you a short-term edge over competitors, to encourage new development? Nope. Patents in a situation like this still provide one big benefit to their owners -- they maintain oligopolies. If a new hard drive manufacturer comes along and wants to make hard drives, they can't. Seagate, WD, etc own masses of IP, enough to keep the new vendor from entering the market.
This is why patents are pretty frusterating in the world of big business. Go work at a corporate research lab...any patents you come up with don't do your company any good against their competitors. They just keep anyone else from entering the arena.
Now, Gates is troubled enough by Linux to pull the patent oligopoly card out of his sleeve, which normally doesn't get played. MS cross-licenses with *huge* numbers of organizations. They own massive amounts of IP. And yes, it's almost certain that they have rights to a large number of patents that Linux does not have rights to.
Hell, last time Slashdot ran a contest asking for silly patents (a ways back, maybe a year ago), I searched for "computer". First ten hits contained the just-granted patent on the table-lookup optimization for computing CRC-32s. Now, *everyone* does this...modem manufacturers, lots of hardware vendors. Not doing it is stupid. And maybe this patent would have gotten challenged if the owner went after, say, 3com with it. But instead, it's almost certainly in a large patent portfolio somewhere, waiting around for a day when its owner feels threatened by a newcomer to the industry. Then it can pull out its portfolio and start beating folks up.
This is not a trivially fixable feature of the patent system. Most US corporate research (probably foreign as well...I'm just not that familiar with non-US legalities) depends upon the oligopoly benefits provided by patents.
And just throwing out the patent system has other problems. I'm not sure that, say, RSA encryption would *ever* have been developed without a patent system to provide encouragement.
The best thing to do, I think, would be to cap tech patents at seven years, so that companies have to keep frantically coming up with new tech. Wastes more on lawyers -- it costs a couple of thousand per patent, and more patents would have to be produced to compensate -- but that at least alleviates some of the effect.
May we never see th
Anyway THE GPL IS NOT AN EULA. How many times has it been stated here. All it is is a simple copyright notice. Yes this code is copyrighted do not copy it unless you show all the code thanks. Thats basically what the gpl is in simple terms. MS is so obsessed with EULA's because this is how they extort, oops I mean maximize profits.
He does not get the gpl at all. You are right about misinformation.
The only thing MS may be right in is linking to GPL code. This is a gray area. For example I was reading the Reiser comments in an earlier story yesterday and the BSD community will refuse any fS that is gpl. Why? Because they fear if you link to a gpl product then the kernel must turn gpl as well. Isn't the copyleft license specifically for situations like this? Perhaps more developers should use that.
http://saveie6.com/
Microsoft was convicted of software piracy in France in 2001. They were fined 3 million francs.
You can check out the details here. - Microsoft winds up on both ends of software piracy stick
I would think that the facts discovered during the anti-trust trial would make it painfully obvious to everyone that Microsoft is not overly concerned with things like ethics or laws. For them, it is an accounting decision. What are the chances we will get caught AND convicted, and what will it cost if we are convicted. Intentionally break our competitors' products, even if it hurts our own customers? Sounds like a good idea to me!
Wouldn't it be nice if we could get journalists to stop reporting stupid claims of "IP" theft?
It's like saying "They stole our karma".. it's a fictional thing that can't be proven.
Intellectual Property takes one of several specific forms, well defined by law. It's not a general thing.. like "Hey I had that idea, and you used it, so you stole my IP".
Copyright - Original works cannot be copied verbatim. This doens't protect ideas, just specific works. Example: You can't make copies of Windows and sell it without permission.
Patent - Must be registered. Gives absolute protection over the use of a mechanism. Example: firewire. Every firewire device pays Apple a royalty.
Secret (trade secret) - A method where nobody who knows your secret is given access to it except under strict contract. Not really a form of IP.. if someone figures it out and is not under contract, they are free to disclose it. The only value of this kind of so-called IP is if you can manage to keep it a secret. Example: Formula for Coca-cola.
All these companies running around saying "our IP has been taken" is just a bunch of stupid spin-doctoring, and the media should stop catering to it. If SCO has a valid case, they can take it up in court. The same goes for Microsoft, or anyone else.. but running around claiming "IP" theft without specific details is like saying "some people got some ideas from us". Well.. guess what MS.. you and every other software developer out there free or not, got ideas from someone else at some point and used them in their software. big deal.
I'm with the others who say "they can have it back". I find that the themes intended to imitate Windows and Mac OS are annoying-- and I wouldn't be at all surprised to find things like icons, etc, being clipped out of screenshots. While Microsoft can't lay claim to "look and feel" they can certainly lay claim to actual pieces of artwork within a UI. And if you ask me that's a legitimate complaint. Making icons is non-trivial and not mechanical. Shading a title bar is a different story.
:)
It's also possible that Gates refers to things like the downloading of MS-produced DLLs and incorporating them into otherwise Free programs-- mplayer would be a perfect example. For my part I think that is legal (and if it isn't, it should be)... but I've been wrong before.
As far as the whole patent thing goes: I hate to defend Microsoft, but they've never seemed to be real big on the whole patent side of stuff. In fact, I've never heard of them using their own patents aggressively, but they've certainly been the subject of a lot of IP complaints themselves (including two pending patent cases that are fairly important, IIRC). Bill Gates might be a fanatic about "piracy" (going back to his "open letter to hobbyists" back in something like 1978), but I've always had the impression he felt that ideas themselves should be somewhat more fair game.
I do not have a signature
You are close. It may be the property of MS, but applying the phrase 'intellectual' to the MS Windows UI stretches credibility to the breaking point. I wonder if there is any case law to challenge them on false use of intellect? Any lawyers out there know?
-Charlie
(Yes, for the sarcasm impared, this was meant as humor)
He could also have been referring to design patents. If you write a cloned program from scratch you can't copy any copyrighted source, but you can definitely copy patented UI elements.
Microsoft is a stagnating company. The share holders expect continued growth. They rule the desktop, but can't seem to break into any new markets. The server market is one they are fighting hard to win.
They know how to play dirty and leverage one monopoly to make a new one, so they keep making windows clients only work well with windows servers.
The open source people clone the server protocol and Bill gets steams. The funny thing is they can't really sue. If they sue, they have to make claims on the record in court and those claims would be great in the next anti-trust suit.
[fade back to reality]
Yes, "Your" version of the code is still available on "Your" web/ftp server. Your code is now 20 features and 50 bugs behind "SuperWidget 5.0". Nobody can benefit from "Your" code with these new features, without paying "Some Company, Inc." $5,000 per copy for "SuperWidget 5.0".
How does the BSD license guarantee that the improvements made to the code, remain available to everyone who wants to benefit from them? It doesn't.
Explain to me again, how this still is a better license, when the code was closed off after improvements were made? What if it takes you 2 years (alone) to match what "Some Company, Inc." took 2 months and 10 programmers to do?
The (Free)BSD license must be changed. It's no secret that ms is using code from BSD in their 2000/XP code base. While the ability to do so shouldn't change, the BSD team should do what it can to prevent sco/ms type actions.
One of the sco leeches has already stated that they will be looking at BSD next.
The BSD code should be changed, where they revoke license rights if the company using any BSD code either instigates, or supports another company instigating, sco type tactics. They can lay out a roadmap of sorts, where prior to any lawsuit, prior to any contacts by any attorneys, the company's (who adopted the BSD code) engineers will show all code in question to BSD, or to any affected entity, and will be given ample opportunity to replace the code, suggest a mutually agreeable alternative, delete the code, or take some other action that the parties can agree upon. And if they do take the case to court, the complaining party must agree to refund attorney's fees if they lose all, or even part of their case.
Refunding attorney's fees even if they only lose part of their case is important because it makes sure the complaining company's case is damn solid, which in turn will give the affected company/entity more motivation to come to an agreement with the complaining company.
It's up to BSD to do this. Not the linux kernel maintainers. It is the BSD code which can be (and is) adopted by proprietary companies for use in their own code. And they are permitted to not reveal the source code. That's why ms is using BSD code, and why they are getting their OS's to some semblence of stable (they have many miles, and years to go).
So what say you BSD?