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Ballmer on Linux
theodp writes "'In the Linux world, nobody stands behind patent claims,' warned Steve Ballmer, saying that Microsoft customers would be protected from the $550 million Eolas patent infringement judgment. 'I'm not trying to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt,' said the CEO of the company who earlier cried wolf about breaking IE in the wake of the Eolas judgment, prompting the W3C to go to bat for the software giant."
'In the Linux world, nobody stands behind patent claims'
He does got a point here. And that's one of the (many) reasons why software patents are evil. Read more here.
Microsoft CEO says 'in Linux world, nobody stands behind patent claims'
IBM, HP, Sun, and others have ALL either stood behind or promised to stand behind their Linux patent interests. Ballmer's statement is a blatant lie and he knows it.
In the Linux world, nobody stands behind patent claims
what about OSRM?
In other news, MS was just granted a patent concerning using TAB to move from Link to Link in a Web Browser: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?patentnu mber=6,785,865
The W3C didn't stick up for Microsoft -- they went after Eolas for applying for and obtaining a patent for a technology that has multitudes of prior art. Had the USPTO simply cared enough to research claims like this, there wouldn't have been the need to debunk this claim. The fact that Microsoft stands to benefit (or at least not lose anything) as a result of the W3C's actions is collateral.
Rule #1 -- Politics always trumps technology.
You see this argued a lot here on
The way Linux is designed and the way Windows (especially with integrated IE) is designed are fundamentally different, and one (guess which) is by design more insecure.
"The market alone cannot provide sufficient constraints on corporation's penchant to cause harm." -- Joel Bakan
Often vendors/makers don't even have the right to sublicense patented techcnology to the end users, like the case of Cognos, who lost the lawsuit with Timeline despite the fact it was Microsoft who had infringed
I assume you are refering to bashing as To engage in harsh, accusatory, threatening criticism.
Well, to many people, the bashing is deserved and not just jumping on the bandwagon for bonus points. I can not stand MS. Everytime MS does something or even says something. I look around the PR twist and analyze the situation as to how are they going to screw everyone over with this. It might be a negative way of looking at things but too much has happened in the past for me to look at things in a positive light. Hell, I even look at them "donating" software to a non profit organization as a huge tax write-off for them (donating and deducting at the full market price for the cost of a blank CD to someone that would not have bought their software anyway) and a way to tie that organization into using or buying MS in the future when the product get old and unsupported or preventing them from using someone elses software right now. Maybe you look at that same situation in a different way, I do not.
Heck, even here on /. I'm constantly inundated with pro-MS server banner ads
MS is spending money, giving it to slashdot/OSDN, to advertise products that 90%+ of the readership isn't interested in, and you're somehow upset about this?
They spend money to gain nothing; OSDN/slashdot gain money and lose nothing. You need to get your priorities straight, I think...
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Microsoft mice are great & they've bought some nice game houses to make PC games for them. There I said it.
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
One key concept is the seperation of kernel space and user space. The kernel sits between the hardware and the programs. When a program wants to write something to the screen, it doesn't do it directly but throught the kernel. The kernel acts like a centry, so to speak, and prevents misuse or stealing of system resources by programs, and also provides a nice abstraction layer for the programers. The user's programs run in their own memory spaces (allocated by the kernel and enforced by the kernel) and the kernel sits in it's own protected memory space.
One of the biggest differences between MS and *nix is that the distinction between kernel space and user space is more blured in MS than in *nix. MS has had a bad habit of tying thier programs into deep hooks inside their kernel in order to get some extra functionality or a bit of performance increase. The problem with this is that it provides a route for errors/viruses/malware/etc to enter into the kernel space through a regular program. Hence, an IE bug becomes a Windows bug. If MS kept a better speration of their programs and thier kernel, a lot of thier problems would probably disappear.
I agree with you about security being a process, not something you can buy in a box. But what you get in that box determines where on the security spectrum you start. A system that allows any user to run as administrator and has a LOT of ports open by default (why I'll never know) is a bit harder to secure and keep secure than a system where there is a clear division between users, access rights, and power where things are turned off by default instead of on by default.
Space for rent, inquire within
I'd really like to ask the question, will Ballmer, on behalf of Microsoft, put that in writing? Will Microsoft provide a written guarantee that they will indemnify their customers against claims of infringement by their software? Not from anything I've seen. So far, here is what Microsoft has put in writing:
From their site, For Business (Windows 2003 Server):
And from their site, For Consumer (XP HOME):
I really don't see where Microsoft is giving anything to people above what Linux is giving, i.e. nothing, except people can see the Linux source code and it is possible if something infringing is present it can be removed.Well, I have researched it for myself and gone right to your company's written EULAs and read them, Mr. Ballmer. Unless and until Microsoft is willing to give (or sell) written indemnification for non-infringement then all your claims represent are a worthless cant of Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt.
Paul Robinson
The lessons of history teach us - if they teach us anything - that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.
Off-topic, I know, but quicksort is only quicker than others (sometimes) on data that can be held in memory. If you need to sort massive amounts of data, algorithms based on the multi-tape sort-merge (see Knuth) are much, much, much faster.
What a long, strange trip it's been.
That's not to say that users would be sued more often than those making and/or offering to sell, just that users certainly could find themselves sued as well. Which is to say there _is_ a legal theory there.
I remember hearing about that in Auto Tech in high school. I remember that the patent was eventually ruled invalid because it only covered two-cycle engines and at that point most cars were using four cycle engines.
The man was George Selden, and you can info about that patent mentioned here.
Ok, so all this talk about patents and we've all been watching the SCO case.
Let's assume that in 2 years somebody comes out and they say "we have well documented proof that the linux kernel has infringed on our patents". when the matter is looked into the majority agree that yes, this companies IP was incorporated into the linux kernel...
Couldn't the maintainers of the kernels, and ultimatly the end users themselves protect themselves by simply removing the offending code and replacing it with non-patent-infringing code? Could this be used to protect the linux end users? Let's assume that the royalty and "past abuse" is ignored... I use the linxu kernel, it has code in it the offends person A, I remove the code and re-compile getting myself a "clean" kernel, am I know safe from A's litigation?