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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."
I like that last line of the article.
"I just think people should go out and research this for themselves".
Good idea, coming from a company that regularly commissions independant researchers to prove their point of the day.
My assessment (not that you asked)?...
Well, my research showed that patent infringement issues in Linux will more than likely get the same treatment as GIF files. If something does come up that really is an infringement, it'll stink for a few years, and then it will fizzle away as developers agree that there's a better solution than the patented one anyway.
Then again, I've already got my company running on Linux servers, so perhaps it's just wishful thinking on my part. *shrugs*.
Kinetic stupidity has a new brand leader: Allen Zadr.
"I'm not trying to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt," Ballmer said
Fear - Ballmer argued that companies should be wary of the lack of indemnity from lawsuits, such as the suit filed by The SCO Group Inc. against DaimlerChrysler AG, IBM, Novell Inc. and others over parts of the Linux operating system that SCO claims infringe on elements of the Unix operating system that it owns.
Uncertainty - "In the Linux world, nobody stands behind patent claims," he said, noting that Microsoft could be forced to swallow a $550 million judgement if it loses its ongoing case with Eolas Technologies Inc., but that its customers would be protected.
Doubt - On the touchy issue of security, Ballmer also dismissed the notion that Linux is more secure than Windows, saying that Linux would be attacked just as frequently as Windows if the open source operating system had as large a share of the operating system market as Windows.
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Not FUD?! What the hell. Every word in his talk was precisely that.
Despite the focus on the next version of Windows, Microsoft is also working to make its offerings more interoperable with products using other software platforms such as Linux, Unix and XML (Extensible Markup Language), Ballmer said.
Ahh, wait. Now why do they bother supporting Linux or Unix if they feel that it's not good enough? I would imagine that if you are that confident in how a rival product is shitty, you would just go ahead and not offer support. But MS wants to leverage customers who have Linux and Unix systems, but yet diss Linux. Sheer hypocrisy.
"If you have two popular operating systems, both will get attacked -- whatever is popular is going to be attacked," he said.
Yes smartass. But resisting the attack will be the better one, and that will not be based on what's popular. Are they trying to say that Linux is popular, now? Out of the horse's own mouth, eh.
"In the Linux world, nobody stands behind patent claims," he said, noting that Microsoft could be forced to swallow a $550 million judgement if it loses its ongoing case with Eolas Technologies Inc., but that its customers would be protected.
"I'm not trying to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt," Ballmer said. "I just think people should go out and research this for themselves."
Boo! The only reason the software industry is so messed up by patents is beause big businesses want to resort to their lawyers in case something goes wrong, and not technology. How about building great technology and not resort to cheap practices, for a change?
Sheesh. I'm fuckin' mad as hell. Not FUD? That's all there is in that.
Is it just me, or does Balmer sound like a desperate lawyer who collects every single possible argument he's heard for Microsoft, and then regurgitates them all at once?
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Power to the Peaceful
"If you have two popular operating systems, both will get attacked -- whatever is popular is going to be attacked," he said.
Huh? Apache httpd gets attacked even though it has the market share of on-line web browsers... fortunately the attacks are looking for M$ IIS holes...
I'd love it if proprietary vendors allowed us the capability to evaluate the risks ourselves. I'll believe the story about proprietary being safer only after Microsoft lets customers audit their source to let me verify that their closed-source stuff doesn't infringe on patents I may be worried about. Note that they let important customers audit their source for security reasons. Losing mission critical infrastructor because a vendor didn't have the rights to it could be even more harmful to my business than a security hole (which I presume would be easily patched).
If my company depends on a closed-source application, and that application infringes on someone elses patent, I wouldn't want that software yanked out from under me. At least in an open source environment I can understand that the offending parts could be coded around. With closed source, it's more likely the vendor will have to stop providing the software. Also, in the open source case, there's a better likelyhood that people have scoured the source code looking for infringing patents.
So far most of the big vendors, MSFT included, have a pretty weak concept of indemnification - they'll cover purchases prices, and the like. Heck even Gentoo.org'll probably indemnify you the cost of the purchase price. Unless they start offering far better indemnification (cover the costs of migrating off their infringing software to an alternative), I'm better off with open source.
Noting the prevalent use of pen and paper by audience members, Ballmer wondered aloud why the content of his speech was not being captured and translated automatically, while also being synchronized with real-time video and a copy of his Microsoft PowerPoint presentation
Perhaps it was because no reporter was willing to bet their career on a laptop running Windows XP?
Ironically, 20 years from now, these reporters will still be able to read their handwritten notes, but Microsoft will have long abandoned the audio and video codecs used to record the speech today...
And that's assuming that the recording media is still playable. How many people can read 5 1/4" floppies any more?
In the Linux world, nobody stands behind patent claims," he said, noting that Microsoft could be forced to swallow a $550 million judgement if it loses its ongoing case with Eolas Technologies Inc., but that its customers would be protected.
This is an abject legal falsehood; a patent ownder can sue the users of the patent if they so desire. They might choose instead to sue Microsoft, but there is no legal indemnification from a patent lawsuit - Microsoft's EULA explicitly denies liability in this regard. And considering that Microsoft's customers have already been sued over patents (Timeline, anyone?), I don't see how he can even believe this truthfully. And to make matters worse, Microsoft has sued its own customers.
If anything, using Microsoft instead of open source software imposes an even greater risk of patent liability on the users.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
He's right, linux would be attacked just as frequently as windows.
One word: APACHE
Which gets attacked more, Apache or IIS. Which has more market share?
It was about a year ago after years of dragging out the case that it was proven the MS SQL 7 was stolen from or illegally used from another company MS response was "we will cover legal cost and suits up to the cost of the product" yeah MS really stand behind their work but the limit is as much as you paid to get it. So by those terms FLOSS is on equal grounds with MS support policy.