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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.
There's a first time for everything.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
It's interesting to note the arguments on groklaw that an OS strategy might actually have *less* to fear than a closed-source one, compared to Mr Balmer's "It's not really FUD, honest" intellectual property FUD.
... eg:
:-)
Also, reading the article, either the writer is unsympathetic to MS, or Balmer is really putting out some mixed messages
"Ballmer scoffed at arguments that his company's operating system creates a computing monoculture" vs his statement "Microsoft's platforms offer better interoperability with the company's other technology".
Sounds like he's been spinning so much, he's dizzy
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
"Please get off, you're crushing me, you sweaty bastard!"
"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.
"Here at Microsoft, we spread duf(TM)."
'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?
just the fact that microsoft so quickly denounces Linux should tell you something
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
Ballmer singled out XML and Web services as the "big breakthrough" of the next decade that will spur innovation.
Puh-lease. I was at the introduction of XML and CDF back in 1996/7 by Microsoft. They also handed out 4.0 beta disks of IE 4.0 at the event. I think it was called World Wide Live.
MSFT's gone nowhere fast with XML, while the rest of the developer world embbraced and extended it. They (MSFT) finally decided on a strategy for it what, three years ago? And now it's going to be the next big thing of the coming decade?
No wonder Linux runs circles around the Redmond Behemoth...
Responsibility is the punishment for compentenc
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.
Which, when you think about it, has been the intiative behind lots of great development, if you don't like the toll road, dig your own and many fine things have come of this. Further browsers like Mozilla and Opera progress while IE stagnates.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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
Ballmer said that cutting back on the promised features at least allowed the company to announce a release date for the product, which was a "major accomplishment."
I am just speechless. I better sit down.Veritas patesco per quaestio questio. Truth is revealed through questions.
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 $550 million judgement if it loses its ongoing case with Eolas Technologies Inc., but that its customers would be protected.
"I'm not trying to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt," Ballmer said. "I just think people should go out and research this for themselves."
Boo! The only reason the software industry is so messed up by patents is beause big businesses want to resort to their lawyers in case something goes wrong, and not technology. How about building great technology and not resort to cheap practices, for a change?
Sheesh. I'm fuckin' mad as hell. Not FUD? That's all there is in that.
Is it just me, or does Balmer sound like a desperate lawyer who collects every single possible argument he's heard for Microsoft, and then regurgitates them all at once?
--
Power to the Peaceful
"If you have two popular operating systems, both will get attacked -- whatever is popular is going to be attacked," he said.
Huh? Apache httpd gets attacked even though it has the market share of on-line web browsers... fortunately the attacks are looking for M$ 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.
Well, according to SCO, Linux doesn't exist. And the headline for this story is "Ballmer on Linux". So I gotta wonder if he's about to have one of those Wile E Coyote moments where he's standing on nothing and gravity decides to assert itself? ;-)
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
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.
Because the speech was encoded using WMA Digital Rights Management, restricting the delegates from recording his words except via an audio stream licensed from Microsoft. Extracting audio "snippets" was prohibited by the DRM software, which meant that reporters on radio could either stream his entire speech or none of it.
A separate license was required to decode the real-time audio, with royalties paid by-the-minute (even modern-day-techno-savy journo's don't want to pay to broadcast Ballmer looking like a monkey) to the owners of the audio-streaming technology, which in this case happened to be Microsoft.
Finally, the PowerPoint presentation was similarly protected by traditional copyright law (its binary), the DMCA (its digital transmission), and - if it's been XML exported with the latest Office - probably patent law as well.
The ways of gods are mysteriously indistinguishable from chance.
Eyewitnesses at the conference where Ballmer made this statement noted that he started running around the stage trying to rile up the crowd by shouting "Patent lawyers! Patent lawyers! Patent lawyers! Patent lawyers!"
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 think at least the top heads at Microsoft are running macs with os X over there. They really have no clue about how windows or linux works for the end user. I'm sure when you're at that level of any company you end up becomming so disconnected from the details of the product you sell. I doubt the Ford executives test drive every new model of a car, but if these cars' tired suddenly blew out on the highway, they'd call in their engineers and ask them what the hell's going on. I don't have any inside sight on how Microsoft works, just a view from the outside like many. For anyone who works there, do these managers at least look at how their products are working and the amount of headaches they cause people all over the world? Or is it all just to get it out the door and market the hell out of it?
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?
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.
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.
Imagine if that was patented. It's been shown to be the fastest sort possible, if I remember right. Or how about all those patents apple has on Font Rendering? There's lots of stuff in Math that there's only one way of doing right. That's why you weren't allowed to patent algorythms in the past.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Mono scares the living daylights out of me.
Given the triviality and obviousness of patents being issued today, there's practically no way Mono can be non-infringing. Yet it's even more dangerous to check for it, because then you get into a triple-indemnity situation. Letting Mono burrow its way into Linux culture, software, infrastructure, and support is ASKING for trouble a few years down the road. It's putting a giant SUE ME sign out.
Besides, "Microsoft done right" isn't aiming that high. We could do better.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.