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Patent Concerns Unlikely To Nix Munich Linux Plan

Posted by timothy on from the that-blue-sky-plucky-upstart dept.

MonkeyDev writes "Yahoo is reporting that Munich is ready to move forward with plans to 'abandon Microsoft Windows in favor of upstart rival Linux. The council is expected to take a calculated risk and vote through the move, despite concerns about possible software patent infringements in the face of coming European Union legislation that caused months of delay.' Not everyone is excited about it. A software developer at MySQL claims 'Linux violates 283 U.S. software patents.' How does the Linux community respond to these claims?" (Florian Mueller, the MySQL developer mentioned, isn't opposed to Munich using Linux, though -- just the opposite.) Update: 09/29 02:22 GMT by T : Marten Mickos of MySQL AB writes with a correction: "Florian Müller is an independent software developer and entrepreneur. He is ALSO an advisor to MySQL AB but he does not work for the company. He is presently engaged in coordinating opposition against software patents in EU, and thereby doing all of us within free software and open source a great favour."

4 of 244 comments (clear)

  1. No google ads ??? by iMaple · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Google has over 82 million unique users a month and annual revenues of about three billion dollars. [2] And yet have you ever seen a Google ad? says the article.

    Well I have seen google ads a lot of times (even on /.). Well, they are the ads for google adsense but techincally thats still google right ?

    1. Re:No google ads ??? by iMaple · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      Oops forgot the /i

  2. Linux is an "upstart"? by Bloodlent · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Oh I love the mainstream media.

  3. I probably violate several patents by marktaw.com · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    I probably violate several patents just by existing. How do I respond to this? "So sue me."

    The onus is on the patent owner to prove the violation, not anyone else. I doubt 1 legal entity owns all 283 patents, so you have +/- 283 companies suing someone... And who are they sueing anyway? Linus? Red Hat? It's open source, there's nobody out there to pay damages.