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Ballmer Threatens Linux Patent Lawsuits
gillbates writes "Today Microsoft warned several Asian countries that using Linux could subject them to lawsuits, claiming that Linux violates '228 patents'. Apparently, Steve Ballmer believes he can enforce U.S. law in Asia." Ballmer is presumably speaking about this story. So, companies which sell insurance against lawsuits and companies which make competing products both warn of the dangers of using Linux. Maybe someone should point out that Microsoft is battling dozens of patent-infringement lawsuits itself, and any user of Microsoft software (including governments) could also be sued?
I knew we should have taken out the ability to double click!
And in related news from Middle Earth...
OSGILIATH (Reuters) - Mordor Corp. warned Middle Earth kingdoms on Thursday they could face the wrath of Orc armies for harbouring and aiding Gandalf and his fellowship of hobbits instead of rightfully bowing to the will of Sauron.
The growing popularity of Gandalf - a wise and benevolent wizard who freely aids all in need and is a friend of all free people of Middle Earth - is a thread to the global dominance of Sauron's Dominion Of Evil.
Gandalf's fellowship has illegally kept Sauron's valuables, Mordor's Mouth of Sauron said at the regime's Middle Earth Kingdom Leaders Forum in Osgiliath. He did not provide any details on what exactly the nature of Sauron's valuables which were stolen are, which the Fellowship disputes.
Ex-hobbit Gollum McBride, who claims that "nasty hobbitses stole his preciousss", is suing elves and hobbits alike, including the Shire.
Rohan's Riders of Defense at Gandalf's council last month readied 20,000 horsemen to face the assault of Mordor Corp instead of submitting freely to the evil reign of Sauron.
Other kingdoms in the region are also beginning to rally under one banner. Gondor, Arnor and Erebor this year agreed to jointly combat Sauron's forces at Gandalf's advice.
The kingdom of Gondor, in particular, sees its proximity to Mordor as a potential threat. Conspiracy buffs believe that subliminal messages sent to Denethor from Sauron via his Palantir might drive the steward insane and thus confuse and cripple Gondor's defenses, possibly during a battle in the Pelennor fields.
The Mouth of Sauron said that security fears some rulers had about surrending to Mordor were "overblown".
"We think Sauron will provide far more security than Gandalf ever could. Sauron is a better protector for you lot because he has this awesome Ring which he forged, he fixed and he stands behind. Gandalf doesn't have an awesome Ring," he said.
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
Keep in mind that China is a Communist country and any concept of intellectual property is relatively novel.
===== Murphy's Law is recursive. =====
This should go over really well. At least MS is entrenched in most business environments here in the U.S. so they can get away with a lot of this stuff. But in Asia (especially in places where they are pushing the stripped-down edition of Windows) this is going to alienate them even more than just having high prices.
"Buy our expensive software... or try the alternative and we'll sue you."
Good way to make friends.
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
That might not be true. Look what a week of gathering cash did for Firefox!! I bet that if Slashdot posted a "donate money to fight Microsoft in court" fund we'd raise millions of dollars to help fight the lies!
I'm willing to donate literally tens of dollars to such a cause.
maybe MS prefers that the asian countries use pirated copies of Windows instead of pirated copies of Linux ;)
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
You left out Tom Bombadil.
And the liberation of the Shire.
Bahhh...
I hope it will be included in the Special Extended Edition of this post...
I don't need a signature.
Okay fine! If you're not our customer, prepare to be sued for it!
While I generally take legal threats and action fairly seriously, my knee-jerk reaction is that Microsoft will be laughed out of the arena on this one. This would be a persuit that would turn the public against them. I can see the IBM propaganda commercials on TV now. They'd be depicting a hobbyist writing making something in their garage or basement followed quickly by a SWAT team with guns pointed at his head.
While it's true that business has taken a natural interest in Linux. It's free, it's reliable, it's flexible, it's customizable and it's everywhere and simply growing and growing. It can't be stopped. Anything that Microsoft does againt the users of Linux will certainly make them look even more evil in the public's eye than ever before.
Public opinion has turned against the RIAA and MPAA because they're now known for suing children and little old ladies. Clear Channel has bad enough vibe out there that they are operating under the names of the companies they bought out just to hide their identity since many people no longer want to go to Clear Channel events. Most people accept Microsoft as part of their computer like a keyboard, mouse or monitor. But when people and small businesses start getting sued and the public gets wind of it, not only will it serve as free advertisement for the new "Underdog" but it'll cause a lot of negative opinion against Microsoft. Apple will start collecting more fans as their next home PC will be a happy-faced G5 running something that's not Microsoft.
Go ahead Microsoft... make my day.
One way to look at it is that lawsuits are an expensive way to make noise. Ballmer has to make noise or else folks will resume paying attention to their work and finding that MS is an obstacle. Or worse, that folks will start checking out other options like OpenOffice.org or OS X or one of the Linux distros. Or, even worse, they'll start to realise that MS stock is a worse investment than Enron:
Mainstream press is starting to figure out that MS-Windows dominance will last only another 2- 4 years and that only because of the enormous marketing and lobbying engine that MS is. To add weight to that, MS blocked its employees from exercising their "underwater" stock options during 2004. That was intended to increase retention, as employees need to remain with Microsoft to receive the payout. Retention would not be an issue unless the company looked to have no future.
Many execs, however haven't been able to empty their portfolios yet and want more delay.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
OSRM hired PJ to do a free-lance project for OSRM, a project PJ wanted to do on her own anyway but didn't have the time to do it. The project was to update the Linux timeline. OSRM hired PJ to do this project on a new site, Grokline, not on Groklaw, and said she could spend as much time as she needed to work on Groklaw. This was good as before PJ had to do freelance paralegal work which prevented her from spending as much time on Groklaw as she wanted. Now she could spend a lot more time.
Everybody's happy except those people who believe the lie that PJ sells insurance. She doesn't. She has no controlling interest in OSRM. She was hired by them to do a specific job, a job in fact that will lessen the need for people to get insurance!
As for the 228 or 283 patent violations, that gets thrown around loosely in very inaccurate ways. Read the orignal OSRM press release (yes, it came from them, not from PJ who had nothing to do with it) and you'll see that OSRM is NOT saying that Linux violates patents, but that in today's litigation-happy climate, it's good to be aware that there are a bunch of patents out there that are vague enough to possible be used in nuisance lawsuits by someone hostile to Linux. It doesn't mean Linux really DOES violate those patents, but that unscrupulous companies might try to pretend otherwise. As SCO proved, you can be completely wrong and yet gum up the court system for a long time while you blab about your lies. That costs money. So OSRM, as other groups did, stepped up and said if you were in a vulnerable position (that is, prominent and a likely target from a money-hungry unscrupulous company), they would offer insurance in the case that you did get take to court.
Individual developers don't have to worry about it. They're not the cash-rich targets the SCOs of the world seek to shake down.
None of the above will shake the confidence of the anti-Groklaw shills that are spreading lies about PJ in an attempt to discredit her. They may not be in SCO's employ, they might even be sincere (sincerely wrong, of course), but the net effect is to help SCO's efforts. Way to go, trolls. I hope anyone else who reads this will take the time to research what I said to prove for themselves that what I said is a lot more accurate than what the anti-Groklaw folks are saying.
As it shows a degree of panic on Microsoft's part. Ballmer starts out with the assumption that software patents are going to be conditional on entry to the WTO. This overlooks two main points:
1) The WTO is, by definition, the WORLD Trade organisation. Subserviance to a global Microsoft Patent arsenal would put Microsoft a step closer to killing off any competition from freely distributable FOSS that can be deployed in homes and businesses. As Linux is the only real competition that Redmond have had in the last 15-20 years to surrender to this would be tantamount to giving MS the global software market forever. Future free software development in countries other than the US would be more difficult, possibly impossible, leaving every country in the hands of the MS. Your country disagrees with America? Simple, Homeland security adds you to the export ban list and all of a sudden your DRM permission gets revoked. Far fetched? Manybe, but in the current climate I bet its gone through a few minds in high places.
2) There are not many countries that trust America at the moment. Europe's nervous about Iraq (why not it's a lot closer to Iraq than the US is), half of the Middle East is keeping its head down while the other half sit wondering whether their next and are probably tooling up just in case. The North Koreans? Wouldn't wanna be in their shoes right now. The Chinese won't want to submit to anyone as their economy's growing fast and they won't want to relinquish control. In short, global software patents suit one country and although Tony Blair will probably prostrate himself on the Whitehouse carpet while swearing to keep the UK government/Microsoft partnership going it's still part of Europe.
So; Given that the main effect of global software patents will be to kill of any other countries chances of competing with Microsoft, what reason have they got for signing up. If anything, this speech gives Europe and China a sign of the state of things to come adding extra impetus to turn to Mandrake, SuSE, Red Star Linux and forget about software patents for good.
As SCO come closer to death it's interesting to see Microsoft's anti-Linux activities seeming more desperate as they flail around looking for options however implausible they may be. The ultimate effect of this one though may be the isolation of Microsoft to American territory, their overseas markets cut off by their own hand.
Incidently, if terrorism is the art of threatening attack in order to influence governments or organisations the tone of Stevey Boys rant could easily be interpreted as such. I therefore suggest that Redmond be declared part of the axis of evil terrorist organisations. A UN force should be deployed in Ballmers office and sanctions be imposed on the evil dictator within. Alternatively, it could be subcontracted to the Israelis who can surround the aforementioned with Tanks, keeping Monkey Boy incarcerated until he's 75 and becomes entitled to utilise the French health service.
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Hmmmmmm..... Deep fried and look like Squirrel.
Listen to this speech (mp4 audio, 3.9 MiB) given by David Martin from M-CAM at the FFII conference on software patents from last week. His company is specialised in assessing the value of patent portfolios and technology transfers. Here's part of a transcript of his speech:
Listen to the rest of his speech for more. I guarantee you it'll be worth your while. For the record, he concludes his speech with
Nice to hear that from someone in the field, isn't it?
Unlike in the US, the introduction (or not) of software patents in Europe is being handled via a legislative process (as opposed to purely via case law). For an overview of the legislative process, have a look here. The bottom line is that it's currently the turn of the European Council of Ministers, which has to reach a qualified majority for one text or another. The current text is hardcore pro-unlimited patentability.
Now Poland has confirmed they do not support that text (they weren't even formally asked after a break in a meeting in May where some fake compromise amendments were introduced, and where a political agreement was reached). Together with a change of voting weights that went into effect on 1st November (because of the expansion of the EU), this means there is no longer a qualified majority for the current text.
So it has nothing to do with not respecting other countries' patents. Besides, a patent is always only valid in the country it has been granted in, that's how pat
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