No Office For Linux, MS Patents Rejected

Bays Fil wrote to mention a ZDNet piece discussing the U.S. Patent Office's rejection of two Microsoft patents on the FAT file system. "There has been concern that if the FAT patents are upheld, Microsoft may claim that Linux infringes on Microsoft technology and will seek a royalty. Any monetary compensation could threaten the operating system, which under General Public License (GPL) terms may not be distributed if it contains patented technology that requires royalty payments." Relatedly, Dayrl writes "Microsoft reiterates its firm decision not to offer its Office Suite on Linux anytime soon. From the article: 'Microsoft is 100 percent focused on Windows: We have invested billions of dollars in it. We have created Office for the Mac but--and I thought I had been clear on this already when I said 'No'--we have no plans at this time to build Office on Linux,' Nick McGrath, Microsoft's head of platform strategy said.'

Comments

The new math....

[Anonymous Coward]

From the story - "Microsoft is 100 percent focused on Windows: We have invested billions of dollars in it. We have created Office for the Mac"

Ummmm...how can you be 100 percent focused on Windows and still develop Office for the Mac?

Maybe he meant "Microsoft is 99 percent focused on Windows". Or, more likely, he meant to say "Microsoft is focused 100 percent against developing Office for Linux."

Re:why feed the competition?

[JPamplin]

Um, they already make Microsoft Office for Mac OS X, arguably a competing operating system with more users than Linux.

Unless your definition of "competing operating system" is somehow different from mine.

So, that's why.

Hasn't the time limit expired?

[ptbarnett]

I'm not a patent lawyer, but my employer's patent lawyer recently submitted a patent application on my behalf.

According to the attorney, a patent application must be submitted within 1 year after the first public disclosure of the invention, which can include:

• Shipment/release of a product containing the invention.
• Publication of an article describing the invention.
• Oral disclosure of the invention (in my case, outside my employer)

I spent a good portion of my vacation dealing with some of the last minute paperwork, because it happened to coincide with the 1-year deadline.

So, I don't understand how Microsoft can be attempting to patent FAT now. Unless they started much earlier, or are trying to patent recent modifications to FAT, I don't think there is really anything to fear.

Re:why feed the competition?

[Reverberant]

They needed Apple to stay alive to keep up the pretense that they were engaging an open market without recourse to any monopoly (which was nonsense - they lost). Bill also invested a bunch of cash in Apple at the same time for the same reason

That may be part of it, but the other part was because Apple caught Microsoft with their hand in the cookie jar (the settlement was on top of the stock investment).

Now that Linus is around, Office's days on the Mac may be numbered.

Keep in mind, Mac Office makes money for MS - to drop it just to spite Apple might make a shareholder or two upset.

He'll keep Apple alive as long as he can, even though he lost the monopoly ruling, because the alternative is all Linux and OpenOffice.

If I were Mr. Jobs, I would have had this conversation with Mr. Gates or Mr. Baller at some point:

"Look guys, it's in your interest to keep Mac Office around. You see, because of the dominance of MS Office, the lack of Office for the Mac might result in a drop in Mac sales. If Mac sales drop off enough, Apple could be in serious trouble, and perhaps go out of business. If Apple were to go out of business, my last act as CEO would be to release all (non-3rd-party-licensed) Mac OS X kernel and GUI code under the GPL. I'm betting you really don't want that to happen."

:)