Ballmer Won't Dismiss Idea of Suits Against Linux

An anonymous reader writes "According to an interview with Steve Ballmer in Forbes, Microsoft is open to the possibility of filing patent suits against Linux in the interest of their shareholders. Ballmer said: 'Well, I think there are experts who claim Linux violates our intellectual property. I'm not going to comment. But to the degree that that's the case, of course we owe it to our shareholders to have a strategy.' Microsoft filed more than 3000 new applications for software patents in 2005 and already owns more than 4000 patents, including many patents on fundamental, but trivial technologies, like double clicks."

Comments

Let's rumble.

[Anonymous Coward]

Bring it on, Steve. Your lap dog SCO didn't too well the last time you tried this trick. Sure you put a short term dent in the stock price of Red Hat, but that didn't last.

Re:Do you know what FUD is?

[NutscrapeSucks]

FUD is a good acronym: Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. What other term would you use to express the concept?

More like FUD used to be a good acronym, but the "Open Sores" community pretty much ruined it through over-use.

Groklaw is the perfect example:
1) Every critism, no matter how minor, is obsessively labeled "FUD"
2) Most of their non-legal content about vendors like Microsoft actually is FUD

So, maybe if people were talking a high-ground principled stand against "FUD", it might be credible -- but the fact is that "FUD" flies faster and dirtier from the Linux side of things.