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Ballmer Says Linux "Infringes Our Intellectual Property"
Stony Stevenson writes "In comments confirming the open-source community's suspicions, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer Thursday declared his belief that the Linux operating system infringes on Microsoft's intellectual property." From the ComputerWorld article: "In a question-and-answer session after his keynote speech at the Professional Association for SQL Server (PASS) conference in Seattle, Ballmer said Microsoft was motivated to sign a deal with SUSE Linux distributor Novell earlier this month because Linux 'uses our intellectual property' and Microsoft wanted to 'get the appropriate economic return for our shareholders from our innovation.'" His exact wording is available at the Seattle Intelligencer, which has a transcript of the interview. Groklaw had an article up Wednesday giving some perspective on the Novell/Microsoft deal. Guess we'll have something to talk about in 2007, huh?
Who merged the Linux Genuine Advantage code into the tree?
Come on, speak up - I know it was one of you.
liqbase
This coming from the guy that's requiring SMB2 in Vista so that people using Samba on Linux server's can't use them for file storage.
That rhythmic thudding sound you hear is the sound of every computer professional on the planet simultaneously laughing their balls off.
I'll be honest, we're throwing science against the wall to see what sticks. -Cave Johnson
I haven't seen patent one infringed upon let alone a whole balance sheet's worth so you'll have to excuse me if I seem a bit pessimistic about you strong arming me into using SuSE.
That's right, you can spin it anyway you want
It's not just any old regular FUD, it's new improved Microsoft FUD.
Enjoy your $500 million, Novell.
My work here is dung.
SuSE is dead.
Microsoft infringes on our patience sometimes, as well.
biopowered.co.uk - catalytically cracking triglycerides for home automotive use since 2008. Just say no to big oil!
If you want a job done right, do it yourself, eh Balmer? SCO just wasn't up to the task.
Infuriate left and right
GNU/Linux infringes on our IP
To quote South Park: Novell just got F'd in the A.
Pretty much any Linux geek will tell you that's a load of jibberish, not unlike the SCO case. But, should it come to Microsoft and Novell going to court over this, couldn't this still spell trouble for Novell? A lengthy trial isn't cheap (and neither are out-of-court settlements). And the worst case scenario - maybe this could even spell trouble for Linux itself? It certainly makes for some excellent FUD for Microsoft to feed to the CIOs and managers of the world.
With Microsoft's track history, I wonder why people trust them at all. Especially when the stakes are high, like in this situation.
Basilisk Digital
But seriously, when the first SCO thing came about, the Linux people said, "We don't want to infringe on anyone's IP, so tell us where it we are infringing, and we will rewrite the code."
Same applies here. Open source takes a little of the fun out of these things, now doesn't it?
If you can't beat 'em sue 'em.
Alright, enough of this bullshit. Isn't there some kind of Libel suit that can be filed about this kind of garbage? I know I, as a private citizen can't go around telling newspapers that the Coca-Cola company kills a kitten for every can of drink they sell, without getting sued nine ways from breakfast. Why is Microsoft any different? If they've got something, let's see it, if not, can't they be forced to stop spreading FUD on pain big nasty fine-y death? Surely Redhat, and the other corporate Linux entities have some interest in trying this?
Ballmer added later in the speech "You'll notice that BSD also infringes on our Intellectual Property. You'll notice that the BSD network stack is identical to the one Microsoft created. Anyone who thinks otherwise has been brainwashed by the Great Satan"
When it is shown to be Mono that is infringing?
Not clear how, if Windows code had been magically grafted into the Linux kernel, that such Frankencode would a) work and b) go unnoticed. Linus himself is the ulitmate commiter to the kernel.org sources, no?
As a society, we need to stigmatize people who say such wrongheaded things in public, and clueless publications that circulate such tripe.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Without that essential information, Microsoft are behaving in a commercially-inappropriate way. Intimidating and destructive to creativity.
I need the chance to way either that the patent does not apply where I live; or that there is prior art; or that I will do something in a different way. Or to find a patent of mine (or of my employer's) that they would like to cross-licence. I also need to know when the patent expires.
"Talk is cheap, show me the code!"
it appears that with the passing years the microsoft top brass is getting old, and surprisingly losing their sanity before their due time.
arent they already aware that eu is bashing them because of their similar behaviour ?
do they think that eu will just let them force people to use their own 'partner''s distro just like that ?
i can see fines raining down like hell.
Read radical news here
With this license agreement, Novell has a license to put MS patented technology into their Linux. Is it safe to permit Novell engineers to submit code to common Linux repositories? It seems to me that they would need to certify that none of their code contains any of the MS IP that they now have access to. Unless MS is willing to identify which portions of SuSE are covered by their patents, this could be difficult.
I hoped that Novell/MS deal was really something meaningful, not yet another PR/Marketing stunt from Microsoft. Putting all that "protection racket" bullshit aside, which I can buy a little bit, this Balmer speech asks for more serious investigation, because it just roars "antitrust".
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
It all makes sense - MS is starting to worry. Not about the "boom in linux in just a few years" - that has been "just a few years" for over a decade now. What they are worried about is the "Big War" on the very immediate horizon. Computing is about to undergo a huge revolution.
Now that (as far as a lot of the top end guys at MS are concerned) Vista is out of the door they are looking at what is next. Customers (home, but most especially business) are not going to pay for another OS - many might not even buy Vista. There is little else MS can put into an OS that sells - stability and modularisation don't sell. They tried the "eye candy" route for Vista - because if they didn't it wouldn't sell one copy. The thing is they can't do the same thing again "Windows Corumo - just another coat of paint on the same OS" - nobody will buy it.
The future? Subscription based economics - they don't have to produce another OS - they just continually charge for the current one. That too goes for MS Office etc.
Why the current turn by MS - because linux really does cause them difficulties in that business model. $30 per month for windows or $0 for a flavour of linux.
The big battle is ahead - the business model that has held firm with computers (both software and hardware) over the past 20 years is being broken up. This can be proven in the easiest way imaginable. Ask yourself this question. As a member of the "bulk" of computer users (ie not high end gamers or 3D designers - home "write an email and watch a dvd"'ers or business "write a spreadsheet or create a presentation"er's) - why would you *want* to buy a new machine/new OS? - the old one does everything just fine - super fast and relatively trouble free. That has not been the case for the past 20 years - it is now.
This is getting really old and although many here will probably disagree, it will eventually have an impact. I can just hear my legal department now "We keep hearing case after case of Linux infringing on someone's IP. We better ban it. Microsoft is a big secure company that would never do anything like that and if they did, there is no way the effects of it could ever impact the end user"...Oh wait.. .. Scratch that.
--- Liberty in our Lifetime
Quoth Ballmer:
So they need lots of developers, developers, developers, developers to keep up ...
I hear there's rumors on the Slashdots
With the monopolist pressure they are forcing my relatives, my employers, my contractees, my government to use their own software and wont let them bail out, limiting me on what i can or cant do with my audio&visual equipment in my own house, increasingly deciding what i can or cannot see on the internet, oppressing my open source community, suing people to the extent of harrassment, causing my relatives, friends, close ones to get into pain over their lacking&incapable&insecure softare and me to run fix-up errands for them, trying to funnel cash into decision makers to influence political decisions against my democratic wishes.
In short, they are using me and all the people i know for their own personal profit against their wishes.
i request that microsoft cease and desist immediately
Read radical news here
What is it about monopolists that they end up thinking no one else could possibly be as good as them and their team, that no one could possibly compete, that no one could come up with an idea on their own?
Why do monopolists assume they own the world when their fragment is a paltry slice compared to the whole?
Why would someone whose anti-trust investigation mysteriously evaporated shortly after the Bush election be flapping their gums when the Democrats are on the rise and looking into any and all events for influence, connections, and blame? Instead of worrying about Linux, Ballmer should be worrying about the spectre of renewed anti-trust investigations.
The Linux code is up for public review. The straw-dog SCO attempt to tear it down is all but done. Let Microsoft publish their code and identify the purported IP conflicts. They don't and won't because they can't, and they know it.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Hey, Steve, Apple of the 1980's called. They want their reactions to your OS stealing their ideas back.
/* No Comment */
Interoperability... Are they are putting in decent VT100 terminal support for a mere few 100 M$ ? Sure.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
Ahhhhh, so Microsoft owns IP that's in Linux, eh? So that explains why they paid Novell All That Much Money.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Funny thing. SCO tried this same thing about 3 years ago. It started with a reporter "viewing" the evidence and then reporting it as being a credible violation. After 3 years, NOTHING has come from it. I suspect that we will soon see a reporter reporting that they have seen numerous IP violations from Linux, but will not show the evidence and will soon say that it is credable. My guess is that it will be Dvorack or some other idiot inside of PC Mag.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Really, he is a genius. Think about it.
IT Shop: We need some robust 24/7 uptime servers.
Ballmer: Great, I'll send you some Windows licences. Misa or VasterCard?
IT Shop: No, we need a well-architected, secure OS that's designed for networking.
Ballmer: Great! I'll send you some Vista licences. You should see Aero. Wow!
IT Shop: No, in the last 10 years, Windows has cost billions of dollars in lost time because of security flaws in Microsoft software.
Ballmer: Um... well... er... heh...
IT Shop: We're going with Linux.
Ballmer: Did you know? All the good parts of Linux were designed by us. Novell even admits it. We release so much great code every day that we let the hippies have some for free. So, in fact, when you buy Vista, you get all the good parts of Linux. Plus... you get Aero! Wow! Will that be Misa or VasterCard?
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
The whole point of the BSD license is that the code may be used freely, by anyone, anywhere, for any purpose. BSD programmers care more about seeing their code put to good use than about getting something back in return. I'd just be happy to see my code being used to improve such a widely-used product, thereby improving the lives of millions. Much less likely with the GPL, you must admit.
And now, a PSA from David Lynch.
All this patent noise is hiding the real agenda. Microsoft is having Novell create a Linux compatibility layer for Windows to replace the aging/ailing Services For Unix/Services for Unix Applications. Services for Linux in Vista/Longhorn by SP2. Novell has the skills to hack Linux interface into Windows, since this is how Netware integrates. Remember FreeBSD has a Linux compatibilty layer so there is an existing shim already that can be adapted.
When I was young, I had to rub sticks together to compute.
Didn't SCO already did that? Why can't Microsoft be original? What's next; are they going to try to erect a huge sunshade over Seattle? Steal the head off of a statue of George Washington? Come on now, Microsoft, you can do better than that! But then, I suppose this is so typical of your idea of "innovation."
Seriously though, if they claim Linux infringes on its IP, it's 99.999% likely that every other *nix variant out there does as well, since Linux is merely a clone of Unix. So, go after the likes of Sun, IBM, SCO (Yeah, I know SCO and Microsoft are lovers, but bear with me here), the BSDs, HP (HP/UX and Dec Unix), and so forth. I don't think even Microsoft has the resources to prove to the courts that an OS architecture which predates theirs by over a decade infringes on their so-called "intellectual property."
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
The BSD license doesn't require much, but it does require that a copy be included in anything that uses the code. Has anyone seen a copy of the BSD license included in Microsoft products? I understand they make substantial use of BSD-licensed code. What is the penalty for that violation? How much of Microsoft's intellectual property is really Microsoft's. How many of Microsoft's patents are similar to their recent years' patenting of sudo (that had been in use for well over 17 years)? How many of Microsoft's patents are based on ideas in code they acquired having BSD licenses?
Folks, we are getting into a massive prior art battle here. Microsoft couldn't create problems for Linux through SCO, so now they are trying to do so directly.
This, btw, was Ballmer speaking to predominantly to his customers. He led off by asking who was running Microsoft stuff and who was running Linux as well. Reportedly, a "surprising" number of hands (described as many outside of the quote) went up as well, and Ballmer asks about interoperating problems, some of the audience were having them, and on he goes with Microsoft's solution. While the ip in Linux is a legitimate lede, isn't another take-away that Linux is getting into the datacenter whether or not Microsoft cooperates, i.e., there are problems Linux is solving? And didn't he tell his customers that they are infringing Microsoft's ip if they were using the wrong flavor of Enterprise Linux? And isn't he saying that in order to help solve the interoperating problem, RHEL-using customer of ours, we're going to sell you some vouchers so you can get the other brand, waste time adapting to its differences, have you write off that support subscription to RedHat and make you go get more money for your budget, and that way, after we huddle with Novell, you won't have interoperability problems later (maybe). So, everyone keeps asking the FOSS world -- what's your reaction, what are you going to do. Well, Microsoft customers who also use Enterprise Linux or who are thinking about checking into it, what are you going to do, now that Microsoft has decided that it should you cost you more money to do your job?
http://www.linuxcommand.org/man_pages/bsod1.html
We all know that Windows most innovative feature is the BSOD. They want thier royalties.
Enjoy,
It's just the normal noises in here.
Microsoft Windows infringes on our intelligence.
This move by Microsoft was pretty obviously in the works when they announced their patent cross-licensing scheme with Novell. But the Novell deal isn't absolutely committed yet. And Microsoft, like other submarine patent strategists, usually waits awhile to announce their target, to fool more people into forgetting the way they set up the target, and fool more people into thinking the original transaction was executed for its intrinsic business merits.
So this whole campaign to screw Linux with patent attacks looks desperate. And since the Novell deal isn't absolutely committed, the strategy is in jeopardy, without its foundation properly laid. With IBM already whipping Novell's last created Frankenstein, SCO, into harmless foam after years in court, Microsoft's attempt looks less likely to succeed every few days. When will Oracle come out of the woods? Does RedHat have a patent arsenal to match its brand and budgets?
--
make install -not war
A lot of that I'm sure is safe, but I can't imagine that somewhere in there and among Microsoft's untold zillions of software patents that there isn't a (legally) reasonable case that could be made against something OSS that people would care about.
A good many GUI's existing before MS-Windows. Just as there are timelines which document how OS kernel's have evolved, there are also timelines which document how GUI's have evolved. This site documents the evolution of each and every GUI, along with every icon that each GUI has used. This is particularly important for commercial application developers who wish to avoid any lawsuits caused by using someone elses "trademarked" icon.
As an example, here is the components page, which documents the evolution of the most commonly used icons.
As long as the Linux community can prove that any feature in an application has prior art in earlier GUI's that haven't been patented or copyrighted by Microsoft, then it is pure Microsoft FUD. If MS want to sue Linux, then they will have to sue the other OS vendors as well.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
So, if there is "infringing" IP in Linux, is there a liklihood that similar infringements have been made in Apple's code?
Really, I'm not trolling. It sounds like Ballmer is saying that MS has so much of the system tied up in IP that effectively everybody who writes an OS which can interact with MS software is infringing. Does Apple have cross licensing?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
The lack of specificity is the most damaging. Clearly msft's game is to flood the media with vauge innuendo about linux being a legal mine field. A lie told often enough is the truth. If msft were specific, their claims could be evaluted and appropriate actions taken.
Msft = the fud factory.
> In comments confirming the open-source community's suspicions,
> Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer Thursday declared his belief that
> the Linux operating system infringes on Microsoft's intellectual
> property.
Well, look at the facts.
* Linux uses Microsoft's technology of taking input from a keyboard and displaying it on a monitor.
* Both Linux and Windows run programs that can help you create documents and run a webserver.
* Both Linux and Windows need "programs" written in "source code" that must be "compiled" in order to operate. Even worse, these "programs" need to be downloaded either over the Internet or from a CD.
* Both Linux and Windows communicate with computers that use the Windows OS.
That's pretty damning evidence! The only technology Linux hasn't stolen yet is Window's ability to bloat up with malware causing the system to come crashing down and displaying the Blue Screen of Death.
...and IBM attorneys are affectionately known within the organization as the "Nazgul."
The track record for Microsoft's legal department is really not that good. IBM will probably tear them apart if they really go at eachother.
According to Ballmer, "the appropriate economic return for our shareholders from our innovation" is about negative 348 million dollars.
That number sounds a bit small to me; I think Novell should have at least held out for an even $400 million, an apology, and a promise from Microsoft to never try "innovating" again without adult supervision.
But really, this intellectual property stuff is serious business, and I don't think any Linux users want to fall afoul of the law. If Novell had to pay negative hundreds of dollars for each of their users' infringement of MS intellectual property, I think us Fedora users (and you Ubuntu users, and Gentoo users...) should all be willing to step up to the plate and pay negative hundreds of dollars per license too.
Brazil directed by Terry Gilliam
One of the characters is a guy (played by Robert De Niro) who runs around repairing the horribly broken machines that everyone's required to use, but are forbidden to fix. He's hunted down as a terrorist.
Seemed pretty crazy when I first saw it.
Doesn't seem so far fetched anymore.
What effect will the Patent Commons project have on a patent assault by Microsoft? Also, will the newly formed Open Inventions Network also affect the way Microsoft approaches this issue?
I mean, both of those organizations essentially grant rights to their patents royalty free only to companies that don't sue F/OSS projects. If MS starts a suit, wouldn't they have to contend with both of these patent holding portfolios as well as the enormous portfolio of companies like IBM who have a vested interest in seeing Linux succeed?
I get the feeling (though I could be dead wrong) that MS gets far more benefit from the current ambiguity and the occasional stirring, scary statement than from actually pursuing a legal remedy.
Tom Caudron
http://tom.digitalelite.com/
-Tom
That remark touches a nerve for me. There was a girl in my elementary school who kept taking my lunch money. Worse yet, she took it from other kids in the school.
However, I was the first one to stand up to her, and tell her that she wasn't going to get MY money, and that I was going to keep it!
So she told me to put my tray back, and turned to the next kid in line.
But I could tell that I'd had some effect from the way she kept looking at me funny for the rest of the year, and the whispering of the other kids told me that I'd made an impression on them as well.
Strike while the irony is hot! -- The Freethinker
Their shareholders should be pretty pissed at THAT kind of money making scheme. But me thinks it's more like their money making scheme with regard to WindowsCE and Xbox. You know, the scheme to take profits from the Windows monopoly( around $10 billion so far ) and keep the WindowsCE and Xbox products on the market so nobody else jumps in and grows to threaten the Windows monopoly/gravy train.
IMO, in the next few years we are going to see the public finally seeing Microsoft for what they really are. After all, FOSS and GNU/Linux must be doing SOMETHING or else Microsoft would not be doing so much in the public and financial markets regarding them. Unfortunately, I don't see very much of this in the United States so it must be going on elsewhere or outside of my sight.
'Gozer' has now, or will soon be, materialized and Novell could be our 'Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man'. Will it be IBM, Oracle, RedHat, or others who bust this party up? Or will the US become to knowns as "The land of Gozer", if it isn't already?
So, "Who you gonna call?".
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
I thought it was just called the GNU/L-Aid.
Testicles, Hair, Uncertainty, Doubt
example.org - powered by Linux!
Ooooh, I see IBM, and M$ going at it, and hey didn't M$ screw IBM with the Operating System...Yeah, that's right they did!LOL This is going to freakin' great!!! Oh yeah, M$ is very frightened of Linux, and Open Source because look at the deal they made with Corel, so that they wouldn't develop Corel Linux anymore.
>> Windows itself is an extrapolation of other people's prior works at best.
This got me thinking... You know, Microsoft can't even claim to have invented windows. Pretty amazing... I had forgotten how late they've come to this game.
According to this link http://toastytech.com/guis/guitimeline.html , it took M$ about 12 (twelve) f* years to finish (?) a product that would "revolutionize" IT.
Let us all remember who it is that is complicit in this FUD campaign, Novell 's self-serving deal legitimizes Microsoft's assault on Linux. Regardless of the technical wording of the deal, and whether it can be established that Novell is violating the letter of the GPL 2, they are certainly violating its spirit, Novell must not be supported.
--10scjed IANAL,AFAIK
Steven, when you use a Trojan Horse strategy, you have to remember to wait to attack until the doors are closed, night has fallen, and the city inhabitants are all asleep in their beds.
Overall grade: C+
Great execution of a sneaky plan at the beginning. Strong-arming Novell was a masterstroke. Then you brought the whole plan down because you were too impatient. Reread The Prince before our next assignment.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
In a way we should be thanking Ballmer. A lot of people run Linux now and the thrill of simply putting it on one's machine is long gone.
Ballmer's comments, and the presumable legal action which will follow them in the future, lets us feel like outlaws, non-conformists, and rebels again. SCO was never really a thrilling nemesis
SCO is...well...SCO is...pathetic.
I never really had that thrill of running something as unlikely as Linux; by the time I got it installed (2001), it was pretty popular, installers had made it simple, and it wasn't a big deal. But now, not only will my 5 years of Linux usage be a functional and utilitarian experience (which is the sum total of what it has been thus far)-- but also one of spite and defiance going forward.
I enjoy spite and defiance. Don't you? I'd rather be dragging down kings and military regimes, but this will do as a small snack in my comfortable suburban kitchen.
A small thrill, but it feels good, nonetheless.
I can't be the only one who felt *good* to be a Linux user when I read this.
The chances of me downgrading to something like Vista were null to begin with, but now, well...
The only thing I have to say about Windows is, well, bitch if I need to, I'll run your OS in a *window*.
These days, you can patent anything. Linux probably violates some of Microsoft's patents -- but they're probably stupid patents that will be overturned by a court.
That doesn't mean it's not expensive to litigate.
Mod parent insightful - for those of you that don't know, yes politicians and lawyers do do this, in Congress for example. Congressman are allowed to take the floor and talk about wookies just to kill time and bore the other side to death so they give up on passing a bill and go home. It's not quite the same as what the parent posted, but it's another example of lawyers and politically minded officials stalling for time as a lame way to defeat the opposing party versus making an actual arguement...
I think this is the first time there's a fud tag but no "notfud".
Obligatory Miguel de Icaza quote: "But Microsoft would never do anything mean to us!"
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
With the Novell deal, Microsoft pretends to 'embrace' Novell SUSE Linux and casts a FUD shadow over non-SUSE Linux but that's not the whole thing. Next will come the Microsoft products that extend SUSE Linux to 'interoperate' with Windows and, guess what, they might actually become popular and useful for both Windows and Novell SUSE Linux users. Finally comes 'extinguish' where the new products become obstacles to using other OSS software and non-SUSE linux.
No. DEC had an implementation of SMB called PATHWORKS, which included a DOS client and a server for VMS and, I think, Ultrix, but they didn't invent the protocol. (They might have had some add-on protocols with PATHWORKS, but the core protocol was the SMB that IBM, 3Com, Intel, and Microsoft were involved with developing. See this message from Steven French. I think Steve's the main developer of the cifsfs in-kernel SMB client for Linux).
One of the lead developers (some guy named "Andrew Tridgell" :-)) reverse-engineered SMB based on traffic between the PATHWORKS client and server; he later discovered that this was SMB, which did have some published specs. See Tridgell's description of the history of Samba.
I really didn't, I thought that Novell would do better than sell out the last of their dedicated fans. I love administrating our Novell network. I loved SUSE Linux before Novell bought them, even more afterwards! And now Steve Ballmer has ME ready to throw some chairs over his statements.
I don't feel we as a community have taken ANYTHING away from those pretentious bastards, things are quite the opposite. I would be forever hurt to watch something as stupid and ineffective as government crush the open source movement over something as silly and wrong as the claims MS is making.
I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
What if they allow it, but only if you pay a licensing fee? The EU decision requires only "reasonable and non-discriminatory terms", and explicitly speaks of "any remuneration that Microsoft might charge for supply"; perhaps I'm missing something, but I don't see anything there that requires Microsoft to allow you to give away SMB server software for free. (See section "6.1.1 Remedy concerning refusal to supply", and its two subsections "6.1.1.1 Order to disclose interoperability information for the development of interoperable products" and "6.1.1.2 Reasonable and non-discriminatory terms, timeliness of the disclosures".)
Perhaps Microsoft's strategy can be summed up here as "Don't forget to pay your $32 to $760 licensing fee you cock-smoking teabaggers." :-)
I thought I'd do a quick Google search and see if good ol' Microsoft has ever "appropriated" any code themselves. In just a few minutes, I found eight instances where Microsoft lost court battles over the code they stole. Here you go:
.NET and related security technologies
As a response to Digital Research's DR-DOS 6.0, which bundled SuperStor disk compression, Microsoft opened negotiations with Stac Electronics, vendor of the most popular DOS disk compression tool, Stacker. Stac was unwilling to meet Microsoft's terms for licensing Stacker and withdrew from the negotiations. In the due diligence process, Stac engineers had shown Microsoft some Stacker source code. However, Microsoft chose to license Vertisoft's DoubleDisk instead of Stacker.[2]
Soon, MS-DOS 6.0 was released, including the Microsoft DoubleSpace disk compression utility program. Stac successfully sued Microsoft for patent infringement regarding the compression algorithm used in DoubleSpace. This resulted in the release of MS-DOS 6.21, which had disk-compression removed. Shortly afterwards came version 6.22, with a new version of the disk compression system, DriveSpace, rewritten to avoid the infringing code.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS-DOS
A new patent battle is brewing -- this time over Microsoft's (Quote) claim over Caller ID for E-Mail.
F. Scott Deaver, owner of Failsafe Designs, says Microsoft is guilty of the "outright theft" of his product name and intellectual property (IP), and will seek legal and financial redress from the Redmond, Wash., software giant and anyone else that uses his technology that verifies e-mail is coming from the domain it claims.
http://www.internetnews.com/security/article.php/3 393891
Alacritech® Inc., the innovator of Dynamic TCP Offload(TM) data acceleration solutions that enable the highest performance and efficiency in networked systems, today announced a U.S. District Court granted Alacritech's motion for preliminary injunction to prevent Microsoft Corporation (Nasdaq: MSFT) from making, using, offering for sale, selling, importing or inducing others to use Microsoft's "Chimney" TCP offload architecture slated to be available in both the "Longhorn" version of the Windows® operating system and in the Scalable Networking Pack for Windows Server(TM) 2003.
Alacritech sued Microsoft in Federal District Court on August 11, 2004, alleging that Microsoft's existing and future operating systems containing the "Chimney" TCP offload architecture uses Alacritech's proprietary SLIC Technology® architecture. The suit is based on two of Alacritech's fundamental patents relating to scalable networking, U.S. Patent No. 6,427,171 and U.S. Patent No. 6,987,868, both entitled "Protocol Processing Stack for use with Intelligent Network Interface Device."
http://www.alacritech.com/html/041305Alacritech_Gr anted_PI.shtml
In April 2001, Intertrust initiated a lawsuit against Microsoft. The lawsuit ultimately accused Microsoft of infringing 11 of Intertrust's patents and almost 130 of the company's patent claims.
The lawsuit centered on accused products based on the following technologies:
DRM and product activation technologies
Trusted and reliable operating system technologies
In bringing the patent infringement lawsuit, Intertrust believed that Microsoft's forward-going technology infrastructure significantly relied on Intertrust's inventions for DRM and trusted computing.
http://www.intertrust.com/main/ip/settlement.html
(Redwood Shores, CA, December 15, 2005) - Visto Corporation has filed a legal action against Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) for misappropriating Visto's intellectual property. The complaint ass
ConsultingFair.com