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?

Comments

Alright, own up

[LiquidCoooled]

Who merged the Linux Genuine Advantage code into the tree?
Come on, speak up - I know it was one of you.

Re:Alright, own up

[91degrees]

Sorry. That was me. I also added the module that executes arbitrary code downloaded by a network application, and the code that requires root access for trivial applications. Did I do something wrong?

Re:Alright, own up

[sfled]

Steve Ballmer
Microsoft Corp.
Redmond, WA

Dear Mr. Ballmer,

I am forwarding my old SuSE 8.1 Pro CDs & DVD to you, along with appropriate instruction on where you can put them (including facilitation of the process with a sharpened poker.)

Regards,

Sfled

Re:Alright, own up

[mwilliamson]

...not if you work for microsoft...pretty standard, really.

Re:Alright, own up

[concept10]

Alright, enough joking. Enough of the Balmer, chair and DRM jokes. It's time for industry leaders such as IBM, Intel and other supporters of F/OSS to step up to the plate and take action against these claims. Also, I haven't heard nothing from the likes of Linus and RMS. Where are they hiding?

Re:Alright, own up

[canuck57]

Who merged the Linux Genuine Advantage code into the tree? Come on, speak up - I know it was one of you.

Funny, but the wrong thing to ask.

The right thing to ask is how much open and public domain source made it to Windows? Was not Linux preemptive multitasking before Windows, POP3, SMTP/sendmail, DNS/BIND, Kerberos, telnet, ftp, http, ssl, TCP/IP itself, and probably more. At least in concept everything in Windows even windows itself is borrowed from other peoples works. Windows itself is an extrapolation of other people's prior works at best.

Re:Alright, own up

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, but those decent human beings didn't patent their work. And in this world, the validity of the patent only matters if the one being sued has enough money to hold out for a non-speedy civil trial for 2-5 years while the prosecutor stalls, trying to bleed the smaller company dry on law costs.

Samba

[Ice Wewe]

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.

Re:Samba

[udderly]

Is it just me or does it sound like MS is going to charge a per seat charge for some enhanced ability to connect from a Windows machine to Linux servers? Or is it just straight blackmail for exemption for future litigation? Or both? I can't tell.

Re:Samba

[Jason Earl]

Actually, Microsoft's plan is even stupider than that. Microsoft wants to charge a per seat license for Linux users, but they aren't really offering enhanced interoperability. Novell and Red Hat are both going to include the same software. It's not like Novell is going to have its own version of Samba, for instance. The primary difference is that Novell customers are going to be able to "sleep easy" because Novell is paying Microsoft so that Microsoft won't sue Novell's Linux customers.

Microsoft isn't going to sue Red Hat's customers either, but that's only because suing Red Hat customers would be ridiculously foolish. At its heart the real issue is that Microsoft has such a poor relationship with its customers that many customers are worried that Microsoft will drag them into patent court. These customers are willing to pay money, not for any sort of patent license, but for a short term commitment from Microsoft that they won't be sued.

Next thing you know Microsoft execs will be brutalizing school kids for their lunch money.

The truly ironic bit is that Microsoft is not going to sue anyone over patents. Microsoft execs know that if they did this the various organizations that have a stake in the success of Linux (which is essentially everyone but Microsoft) would pay for a well-funded defense. Millions of dollars would be spent, and in the end the patents in question would either be shot down or removed from the Free Software product in question. Depending on who Microsoft chose to attack it could even trigger retaliation from other large players with huge patent repositories. What's more, Microsoft's patent aggression would start a wholesale migration away from Microsoft's technologies.

If Microsoft started suing folks using its technology then its technology would become much less popular virtually overnight.

This is why Microsoft has wisely chosen a middle road. Instead of actually taking people to court, it is simply going to threaten to take people to court and hope that they'll throw money Microsoft's way.

Listen closely

[deadhammer]

That rhythmic thudding sound you hear is the sound of every computer professional on the planet simultaneously laughing their balls off.

Re:Listen closely

[krell]

"That rhythmic thudding sound you hear is the sound of every computer professional on the planet simultaneously laughing their balls off."

Damn, sure isn't a good day to be a janitor at an IT firm. Running around yelling "Don't step on and SQUISH the things! Makes it a lot harder to sweep them up!"

Re:Listen closely

[jamstar7]

"This really is a male dominated industry then isn't it?"

thud thud Not thud thud anymore thud thud thud thud

Why you think they call it Unix?

Microsoft Brand FUD

[eldavojohn]

"Novell pays us some money for the right to tell customers that anybody who uses SUSE Linux is appropriately covered," Ballmer said. This "is important to us, because [otherwise] we believe every Linux customer basically has an undisclosed balance-sheet liability."

Do me a favor, disclose your 'undisclosed balance-sheet liability' and then we'll listen to you bitch about Linux.

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 ... but what I see is that Novell just lost all their street cred by selling out to you. What they sold was their future in the open source community. Why do I have this strange view of it all? Well, because I have this sinking feeling that a year or two from now you're going to package some form of Linux (maybe with Windows maybe separately) and you aren't going to release the source code & you're going to earn a profit on supporting it. And people will be pissed and there will be a court case. But you'll hire a thousand and one lawyers and they'll show up and they'll point out to the judge that Linux kernel "infringed upon Windows anyway" and the deal you made with Novell only confirmed it and admitted that they were facing lawsuits from you. The whole time, there won't be any patents cited, no logic will be used but at the end of the day the judge, bless his computer ignorance, will probably agree with you and allow you to continue to release & profit from Linux. But that won't be enough, you'll go after ever user using non-Microsoft-mutated-SuSE Linux and sue every other Linux distro. If that's not your motive, why are you already issuing warnings to users of other distros?

It's not just any old regular FUD, it's new improved Microsoft FUD.

Enjoy your $500 million, Novell.

Re:Microsoft Brand FUD

[jackbird]

Bear in mind that Boies Schiller Flexner, SCO's law firm, is really, really good. They're the firm that defeated Microsoft in the antitrust trial. The fact that they've been able to drag this case out as long as they have with no evidence whatsoever is testament to that.

But IBM has some fantastic lawyers as well, and they are not going to take Microsoft intimidating and/or suing their customers lying down. The nightmare scenario is IBM, MS, and Novell collaborating on a plan to monetize Linux, but with Red Hat already having line in the sand, and Sun and most of the developers unlikely to play ball, that could end well, too.

Re:Microsoft Brand FUD

[MindStalker]

It seems they are referring to the interoperability features. Things like NTFS support and even Samba. Of course as we speak the EU is forcing MS to disclose these interoperability secrets and saying they don't belong to MS. A lot of this stuff was also covered in the initial trial here in the US. They got let off, but the political climate is changing. They might be figuring, hey we need to license this stuff quickly before the government forces us to give it away..

Re:Microsoft Brand FUD

[elrous0]

Well, Novell said "bring it." But they were bent over at the time.

-Eric

Re:Microsoft Brand FUD

[spellraiser]

Also from Ballmer:

We are willing to do the same deal with Red Hat and other Linux distributors, it's not an exclusive thing.

My, how nice of you. So you're willing to include others in your protection racket? You're much too gracious.

Seriously, this is f*cked up, in a disturbingly devious way. Basically, Ballmer's philosophy here seems to be: "Microsoft deserves money for every single computer out there, and we will get it one way or the other."

No need to wait for netcraft...

[SlashDread]

SuSE is dead.

Never send a boy to do a man's job

[A nonymous Coward]

If you want a job done right, do it yourself, eh Balmer? SCO just wasn't up to the task.

really, he should have said...

[MancunianMaskMan]

GNU/Linux infringes on our IP

Okay...

[urbanradar]

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.

Re:Okay...

[chrismcdirty]

So what I'm gathering from this is that it's going to be a behemoth of a battle between IBM and MS, with hopefully many lawyers dying in the middle.

Re:Okay...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well said. It's likely that every non-trivial piece of software infringes on some patent somewhere. But there are two reasons nobody wants a patent war:

• It would be carnage. The only certain outcome would be lawyers getting rich.
• Software patents are still disallowed in Europe, but there is intense lobbying to get them introduced. A US software patent war would show what a disaster they are.

SCO did it!

[hackstraw]

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?

Re:SCO did it!

[miyako]

I think the difference will be that SCO was claiming their actual code was in the kernel, while MS is claiming that it "infringes on their IP".
For all we know MS has some patent on Operating Systems or taking input, processing it, and giving output, or the color blue, or something.
That's the problem with software patents, as it stands right now, if Linux really is infringing on some MS patent then the functionality will have to be removed, not simply re-implemented in a different way. If this patent is on something core to the operation of Linux, then it could be very bad.
Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if Linux does violate some MS patent- not because the kernel developers have been stealing from MS, but because software patents are far to broad in nature. The best possible scenario would be that Linux is violating some MS patents and that is used as a stepping stone in order to reorganize that entire software patent system so it's not so stupid. More likely is that either Linux isn't violating any MS patents, or it is but MS doesn't do anything about it in court because they are afraid of having to fight IBM on one side, and Antitrust lawsuits from the EU (and possibly the US, though we saw how effective that was the last time) on another side.

Patent numbers and licence fees ?

[quiberon2]

Microsoft need to be specific; what are the patent numbers, which countries are they valid in, and what is the licence fee that Microsoft would like from an individual user ?

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.

is this going to force a fork?

[hedrick]

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.

Re:Put up or Shut up

[Bemopolis]

I dunno, Ballmer might be right on this one. I know several Linux users who have a BSoD screensaver...

Bemopolis

The coming war

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Pirates O' The Valley

[Tarlus]

Hey, Steve, Apple of the 1980's called. They want their reactions to your OS stealing their ideas back.

OSX question

[Overzeetop]

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?

FUD means never having to say anything specific

[walterbyrd]

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.

Reverse psychology - Microsoft is the real thief

[slackaddict]

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:

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 .NET and related security 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