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So What If Linux Infringes On Microsoft IP?
Mr Men writes to mention a ZDNet blog entry by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes wondering aloud if maybe, just maybe, Microsoft isn't lying about having patents that are part of Linux. "Come on, no matter how much of a Linux fan you are, you have to admit that there's at least a chance that Linux does indeed infringe on Microsoft's patents. After all, Microsoft does hold a lot of patents and while Linux is open source and we can all take a look at the source code, only Microsoft has access to most of its source code so it isn't all that difficult for it to prove — to itself at any rate — that there are IP infringements contained in Linux. After all, before IBM handed over some 500 patents to the open source community, it's pretty clear that Linux was infringing some of them. Given that, why is it so hard to believe that the same isn't going on with Microsoft?" Even then, he goes on to say, so what if they do? It's not like they're going to go after us with a 'Linux tax.' Kingsley-Hughes imagines that, for the most part, Microsoft is just going to sit on this info and use it to form more and more profitable deals. Better than the alternative, I guess.
From GPL v2:
All direct or derived GPL source is subject to the GPL.
If there are licensing problems with the software, you do not have permission to use or distribute it.
If there are problems with IP conflicts, the GPL explicitly does not apply to the source code in question. That means NO ONE has the right to distribute that software except the AUTHOR/OWNER, and they must use a license other than the GPL to do so.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Although debian has removed non-free since the crypto export ban was lifted some DD's are planning to resurrect it for the sake of software patents http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2006/10/msg 00022.html is the begining of the thread.
People sitting on Windows 2000 are going to see even less of what they want in Vista than they did in XP and migrating to free software will be very attractive for them. The end will come swiftly.
Do me a favor and read Slashdot posts from 2000 ("Windows 2000 is a complete rewrite! There's no way MS can ship it without huge numbers of bugs. This is the end of Microsoft") and posts from 2002 ("I hate the XP interface! And no one is going to want to pay for a minor upgrades to Win2K. And mandatory registration?? This will definitely drive people to Linux").
Then take a look at Microsoft's incredibly profitable financials. And the immense amount of money in the bank. They could bleed for DECADES before it'd be a significant problem.
Your last lesson will be to realize why people buy computers. People buy applications, not operating systems. Linux is incompatible with their software, therefore Linux is totally and completely useless to the vast majority of people. Yes, a small number of people only want email and browsing, but for some reason Linux people think this is more than a tiny part of the world.
Just wait for it -- Vista will be yet another cash cow for Microsoft.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Umm, yes. Please remind me the place and time when Linus started developing the kernel...?
Actually, it was made specifically to be compatible with one already made in the Netherlands, made specifically to be compatible with one already made in the US.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
As long as Microsoft puts something like "Some portions © Regents of the University of California" on a splash page somewhere, they've done everything they need to "rip off" BSD code. Winsock was just the Windows implementation of Berkeley sockets, and is the prime example of their use of BSD licensed code.
BSD license means they can do whatever the hell they want with it as long as they keep the copyright attached to the code or binary, this is why Apple can build on top of BSD and link into it without releasing their UI code. The benefit of BSD is that different private companies can build on top of the same software infrastructure without giving up their improvements, while the reference implementation remains in public and still owned by the writer, who may elect to change the license in the future (BSD is not public domain). BSD is not for me, except for example programs in articles, maybe, but if you're one of those permissive types that wants developer to be "free" to use your code, then it's there for you.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
The tired excuse that MS overstepped laws (presumably by abusing their monopoly) simply does not apply. Many on these boards love to point to Microsoft's abuse of its monopoly power as the way it achieved desktop dominance. That is circular logic. Obviously they had to become dominant on the desktop *before* they could leverage that dominance. No, they simply outmaneuvered their competitors (and a lumbering, arrogant IBM).
I do agree with you that Microsoft did a much better job marketing their wares than the examples you cited. But the question is, of course, what was the nature of that marketing? It is my opinion that what Microsoft did better than anyone else was court (ie market to) 3rd party developers to create applications for their platform. They went out of their way to make it easy to develop for their platform because they recognized that applications ultimately would drive platform selections. And for that they have been rewarded handsomely.
You seem to know your stuff, so you would almost certainly be aware of the way in which Microsoft's involvement with operating software began, but for those who don't, here's a brief summary of events.
Microsoft bought an OS which the author was either too afraid to release, or unable to find a distributor for because of it's similarity to DRI's CP/M. Microsoft hoped bringing IBM's credibility and legal muscle into the equation would delay or prevent legal action and so bought the infringing OS at a bargain basement price and then resold it to IBM at a rate that massively undercut DRI's price. Microsoft (on IBM's dime) later re-wrote parts of PC-DOS so as not to infringe on DRI's copyright and/or patents.
Essentially, Microsoft's first foray into the operating systems market was with an illegal clone of a then dominant OS. Luckily for Microsoft, IBM's PC dominated the market, breaking into the business market in a way that no computer had before. While profits from their optional ROM BASIC (the only reason Microsoft had been in talks with IBM at all) were far below expectations, profits from PC-DOS propelled Microsoft to a multi million dollar company overnight, and turned PC-DOS into the de-facto standard operating system for business software,
Naturally, other companies were keen to get onto the same bandwagon and have access to the huge array of pre-made DOS software, and so began making computers with the exact same hardware configuration as IBM's computers. Luckily for these upstarts wanting to chip away at the very reason for Microsoft's success by simply copying instead of innovating, Microsoft had added a clause in it's license of DOS to IBM that allowed the reselling of DOS under a different brand name.
So began the marketing of so-called IBM-compatibles, clones which copied the IBM computers verbatim except for IBM's BIOS ROM. Compaq were first to market with a reverse-engineered version of the IBM BIOS, and Microsoft came to the party with a generic version of PC-DOS called MS-DOS. With a stroke of a pen, Microsoft killed innovation in the Computer industry. Demonstrating that it was better to let some other large company do all the hard work, and then copy and undercut them with a product that you didn't have to pay any of the research and development costs for.
So it was not only law-breaking, but dirty tricks and a large amount of luck (mainly in the form of IBM's tragi-comic fawning relationship with MS) that put Microsoft into a position that they were later able to parlay into the MS-DOS, and then the Windows monopolies.
Once IBM controlled the OS market for MS-DOS, they were easily able to illegally twist the arms of OEMs and force bundling of Windows, despite the overall technical superiority of OS/2 at the time.
It seems disingenuous in the extreme for someone who seems to understand so much about the issues to claim that Microsoft simply out-marketed their competition, that's complete nonsense. In the beginning there were never advertisements for MS-DOS or PC-DOS, because Microsoft knew it had those markets sewn up.
I can't tell if you're agreeing with me or not, but just in case you're not. Here's why:
Top 5 Online Populations by Country, Among Visitors Age 15+
March 2006
Total Worldwide - All Locations
Source: comScore World Metrix
Worldwide Total 694,260
United States 152,046
China 74,727
Japan 52,100
Germany 31,813
United Kingdom 30,190
When 4% of the world's population represents over 20% of the world's online presence, it's safe to assume they are an extremely important market for software.
Top 15 Countries by Average Monthly Hours Online per Unique Visitor
Among Visitors Age 15+*
March 2006
Total Worldwide - All Locations
Source: comScore World Metrix
Avg. Hours per Visitor March-06
Worldwide 31.3
Israel 57.5
Finland 49.3
South Korea 47.2
Netherlands 43.5
Taiwan 43.2
Sweden 41.4
Brazil 41.2
Hong Kong 41.2
Portugal 39.8
Canada 38.4
Germany 37.2
Denmark 36.8
France 36.8
Norway 35.4
Venezuela 35.3
* Excludes traffic from public computers such as internet cafes or access from mobile phones or PDAs.
I'm sorry, where are those 150 million accounts on there? Given that the particular study you referenced doesn't mention how that estimate was reached, and the low amount of usage of the US compared to other nations, I would suggest that they're counting every member of an American household which owns a computer connected to the internet. This is not an accurate protrayal of *usage* which is more relevant than the number of aging relatives who've learned to send email.
I heard a lot of Windows code was ripped off from BSD.
I heard that monkeys fly on fairy wings.
Here's what happened (I know a guy who was on the NT/2000 development team, and worked on the TCP/IP stack). Early on in the life of the NT project, Microsoft's networking software ran over a system called Netbeui (Netbios is the API for Netbeui). Microsoft realized that TCP/IP was kicking the holy hell out of other networking solutions (Blue Glue...ew...). So they resolved to put a TCP/IP stack into NT.
Problem was, they didn't have a lot of time. So they licensed a TCP/IP stack (that used BSD code) from a company that, if my memory serves me right, was called Spider Systems. Their TCP/IP stack was decent, but ran in an environment called STREAMS. Microsoft licensed the stack and STREAMS and ported them to Windows.
The Spider stack wasn't very good. It relied upon STREAMS, which was kludgey and ugly and a heavyweight. The only version of NT to use it was NT 3. By NT 3.5 (the second version of NT, as it happened), it had been replaced by a Microsoft-written one. I'm not saying that the TCP/IP stack in modern Windows OSes, such as XP, is completely, 100% free of all BSD code. I mean, hell, some things are just stupid to do twice (the checksum calculation, for example), and if you did rewrite it it'd look almost exactly the same. Identical.
Now, some of the utilities--ftp, rcp, rsh--remained BSD-derived for quite a long time. But here's the thing--and if you had any clue as to what you were talking about, you'd have known this--it was entirely legal. As long as attribution is given, BSD code can be used for any purpose--and I remember that, in 3.51 at least, those utilities had the requisite "regents of University of California" text in it.
Yes, Microsoft has used BSD-derived code in the past. That doesn't make it "ripped off." That's the entire point of BSD.
Mod parent -1 Clueless.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
An escapist one - that they're working on doing something that would allow one use this stuff where the laws didn't apply, or even in the US if they have a license (froms some windows software for example).