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Ballmer Repeats Threats Against Linux
daria42 writes "Steve Ballmer has reissued Microsoft's patent threat against Linux, warning open-source vendors that they must respect his company's intellectual property. In a no-nonsense presentation to New York financial analysts last week, Microsoft's chief executive said the company's partnership with Novell, which it signed in November 2006, "demonstrated clearly the value of intellectual property, even in the open-source world.""
Well, if Linux users/vendors become persona non grata in the USA, there's always BSD... Until M$ decides to make the old saying "BSD is dying" come true. Either that or there's simply going to another country that isn't becoming a fascistic corporation whore.
It is very nice to hear Mr Ballmer yelling (cursing) this way, it means he is affraid for open source, open source is making more revenue then Mr ballmer wants.
So guys keep on the good work, when Mr Ballmer is yelling like a fool, the work is very good.
Thank you developers for this nice moment.
Well, there are two options:
1. Ballmer is right and are not protecting shareholders interest.
2. Ballers is wrong and are lying to his shareholders.
Whats true ? Whats worse ? Either way - he's out on a limb on this one - wonder who will push him off it ?
Just saying it like it are.
IBM has a big stake in LINUX continuing as it is. A relatively large percentage of their big mainframes are sold with LINUX running on them. The reason for having a large number of patents is to have the leverage to negotiate mutual use agreements. Balmer and MS will cause trouble by forcing some sort of mutual use agreement while spreading fear and doubt in the potential users of LINUX.
MS has got to be feeling some pressure with lack luster VISTA success. They have huge amounts of cash; but, the business analysts have to be wondering how long it will last if their cash cows start to under produce. When stocks sell at large multiples of their earnings the price is set by confidence that the company's earnings will increase at a steady rate. If confidence in the company's ability should fail, MS would be very disrupted. It hasn't happened yet; but, they have to allay the fears of people who recommend stocks.
And, it looks like the EU is starting to move the same direction as the USA with respect to IP laws, so don't think you Europians will get a "walk" on this.
...
We fought it, it finished by a draw but we will keep on fighting. Currently we are in a gray situation : software patents are forbidden but the European Patent Office deliver software patents on a daily basis. It is illegal but there are no institution to slap it and make it stop. So many companies own European Software patents, hoping they will one day have a legal value. I am not aware of one actually used in trial
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
'the Linux world can replace that code with something else that is not infringing'
I think he realises they claims that OSS violates MS Intelluctual Property are void. Else why are they going about reinventing open protocols. According to the Halloween documents one way of deny OSS projects entry into the market is to de-commoditize protocols & applications.
davecb5620@gmail.com
IBM has a big stake in LINUX continuing as it is.
So does Google, Yahoo, and a number of other serious players. Steve's threats may frankly bite him in the ass.
Ballmer spreading FUD is the latter approach. It doesn't mean he doesn't think he could win a confrontation, but that he'd rather not have one if it isn't necessary. How is that not protecting shareholder interests?
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
with 50 billion bucks and a still-functioning business model to use in suing the world. M$ is so fricken big that one workable legal tactic is to hire all the best lawfirms so you can't get a good lawyer.
I don't think he's blowing smoke as some have suggested. I really think M$ wants to sue anyone and everyone until they have finally broken Linux.
M$'s real strategic difficulty is doing this without triggering antitrust actions, class action suits from competitors, a genuine revolt from other countries, the software industry,etc. Global-sized coordinated opposition is preventing M$ from launching RIAA-style attacks on the world.
Oh, and one other thing is at least slowing them down: The complete and utter invalidity in any such claims.
Pavlov wouldn't be so famous if he'd used a can opener instead of a bell.
I should clarify: I mean someone step up and actually dare him in a press release - basically make a big stink over it. It is one thing to post something in a forum populated by linux users, it is another thing to write him an open letter and put it in a well established IT journal.
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.-TJ
From the TFA:
Maybe my interpretation is wrong, but I interpreted this as him clearly stating that Linux is cheaper than Windows. What ever happened to "Get the Facts?"
If they don't speak up now, they can't sue for damages- only a stop of the use of their patents.
It's called Laches, and it means "delay" in legalese. It means they can certainly tell us what
they have and get us to remove, but now that they've opened their mouth (via Ballmer's mouthing off)
they can't really do much except get us to sidestep. Before too long, they're going to step off
into Lanham Act territory like SCOX has done (if they've not already...). It's a rather dangerous
game they're playing here- IBM and a few others won't tolerate much more of this BS without them
putting up or shutting up.
The reality is, MS would have ALREADY sued for damages, etc. if they actually had
any real beef to that crap Ballmer keeps spouting. I'm wondering if someone can make a Class Action
of a Lanham Act suit...
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
IANAL, but isn't this considered slander (or libel)? Why doesn't IBM or Redhat take MSFT to court and tell them to either substantiate their FUD or pay damages. There should be no excuse for this kind of abuse by someone as high profile as Ballmer.
This whole software patent thing is beyond my understanding, I wonder if anyone out there really get the idea behind this?
The idea behind this is the same as it has been behind any kind of legally-enforced (though hopefully temporary) monopoly: control over something that has value.
If I have control over something that you want, then you will have to do what I want in order to get it. In most cases, that translates to you giving me money for something you can't get anywhere else. In theory such temporary monopolies stimulate innovation (though there is good reason to believe that changes in the technological and socio/economic landscape have made this not true anymore...but that is a different debate).
Software is valuable. It is even more valuable than the computer that runs it. Computers have become very general-purpose tools, and the software that runs them can transform any computer into an information-processing powerhouse. So, people want it. This means there is a natural incentive to try to take control of it. If you want your computer to do x, you must pay me...you have no other alternative.
The problem is that software is very difficult to control in this way. Its not like a physical product wherein each copy must be individually constructed. Copies can be duplicated at infinitum at zero cost once a single copy is made available. Further, someone else can recreate the software just from a high-level description of its functions, so an original copy is often not needed.
So software patents are odd beasts. All the incentives for old methods of control are in place, but the mechanisms of control don't work well. The end result is the passing of a lot of new laws that rob people of some very basic freedoms (control over their own computers), are notoriously difficult to enforce, and will result in a lot of good people being unjustly harmed for doing reasonable things.
The reason Ballmer doesn't say anything is simple. If he did, one or more of three things would happen:
* The code would be immediately rewritten.
* The patent would be challenged and they would likely lose it
* Patent wars between Linux supporters and Microsoft would begin, with the end result that either all the patents would be invalidated or no software would be able to ship or patents would be so massively cross-licensed that they would effectively be meaningless.
By playing coy, Ballmer is actually hurting his case. If he's bluffing, he's basically running a protection racket. He's basically saying we know there's a problem but we're not going to tell you what it is because we want to ambush you in the future.
Neither of these two options are looked too kindly by judges.
And since all Linux projects are done out in the open with full disclosure and most have the policy that "if there is a dispute, we'll rewrite the code" (even Mono has this provision), and is often done by volunteers who want to fill a need (e.g. schools, 3rd world, etc), it would be easy to portray Linux in a favourable light to the judge.
Unfortunately, Novell handed them a source of SCO-like FUD that obscures these issues.
So Novell, here's my request to you. Even if you can't get out of the MS deal, could you cut the knees off of the MS FUD by writing a legal document that states categorically that:
1) The deal is not about patents and if Microsoft believes that the deal is, then it now hereby waves any protection from Microsoft
2) That to the best of Novell's knowledge, Linux is not in violation of any patents.
3) That unless Ballmer states what Linux IP is in place, Novell will have no choice but to file a sue Microsoft on Liable and/or extortion charges.
If Novell did this, and followed through on (3) with the help of other Linux distros if Ballmer doesn't shut up, then the Novell-MS deal FUD would vanish and Novell would regain much of it's previous respect.
Here's a question. If Linux was a single company's product like MS Windows is of Microsoft, couldn't legal measures be taken against the convicted monopoly arch-rival from this sort of action? That is, why can't the SCO/MS strategy of FUD without providing evidence be outlawed? Maybe we need a new law to outlaw FUD, especially when it comes from a convicted monopoly. Something to cut through the legal games.
Certainly the totally opaque Novell deal is not clear at all. That journalists and publications who publish such drivel are even respected is also bizarre to me.
It seems that as governments of individual jurisdictions switch more and more to Linux, they will get more tired of FUD and perhaps even lean toward outlawing or defanging such unfounded threats. If so that would mean Balmer's tactics amount to rushing to spread as much FUD as possible before this window closes.
To me, linux is already a key part of the U.S.' national infrastructure. Why can't it do anything to muzzle this crap? FUD is bad for the economy.
If I remember correctly, its all about integration to reverse engineered protocols such as SMB and storage architecture such as NTFS. Microsoft holds a patent on these, and doesn't want anyone integrating without paying a ridiculous license fee. The argument is because of documentation around the protocols, that much of it wasn't reverse engineered but based on proprietary documentation. At the end of the day, these are valid patents.
/\/\icro/\/\uncher
Windows is a closed source system. How exactly do you think your intellectual property got into Linux? The Linux kernel on the other hand is open source. If there's code in Windows that is also in the Linux kernel, it would only make sense that your developers put it there by copying it from Linux.
You sir, are an ignorant jackass.
If Microsoft truly thought they had the best product available on the market, they wouldn't need to issue threats like these. If Windows Vista was truly revolutionary, if Windows Server 2003 was in fact the best server software to load everything onto (web, database, file servers and so on) then they could comfortably sit back and watch while Linux distros raced around trying to show that their products were truly better, when in fact they weren't. Sadly for Microsoft, they are honestly started to lose marketshare (on a whole) and are beginning to freak out. That's why Steve Ballmer throws chairs, that's why they give gross discounts to governments who consider switching to open source software, that's why Microsoft tells Linux vendors to "respect their intellectual property" or risk being sued. And the reality is that Microsoft has a ridiculous amount of money, so they could bury many Linux/open source vendors with paper and simply watch that target close it's doors.
If I remember correctly, Google uses a large number of Linux servers. A half million of them is the number one typically hears. SCO tried to extort them and got nothing. If MS got a real patent infringement case, how comes they did not already sue Google into non-existence ?
That Business Method Patents hinder innovation. How is it that one can patent isNot ("allows a comparison of two variables to determine if the two point to the same location in memory"), a one click shopping experience, and other Patently Absurd (tm) business logic ideas that there is almost NO WAY to circumvent and acheive the same result? One can patent a major idea and anyone else that infringes must pay. This is why companies build up huge portfolios of absurd, non novel concepts... Just so they can cross-license patents to even compete...
You make a program at home that solves some simple issue, and guess what... Probability is that you just violated someones bus method patent... How can such a system survive??? How can anyone survive with their own startup business?
I've read Slashdot for the last 5 years, and now I start posting... Go figure
Why doesn't IBM or Redhat take MSFT to court and tell them to either substantiate their FUD or pay damages.
Because this is not a copyright battle. It is concepts and many things that open source didn't think were patentable, has been patented at about the same time as prior art, or before.
Remember the MS and Apple fight over a trash can. MS code for a trash can was not copied from Apple. MS lost because the trash can itself was patented. MS managed to slide by using a recycle bin as something that is not a trash can. They were sucessfull in noting a recycle bin is NOT a trashcan.
Linux can be attacked on this front and defending it and then changing it and cross licensing it would be very expensive.
The first shot over the bow has been fired.
The truth shall set you free!
If the bloated corporations abusing intellectual property law started suing each other into bankrupcy, the downside would be... what, exactly?
Unemployment, for me personally, and probably a whole lot of other people.
Those big corporations fund a lot of other software development -- directly, in the case of IBM and Sun and some others, but indirectly in the case of tons of other companies, just because they provide a day job for people who otherwise would be spending 15 hours a day delivering pizzas or waiting tables to pay the bills.
Your attitude is sorta like a guy in Guam saying "hey, if the USA and the USSR wipe themselves out tomorrow, where's the downside?" Well, the downside is that the world just ended.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Fact: Microsoft paid over 1 BILLION dollars to settle patent infringement suits last year. How much sympathy will anyone in the tech community give him when his company practices that he is talking about. All he is doing is war mongering and playing on feat. We have all seen how that worked out for the Bush administrations. Microsoft needs to get with the times. They need new distribution channels. Look at google, they charge for very little (on the consumer end) and open up almost everything (via API). Seems to me that google is making a pretty penny.
The downside of Ballmer "crying wolf" like this is that it seriously pisses off developers.
It forces designers like myself to avoid Microsoft technologies and extensions to standards because they attract less support, indeed outright hatred. Exactly the same thing happened when Sun brought out the lawyers, about eight years ago, and as a result killed client-side Java.
Reduce, reuse, cycle
The horrific thing about patenting of software, is that you don't need to show any code.
You just need a vaguely described process that you may or may not have implemented, once in a court of law the bets are off, a patent can be so spacious that it can encompass things that have absolutely nothing to do with a real solution in the real world, and this would need to be interpreted by people that are not remotely technicaly proficient. The only thing to would need to be "demonstrated" is that the "infringing" software does something vaguely similar to what is described by the patent. Neither part needs to show their code.
If the SCO fiasco has showed us something, is that no matter if reason is on your side, if a company as smalle as SCO in relative terms, with no merit whatsoecver on their allegations, in a copyright and contract dispute (which are far narrower in scope than patents) can drag a case for years, just imagine what MS could do using all their billions, They could arguably paralize any commercial realeases of any other competing software, then the use by any big companies or institutions. That my friends, would be the end of FOSS as a bussiness model for at least the duration of any trial.
If you guys in the US do not wake up and smell the coffee, you are going to drag us in a wolrd in which only megacorporations are allowed to do any thinking. You may think I am paranoid, but just look at MS, their intentions are all too clear to be ignored.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I almost hope for a patent war. I'd love to see that develop. I think in the end, everyone will be better off after that war is over.
-- Cheers!
IBM has been coming to the rescue for years and has granted hundreds if not thousands of patent licenses to the linux community.
Linux isn't going anywhere. Microsoft would only prevail in getting enforced what it can prove, and even then the precedents that prohibited the Z4 company from keeping MS from selling XP will prevail in the Linux community.
Ballmer is using threats and FUD to keep Linux from expanding further by threatening the distros and then telling the financial analysts that they should not use those products because the distros are a prime target.
It's an idiotic move and it will hurt Microsoft even more. Don't think big corporates have major investments in Linux? Think again. It's massive.
This just shows that Microsoft is going to become the biggest looser.
Look, if one technology is infringing it doesn't mean the whole Linux is infringing. He'd have to prove first that those are infringing and that the distros knew it. He's just trying to keep more distros from popping up and from proliferating. He's trying to provide less incentive to start a new distro that would innovate since most distros lock themselves into an ideology and never reinvent themselves. If he has fewer distros cropping up with innovative things then the old ones will die sooner or later but he's only going to accomplish this by FUD threats. He can't accomplish it by revealing how weak his hand is.
If there's a violation in Linux tell the community. Put up or shut up Ballmer is the only voice he should hear from the community. And yes, there are weapons in various other arsenals that can be wielded against Microsoft.
This is a no win situation for them. They can only succeed by threats. Any action defeats their purpose. Threats fulfill their purpose. The community must ask in one voice: WHERE AM I INFRINGING? That is what will defeat their threats.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
This was posted as Anonymous coward so highlighting it.
h tml
I googled it to check before I highlighted it. Appears to be true.
"ftp.exe copyright california"
http://seclists.org/bugtraq/1999/Aug/0234.html
The most interesting post was here:
http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2005/Mar/0880.
Where they showed how to check it yourself.
>>> post quote
I was curious about this.
on win2k :
C:\WINNT\system32>strings *.exe | grep -i university
C:\WINNT\system32>strings *.exe | grep -i california
C:\WINNT\system32\finger.exe: @(#) Copyright (c) 1980 The Regents of the
University of California.
C:\WINNT\system32\FTP.EXE: @(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the
University of California.
C:\WINNT\system32\NSLOOKUP.EXE: @(#) Copyright (c) 1985,1989 Regents of
the University of California.
C:\WINNT\system32\rcp.exe: @(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the
University of California.
C:\WINNT\system32\rsh.exe: @(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the
University of California.
C:\WINNT\system32>
on XP :
C:\WINDOWS\system32>strings *.exe | grep -i university
C:\WINDOWS\system32\finger.exe: @(#) Copyright (c) 1980 The Regents of
the University of California.
end quote.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Patents have always been good ammunition when companies engage in a battle. The way to reach agreements is to trade patents and pay money until an equilibrium of power is reached or until one of the two is crushed.
MS has identified Linux as a worthy opponent and is just engaging in its standard procedure. I really do not blame MS -- blame your idiotic patent laws that allow companies like MS (but also others, e.g. IBM) to patent every little trivial function in order to pile up ammunition. In a democracy, laws, and that includes patent laws, should be the result of what people want. Obviously the majority of people want a capitalism where big companies can crush small competitors by playing - among others - the pile of insane patents card.
He who can afford the better lawyers and the bigger number of simultanously ongoing trials wins.
People, you voted for the guys who made these laws.