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Microsoft Says Free Software Violates 235 Patents
prostoalex writes "Microsoft told Fortune magazine that various free software products violate at least 235 patents, and it's time to expect users of this software to pay up patent licensing royalties: 'Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith and licensing chief Horacio Gutierrez sat down with Fortune recently to map out their strategy for getting FOSS users to pay royalties. Revealing the precise figure for the first time, they state that FOSS infringes on no fewer than 235 Microsoft patents.'"
Ladies and gentlemen, we have tonight a bout between two of the worlds greatest software idealogists.
In the Blue corner weighing in at 289 pounds we have Monkey Boy Ballmer, his speciality move: The chair.
In the Red corner, weighing in at 432 pounds we have the one and only R.M.S, speciality move, being R.M.S.
Who will win this epic battle?
liqbase
Microsoft, fuck you!
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Doesn't this just serve to show how screwed up the idea of software patents are?
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
If I'm a licensee of a software package, particularly under the GPL, since when do I pay royalties and not the licensor?
free software violates 235 MS patents?
Ok just get rid of software patents. Software should've never been permitted to be patented in the first place.
Of course, it was fairly obvious that free software would infridge on some MS patents: there's so much code from so many people, including people who have no clue what they're doing (don't get me wrong, also a lot from totally brilliant people!), and I doubt maintainers check the source at every checkin to be sure no patent is being messed with...
However, I always saw it as a way for Microsoft to loosen its illegal monopoly status: by letting free software use some of its patents, its leveling the playing field.
And now they screwed it up. Countdown before more anti-thrust lawsuits start, 5...4...3...2....
Tell Mr. Balmer he is welcome to a portion of the $699 Linux IP license I paid SCO. I hear they sold lots and lots of them.
My rights don't need management.
Here's what the interview should have been:
Microsoft: It's a fact that Linux and free software infringe hundreds of our patents.
Journalist: Which ones?
Microsoft: Well, the kernel violates 60, the GUI violates...
Journalist (interrupting): which 60? Where is the list?
Microsoft: I'm not prepared to disclose that at this time.
Journalist: Well this is a big fucking waste of my time, isn't it?
Journalist: I went through this same dance with Darl McBride. Call me when you have something to say, bye
Start litigating Microsoft, you're not working in the shareholder's favor by sitting idle and letting these blatant IP violations go unpunished.
If you have evidence, show it. If it's infringing, it'll be removed. But you don't want to. You want to spread FUD to generate $$$.
CDE open sourced! https://sourceforge.net/projects/cdesktopenv/
The Supreme Court recently ruled that the courts don't get to pretend that patents on obvious things are valid. It is unlikely that /any/ of these 235 patents will hold up in court. Microsoft is just using them to create FUD; they know they won't get any judgements.
This shows how fearful Microsoft is really starting to get paranoid about the linux desktop revolution. 2007 is *the* year, I don't care what anyone else thinks--I know this to be true because this is the first year I've actually got friends to honestly convert over to free software/OSS software. And they're even talking shit about MS now that they've seen the light! With all the linux populatization going on these days--microsoft is shaking in its boots... The days are quickly approaching when microsoft is bound to become an even more dreary version of GM. A question for those more knowledgeable than me on this subject--was microsoft not behind the whole SCO debacle? Perhaps they've now taken their proxy war public. They're pathetic.
A cajón is a big box (the aumentative of caja). A cojón is a testicle. Maybe that's the word you were looking for?
that most of these 'patents' that MS owns are general in scope and probably would make all other OS's infringing on their patents anyway, not just free software. I believe it's time to work on making process/software patents unacceptable, especially when they are so broad that no other company could work in the same space. Patents on things like "integrating email client functionality into office apps" is just too broad, and as such can only serve to hamper innovation and business in general.
When MS can claim to have 235 patents that are violated by F/OSS we need to look closely at why they have that many that can be infringed upon by people so easily... perhaps they are not unobvious at all or too broadly stated to be of use other than to be an offensive tool to use against competitors.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
It seems that this is going to be the final "slow bleed" for Microsoft. People aren't buying Vista (in fact, Dell is reoffering XP on systems just to shut up annoyed users). But hey - they have the lawsuits, and they'll be more than happy to pull a SCO and threaten to sue the pants off of people who don't pay off their protection racket.
Odds are, they'll be smarter about it than SCO - rather then go right for IBM (with tons of dollars to pay lawyers), they'll make "deals" with places like Novell and others so insure that PC tax continues no matter whom the likes of Dell and Gateway and others finally go through.
The sad thing is, there still isn't a great competitor to Windows. Linux is nice and Ubuntu and other distros have come far, but it seems they lack that final step (like "How do I change my screen resolution?" or other bits that only techies would know). OS X is my preferred OS as a security analyst, but it only runs on one system (I know - Apple sells hardware, blah, blah, blah, but damn - if they make Leopard for *all* X86 systems, they might take over the desktops - I've met plenty of CIO's who want that).
Either way, Microsoft's plan is to continue to be the "gasoline" of computers: they don't make the computers, but they get paid for every one that's made. Through their threats and strategic lawsuits/threatening of lawsuit, they'll ensure their money for a long time to come.
Unless, of course, there's enough people who stand up and say "No" and pool together *their* money to help companies fight back....
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
...infringment on 1) use of numbers 2) use of words, punctuation, sentences... 3) use of algebra sum(A1:A22) 4) excessive problems with operating systems and applications -- I can prove my mental condition is much worse having used MS products and so on...
And our lawyers will work pro bono because so many of them hate MS too.
Help end the use of Sigs. Tomorrow
We've been joking about world domination and the evil empire for years here. But despite the kidding around, despite our biases, we've never been motivated to go all-out. We can ruin Microsoft. In the terrain of the Internet we hold much of the high ground - the servers, as well as not a few firewall-routers and other essential equipment. Microsoft for years has had no qualms about breaking competitors' functionality. We can cripple Microsoft's functionality in a wide variety of real-time environments - and stay a hair's breath within the law just as they've (almost) done.
Building stuff that can replace Microsoft's products is one thing - honest competition really. But we've never stooped to Microsoft's own favored methods of dishonest competition. Is Redmond really stupid enough to motivate us to take that step?
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Last paragraph
"
If push comes to shove, would Microsoft sue its customers for royalties, the way the record industry has?
"That's not a bridge we've crossed," says CEO Ballmer, "and not a bridge I want to cross today on the phone with you."
"
Tech company sue it's own customers?
The Singularity is closer than you think
Quant
FTA:
"Microsoft counters that it is a matter of principle. "We live in a world where we honor, and support the honoring of, intellectual property," says Ballmer in an interview. FOSS patrons are going to have to "play by the same rules as the rest of the business," he insists. "What's fair is fair."
Since when? Of all the corporations that have trampled small businesses IP rights Microsoft have to be the biggest shower of shits in existence. Most of their product range is based on other people's ideas and much of that, e.g. IE was ripped from small business with minimal reward to the innovator.
Basically, name them. Yep, name the infringements. Don't hide behind lawyers and withhold information, BE SPECIFIC!! Many of the IP claims that Microsoft put forward to the EU were minor extensions to existing Open Source software and are no "innovative" enough to justify the high fees requested, equivalent to making an add on to a car and claiming IP over the entire car. If accidental infringment has occured then it's reasonable to allow the FOSS authors the chance to remedy the situation by rewriting code but it's also reasonable to give them access to the information required to perform the task.
It's a constant embarrassment to me that the toadying twat that runs my country saw fit to give a convicted monopolist and proven unfair player like Gates a knighthood and until Microsoft starts behaving in a reasonable and honest manner Gates, Ballmer and Co. can stick their royalties up their arses where their heads have been for the last twenty years.
To reiterate, STATE YOUR CLAIMS IN FULL. Stop hiding behind misinformation, partial information and the pathetic, sad bullshit that has for so long been a trademark for Microsoft business practice.
There, I feel a bit better now.
Hmmmmmm..... Deep fried and look like Squirrel.
MS violates a goodly portion of the Open Innovation Network patent pool. Sue Linux or a batch of participating FOSS projects and get a goodly portion of their server and other products shut down but good. They flatly don't want to do this. In all honesty they really don't want to be doing this sabre rattling either, but they're being stupid because Vista's NOT doing well for them and costing them dearly.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
First, free here means free as in freedom, not free as in beer. Many companies have made money from "free software" (e.g., Red Hat), and it's considered perfectly kosher to do so provided you keep to the terms of the licenses.
Second, patents apply to almost all use, not just to things that are bought and sold - you can't undercut someone else's patents by giving away their inventions for free.
Third, every company that uses free software (and who doesn't?) does so presumably for commercial advantage.
Not that it's at all unexpected, coming from Fortune--a bastion of support for giant corporations--but man, is that article biased. I love the photos on the right: A picture of Steve Ballmer, wearing a suit, looking harmless, and captioned "The patent owner", followed by a picture of Richard Stallman, looking like an Al Qaeda member, captioned "The patent hater". Maybe this is just a coincidence but I like how they refer to RMS specifically as "Richard Matthew Stallman," which makes him sound like a presidential assassin or serial killer. Like there's another Richard Stallman we might get him confused with if they didn't use his middle name? :)
Later the article manages to imply that there's only one license that all FOSS projects use. You get three guesses which license it is, and the first two don't count.
Does anyone know where we can find out the 235 patents that MS claims are infringed? TFA didn't give any examples.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
Come on Microsoft, don't pull a SCO. If you think there's a problem, point it out so we can fix it. Tell us what patents, exactly, are infringed and what software, exactly, is infringing.
Sure, it's a bit risky. Any patents you point out are going to be put under a microscope and the collective knowledge of a very large and lore-rich community will be brought to bear in an exhaustive search for prior art, but if you really think the patents are truly valuable, novel inventions, and that you are really being damaged by their infringement, tell us so we can find a way to avoid infringing.
If we can't find prior art, and can't find a way to show that the software isn't actually infringing, and can't find a FOSS-friendly company to use its patent portfolio to negotiate a deal, then we'll get busy finding a way to change the software so it doesn't infringe. Actually, given the nature of the community, we'll probably change the software so it doesn't infringe even if we can address the issue another way. We don't like software patents, but we feel quite strongly about making sure that our software is free from any legal encumbrance. Tell us what the problem is and we'll try to fix it.
But, please, the biggest software company in the world should have at least a *little* dignity. Don't pull a SCO.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
It doesn't matter if the patent is "worth" anything, the fact of the matter right now is, if something IS infringing on that patent, it's breaking the law, and until the patent gets revoked or the laws change, that's the way it is. Even if all 235 get struck down, that's still a hell of a lot of judgments, court cases, and legal work to be involved.
We can't just ignore it because "software patents are wrong". Until the courts agree, we have to live with it.
ìì!
This is part of Microsoft's new Vista campaign for 2007 and 2008:
"If you can't innovate... LITIGATE!"
I RTFA, and I don't see an itemized list of the FOSS packages which they claim infringe, and the relevant patent numbers that are apparently infringed-upon. Until I see an itemized list, I can't properly audit my collection of FOSS to replace or rewrite those referenced packages.
Until I see an itemized list of FOSS packages and relevant patent numbers, this is all just smoke.
but if you go read it, you'll see how.
Ahh, who am I kiddin'? Here's the skinny:
Microsoft has been approaching Fortune 500's for years now and offering to sell "patent licenses" on any of the software that the companies might be using without one. Basically, it's extortion. "We think you might be running software which utilizes our patented technology without a license, but don't worry, we're not going to sue you, so long as you buy this license from us."
That takes care of all the big fish.. last year they went after the little fish too, by approaching Novell and making that patent deal you might have heard of. When Redhat crumbles (assuming they haven't already) we'll all be paying a Microsoft tax.
How we know is more important than what we know.
However, Microsoft is leagues ahead of Linux in the desktop market, and people claiming that Dell selling XP boxes instead of Vista marks the death knell for the company and suchlike is clear Linux fanboyism and propaganda. Whichever of their OSes they're selling, they're still paying Microsoft hefty licensing fees, and that is unlikely to change as long as their OS and office suite is ubiquitous in the corporate world. Microsoft may be deceitful and manipulative, but anyone comparing this to a dying company making a last ditch grab for cash in SCO style is clearly stupid or ill-informed, however much we might wish that to be the case.
I take none of those products was a spell checker.
Their problem is that they can't just keep braging that there are "238 patent violations in various OSS". The SCO case has proven how much staying vague about the actual violations is useful.
...BUT...
Microsoft, for credibility will have to produce a detailled list of said patent violations (and eventually a list of specific OSS application that they think are infringing).
And this, my friends, is a double edged sword.
On one hand, it will show that Microsoft HAS tangible proof that OSS are inferior because no company can be held responsible for patents infringement, and that patent lawyers will go after the users.
On another hand, such a list, and maybe a couple of days of work distributed across the whole community is everything needed to circumvent said patent and implement it either with a slightly different approach (see marching cubes vs. tetrahedron in 3D), using more generalised version (arithmetic coding vs. range coding in compression), or simply recycle some very old code in place - code who's age is a proof of prior art.
And suddenly, all this MS PR stunt is moot.
Just imagine :
This week press titles "Microsoft says OSS dangerous because patent mine field", "New microsoft sponsored studies proves TCO to by higher for OSS because of patent fees", "Microsoft to go after individual users MAFIAA style".
Next week press titles "238 patches and upgrades on Debian and Ubuntu repositories", "OSDL sponsored study proves that OSS has the highest reaction time in terms of patch release", "RMS & Linus to give speech about strengths of OSS development ; Ballmer responds throwing chairs".
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Problem: most FOSS projects don't have the resources to make sure they don't violate patents.
No, those are not the problems you're looking for.
There are roughly 1,400 (Patent Storm Search) Microsoft patents covering OS kernels. Microsoft says Linux is infringing 45 of them. A quick look through those patents will bring up gems like Patent 6711625, found on the first page of results;
Microsoft currently has about 24,000 Patent Storm patents in its portfolio, a significant proportion of which should never have been granted. Microsoft is using those dodgy patents to generate FUD, and make businesses less likely to use software which competes with its own products. That's the real problem."I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
"The idea is to ... make people start to get nervous..."
So, Microsoft is the new SCO. The result will eventually be the same.
Adversarial behavior eventually destroys those who engage in it.
If you want a very good indication of the effect this new rotten behavior by Microsoft will have, just look at the Slashdot comments. People are ready for this after years of considering SCO. The parent comment is an example of this; the parent comment shows complete understanding. The SCO case has prepared us.
Microsoft has always depended on ignorance. That ignorance is disappearing.
This Slashdot story about "235 patents in free software" reminds me of 205 communists in the State Department: "... in February 1950, an undistinguished, first-term Republican senator from Wisconsin, Joseph McCarthy, burst into national prominence when, in a speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, he held up a piece of paper that he claimed was a list of 205 known communists currently working in the State Department. McCarthy never produced documentation for a single one of his charges, but for the next four years he exploited an issue that he realized had touched a nerve in the American public."
Microsoft is to software what McCarthy was to politics?
Windows Vista costs US$ 300. I'm dividing and conquering it.
US$ 50 for many lawyers + US$ 50 for the judgement coasts + US$ 50 for the tons of papers + US$ 50 for the fueling + US$ 50 for the food diets + US$ 50 for SCOX's NASDAQ + US$ 200 for my pockets = US$ 500!!
US$ 300 - US$ 500 = US$ -200!!! And no money to pay to the M$ developers!!!
Conclusion: the M$'s software is bad software for the users.
What a serious strategic error this is, even if its only a PR trial balloon. Not only has Microsoft ignored a significant shift in national intellectual property law (per recent Supreme court decisions) and pretended the collapse of SCO litigation was irrelevant, but Microsoft once again presumes all commerce is predicated on U.S. intellectual property law.
Faced with serious issues in Australia, China, nearly every emerging market and even much of the EU, Microsoft wants to play "us vs. them" with open source? Even much of the Fortune 500 has been investing significantly into Linux (such as the corporation I work for, which is one of the larger global financial companies). Our company didn't take previous patent trolls lightly, and Microsoft's reliability issues don't give it a reliable foundation on which to make life any more difficult for us.
In an era of unprecedented foreign confiscation of pharmaceutical intellectual property, can Microsoft be this utterly ignorant and stupid? Does Microsoft not realize it has zero leverage outside the U.S., facing serious penalties in the EU for its disregard for their law and even worse conditions elsewhere? Does it really believe it can force Brazil, China, Mexico, India, Malaysia, emerging Eastern Europe, Russia and countless other markets to pay excessive royalties for a bunch of questionable patents it had its attorneys sneak through? The only certain outcome is that U.S. intellectual property law will be even further ignored and real issues like drug patent confiscations more common.
Apparently SCO was only the warm-up act. This certainly is going to be an interesting train wreck for us to watch if they venture down this path.
*scoove*
The thing I see good about this is as follows:
1. We knew this was going to happen sooner or later.
2. Its better it happens sooner, Linus was getting impatient with the FSF folks
and rightly seeing them as paranoid. If it had been a year or so more, the kernel
might've been forked with some GPL v3 and GPL v2... This forces the FOSS community
to circle their wagons and get along.
3. I welcome this challenge, because what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
MS executives are doing it now to appear like they're working hard because the
great Redmond machine is running out of steam and they need to keep that stock
price propped up for a few more years while they sell:
When was the last time you saw an insider trade of 'buy' MSFT? They have a
good margin and great revenue, but so did Kodak and Palaroid just a short while back.
Ideas can last forever, companies don't.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you.
My pet conjecture is that they are in the process of setting themselves up to switch to something completely different for their next OS.
I don't believe it will be Linux. It is more likely they will fork their own copy of one of the BSD's, probably FreeBSD, and then port all their own proprietary stuff on top of that.
In other words, once again, Apple will show them the way.
(This is completely bogus, but is an interesting thought experiment.)
What if Microsoft's direct goal were not harming Linux, but rather destroying the software patent system? Obviously, Microsoft would love for Linux to disappear, but they could be thinking much deeper. Microsoft has argued for patent reform before when they lost $521000000 to Eolas. Clearly appeal to Congress and the courts has not worked.
By creating complete chaos in the software industry, these legal threats could force changes to the laws to avoid a breakdown.
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
LAMO, that is not just in Soviet Russia!
www.aleo.no
If such a trivial patent is valid, then the US patent system is realy b0rked.
But even, in such a case, the patent can be circumvented.
See, given the era when screensavers started to appear (i.e.: when CRT was the main method of displaying image for computers), so there a very high chance that such a patent will be formulated as the GP poster said : method in which the display shows random or non-random patterns in order to avoid screen burn-in.
See, the main point is that, as pointed-out by the Wikipedia, nowadays screensavers are primarily used for entertainment or security purposes, because LCD panels are a lot less susceptible to burn-ins than CRTs.
So the whole idea is to do exactly the same result, using slightly differently stated method. Call it a "screen protector". Define it as a piece of software that :
- Monitors user (in)activity.
- After a given time, turns the LCD panel of for power saving
- After a given time, switches from the user desktop to a different environment for security reasons (protect both the access to the desktop and the data displayed on the desktop from undesired intruders/eavesdroper)
- Switching back from protected mode to desktop mode requires that the user enters his log-in credential again.
- Password prompt conditions may be optionnal : one may decide to use auto-logon and only protect data visually (can't eavesdrop through window, but anyone could unlock)
- The protected mode may be just blank screen. As an added bonus, the protected mode may also display some sort of audio-visual entertainment.
It does exactly the same thing, but it is defined as a different product.
It's not just a flying toaster on the screen to avoid burnins,
it's a "screen protector" with "power saving and protection of privacy, with audio-visual entertainment option activated".
It's the same way the Arithmetic coding can be circumvented by substituing it with the closely related Range encoding.
Or substituing the patented Marching cubes algorithme for producing a surface from a volume, with the simplier but functionnaly equivalent patent-free Marching tetrahedron.
The only limitation is for a couple of things where, to achieve it's goal (interoperability with formats or network communication between microsoft and linux softwares), the software has to follow one specific implementation (ffmpeg may infringe on some of microsoft patent on VC-1 video) but the implementation can't be changed because compatibility will be lost (using alternative non-patented algorithms for video compression/decompression will result in incompatible data).
That hapened during the GIF and MP3 patent controversies. (Although in GIF's case the patent could be circumvented to produce legal GIF although not compressed).
But in the specific case of those 235 patents, some juridiction - mostly EU - will back the open source community as patents are used in ways to explicitely stop interoperation from concurrence. (See what happened with Samba)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
RMS has proven himself a visionary once more where some thought he was going too far. The whole GPLv3 thing might seem a bit paranoid in the beginning, not just for Linus, with all this talk about forking off a lot of commercially-backed development --- people took SCO's failure as a governing example and thought that other big players would abide by the status quo, with the patent stockpiling by both sides to be an assurance of mutual peace... Following this new development, however, GPLv3 WILL mature and get adopted much quicker and on a larger scale. You're right on the money saying that now the forks will not likely happen.
VKh
> Ironically, McCarthy underestimated the number of Communists working in the state department - the 'true' number
... he is famous for making it up as he went along and for getting very publicly caught at it.
> derived from Venona intercepts was even higher.
That is completely irrelevant. McCarthy pulled his number out of his ass. In fact, he pulled it out of his ass a few times and it was a different number each time.
Then he named names, which he also pulled out of his ass.
I can tell you for certain that there are murderers and rapists living in your city, out on the loose. I don't even need to know what city you live in. There are murderers and rapists loose in every city. However if I say there are 122 murderers loose in Philadelphia and I don't have a list of names and I start picking people randomly out of the Philly phone book then it really doesn't matter if later down the line a study finds that there are actually 375 murders loose in Philadelphia. McCarthy was not at all involved in the actual enumeration of communists in the US gov't. He was completely and totally involved in his own self-aggrandization.
> A few years later a Senator from Massachusetts (initials were JFK) claimed that the Soviet Union had close to 200 missiles
> ready to launch against the US - the truth was that the Soviets had 6 ICBM's ready by mid-1960. So maybe it is safe to say
> that Microsoft is to software what Kennedy was to politics?
Also irrelevant. That is not at all what Kennedy is remembered for, while McCarthy is CHIEFLY remembered for pulling a "number of communists" out of his ass and then witch-hunting around all the while refusing to provide any documentation to back up his claims. McCarthy is not the only political figure ever to exaggerate or be wrong
If Ballmer can't back up his number of patent claims with actual documentation of same then the original analogy of McCarthy and Ballmer is apt and valid. If Ballmer says "238 patent infringements" and then he can't give you a 238 page memo to go with that then he will have "pulled a McCarthy."
If somebody shoots Ballmer in the back of the head over this, then he will have "pulled a Kennedy."
I think you're trying to score political points rather than objectively analyze the situation both in the 1950s and today.
Here's the reality. Balmer is probably correct. He may well have pulled the figure out of his ass, but the likelihood is that free software probably contains technologies covered by hundreds, if not thousands, of Microsoft patents. This is not because free software is doing anything wrong, it's simply the reality of programming computers in 2007, and the nature of patents. Patents are routinely granted that, to people in the field, are obvious, or are covering techniques that are inevitably going to be re-invented multiple times by independent entities. The reality of getting a patent these days is that you don't need to be farsighted and smart when it comes to finding the solution to a problem, you just have to be farsighted and smart in identifying the types of problem people will need to solve.
Did it really matter how many "communists" were in the State department? If McCarthy had been attacking the government for its employment of soviet agents, then there may have been some moral legitimacy in his complaint (notwithstanding the fact that he almost certainly made up his figures and made up his list.) But the mere ideological viewpoints, protected by the First Amendment, of the people doing their jobs in the government, loyally to the US, is immaterial and that's what McCarthy concentrated upon. It was a "problem" in the 1950s because people genuinely were paranoid enough to conflate the two and legal and extra-legal hot-water was entered by anyone who had been unfortunate enough to believe there was a serious problem with Capitalism ten years before and had joined one of the groups that said this.
Today legal problems enter the fray for any programmer who encounters a problem that Microsoft, or some other group, has encountered before they did and deemed solutions patent-worthy, and who chooses the most obvious solution to that problem. That's the reality of patents. And most people have problems understanding the concepts, that patent infringement is not copying, that patents themselves are increasingly immoral, unjustified, and unsustainable in a society that requires constant progress.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Now ... all Microsoft needs to do (and is doing) is to demand license fees for the use of their patents. This won't affect Linux'es availability for anyone who's willing to pay for a license. How much opposition do you think this will engender in corporate America? How outworldish is it to try to monetise your patents? I have this sinking feeling that most of the industry will shrug it off with "Well ... we knew they're bastards, but that's why they make such a lot of money.", and simply make sure that their Linux distributions are covered by patent license agreements.
Google
Will Google suddenly litigate 150-odd patents (they won't be using the gui or Open Office, just the kernel), or will it consent to pay, say 15$ a copy in licensing fees? Eh? What would you advise Google's CEO if you were in charge of Legal Affairs?
Novell
Novell has signed this patent-agreement, so wouldn't automatically be required to oppose Microsoft when MS asserts its patents. And what about Red-Hat? Will they charge the windmills?
IBM ... will Microsoft see it as a winning strategy to get into a court battle with IBM about anything they can sue other much smaller companies for first? I'd be surprised.
And IBM? Will they even be a party in the initial legal battles? I mean
SUN
And yes, SUN will not take allegations that it's Open Office infringes on Microsoft's patents lying down. But will it take up the cudgels to protect the Linux kernel when it's trying to make a go of Open Solaris? Really?
The little guys
Although I will readily admit that "corporate" use of Linux has helped it along enormously, there are still the "purist" and "hobbyist" distributions. I'm guessing that there are hundreds of small specialised tweaked Linux distributions (ranging from Knoppix to firewalls) brought out by individuals and tiny little companies. That's where Linux shines. And that's where you see the oddball experiments and many of the interesting new developments.
So what are those small guys going to do when they receive a pay-license-fees-or-cease-and-desist nastygram? Their entire assets might just be enough to have a lawyer read the letter and explain to them what it means. My guess is that they will be unable to defend themselves and will quickly fold and withdraw their distros. That alone would be a blow.
The Kernel repositories
And then the Kernel repositories. What are the chances that those will have to take down the infringing portions of their code, if asked? Of course I can't say how likely this might be, as I'm not a lawyer. But Denis Crouch is and his response here ( http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2007/05/microsoft_ foss_.html) doesn't completely reassure me that Microsoft won't get anywhere.
What does Microsoft have to loose really? ... who likes buying Microsoft? A show of hands please! ... And now, who of you buy Microsoft because it happens to come with the hardware, and it works after a fashion, and you're locked-in anyway?
And about other companies giving Micorsoft a hard time
Really ... what does Microsoft have to loose from some bad publicity when trying to collect licenses on their patents? Somehow I can't even imagine that it would spark off an anti-trust suit, because all the "corporate" Linux distros aren't affected. Microsoft isn't (formally) trying to siderail an opponent, it's trying to get money for patents they own. Well yes, it's lethal to free-as
Apparently Smith didn't pay much attention in his equity classes in law school (not surprising since most people find equity boring and difficult - I on the other hand topped my year so :-P to Smith). This behaviour is going to give rise to a proprietary estoppel against Microsoft, and he has now publicly stated the hardest things a defendant would have to prove to get the estoppel. This is just about rule #1 of equity - if you know somebody is violating your property rights, and you let them expend time, effort and resources building something in violation of those rights without them having knowledge of the breach of your rights, the courts will not let you enforce your rights against those people or anybody who claims through them.
It would be a different matter if Microsoft had no knowledge of the breach, but having investigated it and found the breach, if they don't tell the projects affected what the alleged breach is in fairly short order, they are not going to be able to enforce their rights at all.
Even if he did not pay a lot of attention in his equity classes it seems unlikely Smith would not have some awareness of this. This suggests to me that Microsoft have no intention whatsoever of using the patents to pursue open source projects or even users who are building businesses based around open source products. If they did intend to do this, they would give specific notice. This leaves them with only intimidation as a strategy for exploiting their patents against open source.
It is a shame we have no examples of another company that turned to using unspecified intellectual property violations as an intimidation strategy against open source. Such an example might give us an indication of the ultimate result.