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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
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/
In the article, it explains why Microsoft chose this route: Since FOSS is (nominally, if not practically) written by a loose band of volunteers, and because they don't really sell the software (with some exceptions, but generally mostly they give the software away and sell the support), it is extremely difficult to track them all down and make them pay royalties. It is much easier to just threaten the major corporate users (who are extremely risk averse). To quote Neal Stephenson, "Microsoft is ten times smarter than your average government, a hundred times more aggressive, and bound by no particular rules."
In the old days, we called this extortion.
A cajón is a big box (the aumentative of caja). A cojón is a testicle. Maybe that's the word you were looking for?
Indeed. If patents are supposed to patent non-obvious ideas, then how do you explain the number of software patent violations when software developers dont look at patents?
Absolutely, and ultimately Microsoft is screwed either way. Either they attack FOSS and lose, or they don't attack and FOSS they lose anyway. There's no way they can win this fight - no matter how many lawsuits they file and how many open source projects they try to attack.
If FOSS were somehow limited to the US, maybe they could hire enough lawyers to mount an offensive. But with the extremely strong chunks of the community around the world they literally have no chance. At best they can just fuck things up and make themselves look even more "evil" than they already do.
Haiku for you!
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
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
I would expect we all send MS a check for $0.01, really. The administrative headache will be the stuff of legend, and I imagine MS will have to create a whole new department and employ an extra 1,000 people for mail handling and admin processing.
HEX offender mugshot ID: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
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.
This is really key. The fight shouldn't be against me, using the software at home, or even a distributor of a collection of compiled programs. It should be -- if we accept that software patents as an idea is even valid -- against the people who wrote it. They are the ones that are infringing Microsoft's patents.
Microsoft wants to have their cake and eat it too. They want to sue "Linux" for violating 235 patents, when in actuality, they should undertake roughly 235 SEPARATE lawsuits against the individual programmers whose code infringes. IT'S NOT LIKE THAT'S A SECRET. Code is always attributed in the free software world.
And what's with not being specific as to the patents? More SCO-like nonsense. They're afraid of giving people time to "open source" the defense using something like Groklaw to rally around.
Acts 17:28, "For in Him we live, and move, and have our being."
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.
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 ]
"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?
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*
I'm a patent agent and when I read the article contribution, the same argument sprang to mind and I looked whether someone had used this argument. I believe it has some validity, but unfortunately I also have a counter argument. A patent doesn't mean that nobody else could think of it, just that the ordinary person skilled in the art wouldn't think of it. And with the big FOSS community, there are surely sufficient people that stand out (i.e. aren't ordinary people skilled in the art), who also could come up with the idea.
Bert
Who believes that getting rid of software patents is an uphill battle with the upcoming revision of the European patent law (in particular because of TRIPS, which contains an innocent looking but very nasty clause, that patents must be obtainable in any technical field).
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.