Why Microsoft Won't List Claimed Patent Violations

BlueOni0n writes "Earlier today, Microsoft announced it will begin actively seeking reparations for claimed patent infringement by Linux and the open source community in general. One opinion on why Microsoft won't reveal these 235 alleged IP infringements to the public is that they're afraid of having the claims debunked or challenged — so instead they're waiting until the OS community comes to the bargaining table. But a more optimistic thought is that Microsoft may be afraid to list these supposed violations because it knows the patents can be worked around by the open source community, leaving Microsoft high and dry without any leverage at all."

Comments

Devil's Advocate

[javacowboy]

I hate Microsoft and refuse to use their products. Still, Slashdot is replete with articulate anti-Microsoft arguments, so I thought I'd play Devil's Advocate.

Microsoft spent billions of dollars, thousands upon thousands of man hours for programmers as well as typographers and visual design specialists, not to mention as untold research and interviews with focus groups on developing their GUIs, only to see them egregiously ripped off by Linux copycats. The "Start" button, Windows taskbar, menu bars, MS Office programs and their associated interfaces, as well other genuine GUI interfaces from Microsoft that did not exist on Mac. At least NeXT, Mac, and then OS X invented their own GUI conventions. These "Free Software" losers stole Microsoft's IP by blatantly ripping off all their GUI ideas. Can the Free Software community afford typographers, GUI design specialists and consumer focus groups? No. So they piggy back off Microsoft's investments in these specialists. GNOME and KDE have come up with ZERO GUI innovations. Switching OK and Cancel? PUH-LEASE!

It's about time Microsoft called a spade a spade. Free Software does nothing more than leach off the hard work of true capitalists.

What's worse is that they have this stupid clause called the GPL that prevents Microsoft and other true capitalists from actually using their code. They steal from Microsoft, and yet they don't let us steal from them? Unacceptable! At least BSD/Apache/Mozilla licensed code is available for Microsoft to use. That's a fair trade. The GPL is a one-way deal and Microsoft can't accept that. That's why Redmond has been forced to use its patent portfolio to defend its investments from this flagrant uncompensated theft.

I'm 100% sure that this is how Ballmer and the rest of Microsoft view GPL software. They can't accept competition. They don't believe in reverse engineering. They don't believe in innovating, only harvesting decades-old investments via the preposterous U.S. patent system.

MS BullShittier is wife to her son Isa SCOrotum

[OldHawk777]

There is always proof positive of a frivolous case (no proof ... no case).

Without proof and intent to financially damage; well, MS BullShittier like
her incestuous (paid for diseased whore) son Isa SCOrotum is just another
failure, asleep with the Anti-Capitalist Satan, looking for public-funded
welfare handouts from courts and governments.

MS BullShittier incubated her son in a fallacious lies test. The MS SCOrotum
father's attempt to monopolize global software. Now Isa SCOrotum is a zombie.
I suspect, in five to ten years, if MS BullShittier wants to continue this
communist monstrous-abortion assault on free global markets/economies; well
then, MS BullShittier will become the next worthless zombie in the USA economy.

MS BullShittier will not be the first or last corporate-communist to have a
crash&burn suicide party.

GOOD POINT: Globally this may be the straw that breaks the back of the USA
corporatist government strangle hold on IPR, patents .... I am confident that
China, Russia, India ... others will eventually tell the USA, EU, UN, WorldBank ...
and the International Court to go fuck themselves with their dead-battery dildo.

But,it ain't like the USA has been able to figure anything out 12 months or 12
years out. Clueless courts, diplomacy, domestic policy, government ... such an
incompetent slime-ball pitiful gang of politicians have not been collected together
in one government since the Mao-China's "Cultural Revolution", Stalin's Purges,
Hitler's Perfect Aryan Religion ....