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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."
MS likely has as many patent violations in its secret list as McCarthy had Communist names on his.
Sure Microsoft can go after companies with legal threats, but ultimately the patents would have to come out. You can't sue and not be prepared for the information to become public. There was a little software company in Utah that is finding this out. Is this just SCO vs. IBM where SCO has been replaced by a much bigger company that isn't going to run out of money in 5 years?
Translation:
The SCO vs IBM assault (funded by Microsoft) is about to implode.
Therefore, Microsoft is poised to move on to their next strategy of
attacking free software.
Just take a look at the amusing comments on the Office blogs about licensing their Office 2007 user interface IP. It's abundantly clear that some of the bigwigs in management there are not lawyers, and haven't even read about their own company's history in this area with Apple and others in the past. Some of them really do believe that just because they spent a significant amount of time and money researching something, they automatically get perfect monopoly protection of that research under IP laws.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Imagine this, you get pulled over by the cops, they say you've broken 235 traffic laws, but won't tell you exactly what you've infringed. Ridiculous.
When someone points out a mistake I made, I appreciate when they tell me exactly what it was, or tell me where to look if it's in my best interest to learn how to be more diligent with my work. I don't suffer fools, and being a smart-ass doesn't help.
What MS is doing is simply saying "hey you guys, there are 235 things you're doing that's going to get you in trouble, but we won't tell you what it is"
Will it make us go away? It has definitely incensed a bunch of us to either be even more anti-MS in our stance at their sword waving, (hopefully we can do the Indiana Jones thing from Raiders')
HEX offender mugshot ID: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
We all knew this day would probably come, just as soon as the usefulness of the SCO lawsuit ended. Guess this means Microsoft has decided SCO is no longer enough to scare people off.
It also means they have decided the odds of getting Europe to adopt software patents had become too low for it to make sense on holding their fire any longer. Because this will almost certainly put the pro patent forces in the EU on defense while everyone decides that waiting to see how this afair shakes out is the prudent course.
It also means they feel threatened. Now normally that would be sorta good news, but Microsoft is paranoid and fearful as a matter of policy, always afraid of being knocked off their perch. They never choose to wait and 'hope for the best' when attack is an option for dealing with any real of imagined competitive threat. I suspect the only reason they have held their fire for so long was they felt they could use SCO to buy time to come up with a better plan that risking a Patent War that will have unpredictable results.
But SCO is used up and they only came up with the one twist to a plain patent fight, the Novell deal. It a) takes Novell out of the fight and b) offers an escape path for any corporation who decides the risk is too great, just throw Novell money and opt out of the fight. It will probably clear the field of everyone except the principles, which was the plan. Before it is over we will be following, at a minimum, RedHat V Microsoft, probably IBM v Microsoft and since this will probably trigger another anti-trust action we will also get DOJ v Microsoft.
Democrat delenda est
The thing I think is interesting is MS's deal with Novell. If MS really had this big patent portfolio on which Linux was infringing, then Novell would have been in a very weak bargaining position.
Instead we see the opposite - MS paid Novell a lot of money for that deal. To me this says that MS is full of shit, its patents are hollow (or uninfringed), and they were paying a lot of $$$ to Novell to try and add credence to their dubious claims.
But what would I know - I'm just a hippy Linux user
The real shame is that Microsoft have hidden away some of the greatest programmers that have ever lived, and essentially corralled them into harmlessness in MS Research.
.NET OS. It's very impressive in and of itself, but the programmers who put that together could have been working on something that would actually see the light of day. Imagine if Borland hadn't been steamrollered into oblivion. .NET could have been a Borland or IBM project.
.NET guys, the Haskell guys, and what they actually release such as Office 2007 (though the interface is nice now) is like night and day.
The singularity OS is basically a
The comparison between the assets that Microsoft have, such as Singularity, the
Microsoft have held back the general state of computing in order to preserve their monopoly. It's absolutely clear. Yahoo for Douglas Crockford and watch his Javascript videos. It stands out like a sore thumb how many examples of Microsoft throwing a spanner in the works of Javascript. Repeat this across a whole industry, many times a year and it becomes clear that FOSS and contributors to FOSS are going to be how this industry is driven forward.
Any time there is even a sniff of a state legislating for open standards and Microsoft goons pop out of the woodwork.
GNU/Linux and the web have now cracked Microsoft, the water is starting to flow in, and the whole edifice needs to start bailing, or flounder. Start using your research. Cooperate with open standards, and start to compete on merit, and maybe Microsoft will have a chance.
-- "It's not stalking if you're married!" My Wife.
Consider the MS FAT file system patent. There is no way you can work around the patent and still provide FAT functionality (required to work with cards from cameras etc.). For such patents there are three choices (i) Keep infringing, (ii) pull support or (iii) challenge the patent and get it overturned. With these types of patent, MS will have to weigh up whether it is worth exposing their patents to challenge, especially since many of the claims are probably quite unlikely to succeed.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Isn't it be possible to get some sort of declaratory judgement from a court? Say you're RedHat (or any other Linux distributor), who happens to sell Linux and related services - in light of MS's statements, wouldn't you be entitled to know which patents are involved? MS's statements have a direct impact on your business.
And if MS refused to tell you then couldn't you get a declaration from a court that your product doesn't infringe? IIRC, this is similar to what RedHat is pursuing in its case against SCO (which is on hold while SCO v IBM drags on).
Maybe a small Linux distributor with no assets and not much to lose could pursue a case like this against MS.
These tactics, if they can be proven as intentional (another halloween memo out there?), should be indication of their abuse of the patent system. Is it reasonable to expect every coder to search the entire patent system database for possible infringement before release to the public? I don't think so given the enormity of the database as it exists today. So their refusal to inform which patents are allegedly offending amounts to an abuse of the system ... by a monopoly power no less.
Frankly, they shouldn't be allowed to continue their predatory and intimidating ways because they are a convicted monopolist. Where's the oversight?
And the fact that we, as the BSD crowd, can see nothing wrong with that, and believe that that is the way the entire world should be, nicely demonstrates the difference between us and the Linux zealots. We believe that having to rewrite code that is already available, for any reason (Apart from "I can do this better", of course), is a criminal waste of resources. Even more so if it is because of the legal restrictions. I demand the freedom to be able to choose how I release my code. Therefore, I BSD. I believe that anyone using my code should have the same freedoms I do. Therefore, I BSD.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
It's odd that you would bring this up in defense of BSD/Expat/MIT vs copyleft, because this is almost exactly the same reasoning behind the Free Software movement: the inability to modify software that is not freely available in source code format leads to us rewriting it. Having done so, we license the resultant works so that we won't have to do so again.
At the end of the day, though, most of us wouldn't care what licenser something is released under so long as we can modify it and combine it with other free works; the unfortunate nature of closed source software is the only reason that the GPL exists... if everyone gave away source code, we would never had left the halcyon days of the dawn of computing.
http://www.donarmstrong.com
the collapse of the tech industry from all the businesses going under
My goodness, how apocalyptic.
Take a look around -- there is a whole big world out there beyond the borders of the USA, and a healthy technical industry as well.
If the US decides to blow their own industry away, that's more for everyone else.
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
I do admit, I just can't get past the way this resembles a Monty Python sketch. I can see it now...
JOHN CLEESE: "You've trespassed upon my property!"
GRAHAM CHAPMAN: "I did not."
CLEESE: "You did! You did! You owe me a toll!"
CHAPMAN: "I wasn't aware that I did. Where did I step on your property?"
CLEESE: "...I won't tell you."
CHAPMAN: "What? Why not?"
CLEESE: "If I told you, then you'd find a route that doesn't cross my property. That would ruin my chances of collecting a toll in the future, now, wouldn't it?"
CHAPMAN: "You are a very silly man and I have no intention of paying."
CLEESE: "THERE! You did it again! Now pay up!"
CHAPMAN: "No. Go away."