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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."
Didn't they claim (after they signed the agreement) that Linux did not have any patent issues with Microsoft?
Where is their press release regarding this?
You get the feel there's some sort of end-game being played out here, but it all started well before it became clear Vista was going to be a dog.
The thing is, if Microsoft divulges what the FOSS patent breaches actually are, the community will respond promptly, and that particular bullet will have been fired. Until Microsoft's list is actually available, we don't know how much harm they'll be able to do, but there's not much chance they'll be able to inflict fatal damage to FOSS.
This patent grab is essentially a one-shot hit, and until now, was always more valuable as a FUD threat than an actual tool of coercion. Micah hacks the computer system so Nathan can win. Peter controls the radiation power, and the ending is a cliffhanger into the next and final episode. That Microsoft is choosing to use it now is indicative that they believe it's value as FUD has waned, and I suspect that has more to do with the outcome of their their patent proxy SCO's efforts than with Vista's failure.
Perhaps, as in the case of SCO, MSFT would rather not have PJ at Groklaw dissect their claims...
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
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.
Microsoft wants the OSS community to do its leg-work for them to prove that all the patents are in the public domain, thereby saving them lawyering fees. At $7000 a patent, they are protected. Once they make a small-time claim, OSS proves it is in the public domain, and *poof* MS never has to worry about someone ELSE trying to patent the obvious and using it against MS in a much more costly litigation.
Brilliant, actually.
Joe
Really, what this comes down to it Microsoft, having or claiming to have some rather nice cards, not wanting to show them off.
The first and hopeful reason for this is because most of their patents are pure rubbage. The second and also somewhat hopeful reason is they don't want anyone coming up with a strategy to overcome theirs. The third and less optimistic reason is that they're trying to maximise the amount of damage they can do.
Comedy option number four is that they're afraid of IBM, FOSS patents, and they're simply full of hot air.
What is is all that is. Isn't that obvious?
This is really about knocking back linux's control of the embedded market through a generalized attack.s p
Fuel prices have radically altered the economics, and some of the patents involved will be used in a new invention that will revolutionize the transportation industry.
Details here:
http://www.snopes.com/autos/business/carburetor.a
When you read that link, remember: False is the new True!
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
I know this is Slashdot and everything, but at what point do the Microsoft stories become redundant?
Yesterday there was a link to a story on this issue, followed by lots of discussion as to why Microsoft is doing what they are doing. Today there is an opinion piece regarding the original story, in which someone lays out unsubstantiated brainstorms, all of which were covered yesterday.
I understand that Microsoft stories are huge traffic and comment generators on this website (any MS story is a guaranteed 300+ comments), but often times it seems as though the editors like to fuel the fire.
I don't know. Just thinking out loud...
- Scott
They can't avoid it forever though, and they need to do it before any lawsuits they bring go very far. It's a requirement that a patent holder claiming infringement inform infringers exactly how they are doing that. Refusal to do so is considered a bad faith act on the part of the plaintiff, which is a serious strike against any damages they might want to claim.
And the brethren went away edified.
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.
It's been 4 years since this came out. SCO didn't have any facts to put into the case, and it's still banging around after 4 years. The only thing that will really limit them is their bankroll, which is running out.
MS has a much larger bank roll.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
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
Where is the C&D from the FSF?
If someone is making a dubious claim, slap them with a c&d, and force this thing into court.
... hi bingo
IANAL, but I have some small knowledge of the law in this area...
If MS has knowledge that their patents are being violated, yet refuses to tell the violators exactly what patents they are violating and how, aren't the patent claims automatically nullified, since they made no good faith attempt to resolve the situation? If Linus or the OSDL contacts Microsoft and are rebuffed when they formally requests details of the patents in question and how they are being infringed, I would expect they would be laughed out of the courtroom in the best case. At worst, this might be viewed as a thinly diguised extortion attempt.
This is sort of like delivering a copyright infringement notice to a website without telling them what the infringing material is, and demanding the entire site be shut down or pay the claimants whatever they see fit.
My rights don't need management.
Pretty much, although that was copyright and this is patents. It could well be that MS holds patents that might be stretched to fit some operation in the Linux kernel, but whether or not that patent is valid is another, yet pertinent, issue.
Until MS lays it all down on the table, just consider it more FUD using the SCO model.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
They'll be able to repeat this process as for as many patent violations as they can come up with. Should be able to do a lot of damage.
SCO failed Microsoft... so, as the old saying goes, if you want something done right, you gotta do it yourself.
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
If this turns into more than just FUD and we see actual legal documents flying around, how will the various major players respond?
Specifically, I wonder how the following organizations will react:
IBM (big in Linux these days)
Dell (Given the timing one has to wonder if the new announcements by Microsoft are designed in part to kill the Dell Ubuntu machines)
RedHat
Sun
Free Software Foundation (have Microsoft made any claims that FSF software infringes on their patents yet)
Motorola, Cisco, Linksys and others who are using linux on embedded devices
The big question is who is going to keel over and stop using linux, who is going to "cut a deal" with Microsoft (IBM for example may just engage in some kind of cross license deal rather than try to fight) and who is going to fight?
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.
Pamela Jones has an interesting take on this story: now that Dell has bought some of the SLES coupons that Microsoft bought from Novell, Microsoft has effectively distributed a GPLed Linux distribution, thereby granting an implied license to any patents it may infringe.
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.
You're making the Look-and-Feel argument, which was legally thrown out in the 80s, not a patent argument.
Thanks for playing. Please try again.
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.
Then why bluster with the threat? It makes them look like SCO and sound like the Iraqi Information Minister. We've got Super Secret IP! We will drive the Linsux invaders into the sea! There are no Linsux soldiers within 150 miles of Redmond! What kind of drugs is Ballmer on?
Not to mention the scrutiny this case would get by the open source community. Nothing like having an army of volunteers. And you know MSFT actually suing someone would vault them into action.
They trained on SCO, they're ready for the Redmond Death Cage Match.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Just another reason why corporate money needs to not be part of the
political process. The politicians worry about getting reelected,
and corporate money is crucial to that goal.
emt 377 emt 4
The Microsoft version of the playbook is slightly different:
Microsoft to random corporation: You are violating patents A, B, C, D and E
Random Corporation: A, B, C, D and E are total BS
Microsoft: Not to worry. You are violating F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N and O.
Random Corporation: They're BS too.
Microsoft: Surely there's something worthwhile in this box (rummages in box). How about P, Q, R, S, T, U and V?
Random Corporation: BS
Microsoft: W, X, Y and Z, pleeease?
Random Corporation: Look. IBM had a real research lab that did patentable original research. Yours is just a bunch of people sitting in front of PCs animating paper clips. Now get lost.
Microsoft: Damn
Be realistic. At least a few MS products are superior to all competitors. If nothing else, you can hold up Excel as a shining example of excellence in software. Many people say the same thing about Visual Studio (I haven't worked with it).
.....Paint is seriously deficient.)
They're monopolists and their ideas about systems programming are at best ill-conceived, but you'll be more credible if you give credit where credit is due.
MS would do very well to clone a few of the OSS utility apps that are totally user-friendly. Kolourpaint, for instance, as a replacement for Paint. It might not make a big splash, but the millions of people upgrading to Vista would be pleasantly surprised by the fact that their bundled bmp editor had become more usable without losing approachability. (the grabbies that resize the canvas would be large enough for easy use on screens with resolution higher than 800x600, you could zoom to 300% in addition to 200% and 400%, you could zoom out, you could add text while zoomed in,
Among family , I keep my trap shut about technical matters.
The PR regarding Microsoft is so effective that Bill Gates is regarded as the savior among the clueless (as in all my relatives), and Microsoft is the Orthodox Church.
It really does NOT matter that I think that he is a greedy weasel, and always has been (since the Homebrew Computer Days).
My last great hope in the SYSTEM is that the Supreme Court of this land will recognize that software patents are as nonsensical as making mathematical formulas "IP" or patentable (if that is a valid word).
This isn't the first disgusting display I've seen of a monopoly scrambling for that last nickel out of the tire treads of the parked cars - I witnessed "THE PHONE COMPANY" doing the same thing.
Just tell Microsoft, "How about I give you the finger" *give finger* "and you cram those patents right up your ass."
Microsoft can look for patent violations in Linux source code, but no-one can look for patent violations in Microsoft's source code. If you have a patent on the way an internal piece of software works you have no way of telling whether MS is breaking it, but they can tell whether Linux is.
// MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
I would assume this is true, I've always wondered why M$ didn't go after the Samba team - I'm sure there are plenty of patents associated with specifics in protocols like SMB/CIFS.
Personal note: I'd be glad to get rid of Samba in Linux - it would be a push in the direction of getting rid of M$ on the client/workstation side, which is a good direction. There are plenty of Linux servers in business, and if M$ made everyone stop using Samba, a lot of business owners would sooner replace the network filesharing protocol to something better like SSHFS, or something similar.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
I don't think the (entire) problem with the SCO case is that the lawyers don't know what they're doing, it's that they don't have anything to work with. Their lawyers are trying every creative stall tactic they can think of, and then trying more, just to get out of having to finally break down and admit that they have absolutely nothing - no evidence, no lines of infringing code, no case.
With 235 possible infringing patents Microsoft has a lot more to work with. I believe that most of the patents will be found invalid and the rest will be worked around, but the process will take time and money.
I wonder if litigation is really in their best interest though. Part of the reason IBM is defending themselves so vigorously against SCO is to defend against the implication that they were behaving unethically; donating someone else's copyrighted code in bad faith to Linux. IBM makes a good deal of money supplying products and consulting services based around Linux. Wouldn't IBM's business be threatened by implications of intellectual property problems? Does Microsoft really want to go up against IBM over patents? Whatever you may think of SCO's legal team, IBM's is frighteningly competent.
"Seek first to understand." - Socrates
Also keep in mind that Bush coming to power may well have saved MS's bacon, given that they pretty much got their hand slapped after loosing an antitrust suit. And now who's going to be in power after the 2008 elections? I have a feeling that MS may think they have to make their move (although with the American legal system being what it is nothing much is going to happen until way, way into the next administration. Interesting times... I'm looking forward to this. The fact that their strategy seems pretty much unchanged from the SCO sock-puppet disaster does not bode well for them.
It is clear that Microsoft has "declared war" on Open Source. We must take punishing counter-steps. Start with an MSNBC boycott. No more Ford. Absolutly NO purchases of Microsoft products for the household. Microsoft MUST be disciplined like a spoiled child until they learn to behave themselves in a civilized fashion.
You're making the Look-and-Feel argument, which was legally thrown out in the 80s, not a patent argument.
Are you referring to Apple vs. Microsoft. Much of that decision going Microsoft's way was due to the fact that Apple didn't bother filing defencive patents for their GUI innovations. That was John Sculley's screw-up.
This space left intentionally blank.
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.
validity of the patents? not really.
Money MS has available? Nope.
the tenacity of Ballmer? Ha.
The real reason to worry is that the big thing the US still exports is...IP. We don't export televisions, computers, cds, dvds, toys, or anything else. We export how to make those things, what music and movies to put on the cds and dvds, etc. That is our largest remaining industry (since food is too cheap to make money off of really anymore).
Part of me, therefore, worries that the feds will come HARD to the rescue of MS, because to do otherwise would be to give up a large part of the US IP. Not that MS is, by itself, such a thing...but it is certainly a figurehead for software patents, and the fall of MS would domino many other falls, all dramatically hurting the long-term export portfolio of the US.
The title pretty much says it all. WHY is MS doing this? No, "they're dumb as dog shit" and "Bill Gates is the antichrist come to bring tribulation upon the righteous [OSS people]" aren't valid answers. I could imagine that they're greedy, and perhaps even scared by open source. But WHAT rational reason does MS have to take this action? If they reveal the list, they better have one or two really good ones, because most will be either easily invalidated or quickly patched by the many, many Linux nerds worldwide (and Gord help them if IBM or some of the other giants step into the ring). If they don't reveal the claims, well, that'll make it impossible to sue (and IANAL, but some of the other comments suggested that some could call MS' bluff and put a stop to the spreading of FUD).
At least MS getting SCO to pull a stunt like that (I have no comment on whether I think that's true) would make sense, as it wouldn't be any harm to MS; but time has shown the harm it's done to SCO, and I can't imagine MS would want to get into a losing fight like that, directly. Is there some way they could actually come out on top by this? I have a hard time believing people do things without a rational reason; now what is it?
You have tried to support your argument with faulty reasoning! Go directly to jail; do not pass Go, do not collect $200!
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?
In my view, open source software shifts the market in favour of the local developer - and customers. The MS ecosystem is (currently) larger, but MS gets most of the money - a few developers also make a living, but if they make too much, MS buys them out or brings out a competing product that kills them. Most customers have to use off-the-shelf MS software, because they can't change it and it costs too much to get custom applications written from scratch.
In the smaller OSS ecosystem, the OS and tools (web servers, databases etc.) are a commodity that cost little if anything. Customers pay less, and can get local developers to provide exactly what they want. Local developers get most of the money.
I prefer the OSS ecosystem. My customers can afford applications customised to how they think and work, and I actually DO make a good living developing my own code. And it's far more fulfilling than earning a margin on MS software that I've shoe-horned the customer's requirements into.
Do as you would be done to.
If MS really had this big patent portfolio on which Linux was infringing, then Novell would have been in a very weak bargaining position.
Both parties are in awkward positions, if pro-Free-software legal experts are correct in their interpretation of the MS-Novell agreement and the GPL.
Increasingly it looks like the agreement will be in conflict with GPL3, and as software included in SLES migrates towards using GPL3 Novell will either have to freeze SLES at the last version of code relesed under GPL2 or somehow find their way out of the agreement to stay current.
MS is in an awkward position because in their end of the deal they are obligated to sell SLES certificates. Technically they are now a Linux distributor. To sell a distribution you MUST abide by the GPL--even under GPL2 when you distribute GPL software you MUST make the source code available without restriction. It does not matter if the code implements a patented invention, MS could not charge a royalty/licensing fee to restrict use of the application or its source code without violating GPL. If MS is serious about trying to enforce its patents it must immediately terminate its agreement with Novell. GPL3 would not make the above situation any different for these existing patents from what I understand--what GPL3 does is keep authors of GPLed code from creating NEW patents based on the functionality of that GPLed code (could a lawyer out there tell me if that is a valid interpretation?).
I'm not convinced MS will get very far with this latest cage-rattling. I suspect many of the involved patents are pretty dubious in nature--and some may be very old and could be close to expiration by the time litigation has finally reached a conclusion (another reason why they wouldn't pull a SCO and head into an embarrassing, protracted legal battle over IP). I also suspect that the Linux kernel itself violates few if any patents at all given how architecturally different it is from the Windows kernel. Microsoft would most likely go after the more outer layers of the OS onion--those involving interoperability with Windows. That is, after all, the stated focus of the MS-Novell deal.
I think we'd first see action against Samba for example. Mono would've been a target as well, but the Novell agreement took care of that. Frontpage interoperability with Apache is another likely Free software target (I realise not all of their targets are GPL, though that is their prime concern). ODBC drivers that let Linux talk to Microsoft databases might be in the crosshairs. This strategy could be part of the "if you can't beat them, join them" plan: If Vista and the corresponding to-be-released server OS prove to be disappointments over the long term the Windows platform as it exists today may be allowed to wither and die on the vine, to be replaced with something more Linux-like (or perhaps BSD-like).
If it does indeed "pull an Apple" and underpin its OS with such Free content it'll need a differentiator--and they intend that to be backwards compatibility with what will be "legacy Windows", which will also allow them to maintain their vendor lock-in. That key piece of the puzzle cannot be Free under the MSFT business model so the goal of more aggressively enforcing patents is likely to explore the feasibility of taking the "MSFT/Linux" or "BSD Windows" route whilst maintaining the leverage they enjoy as a monopoly.
Their investment in "open source research" as of late has provided them with some ammunition, however I think they are still too clumsy with the gun and will only be able to shoot themselves in the foot with such a clumsy strategy. MS is resilient though, so I hope defenders of Free software can keep them off balance before they recover.
DUDE! You suck! why would you tell us that!? Did we eat your children or something..... not kewl -Seething pile of Man-Anger
This whole move by Microsoft confuses me. Surely they would know that the Open source community would basically hit back with "Show us the code", "Your patents won't hold up in court" and "Whatever you have, we will work around it". My guess is that either: Steve Ballmer really is an idiot and doesn't understand what is happening, or that there is some other end game in this. I refuse to believe that such an idiot at least wouldn't be stopped by someone else in Microsoft's camp with a simple "Just think about it first", so my guess is that there is another end game.
e nt-violations/ that basically, MS's won't reveal the infringing source code because it will get traced back to MS agents. Either way though, it doesn't explain this.
Yes, this is bad publicity for open source through mainstream media (as, like it or not, most people don't get their tech news from people that can program), and yes, this will scare some companies into buying MS software in their next cycle, but really... what is the end game?
I saw an interesting comment here: http://neosmart.net/blog/2007/microsoft-linux-pat
Like it or not, Microsoft, as a company, are as smart as they are evil. There is something else behind this.
Apology accepted, Captain Needa.
There are plenty of reasons why MS wouldn't be able to stall as long as SCO, and I'm sure MS knows that. That's why they've been using SCO so far, instead of doing it all directly.
Think about it. If MS were to actually start suing Linux users, it would make the front page of most newspapers in the US. The last time Microsoft was that involved in legal disputes in the US, it took a presidential impeachment to distract the public and the press. Microsoft would be under far more scrutiny than SCO, and the truth about their baseless claims would come out. By the time the dust settled and the judges dotted all the i's and crossed all the t's, precedents would have been established that would destroy Microsoft's core business practices. And because of the importance of the case(s), all the Fortune 500 companies would be demanding a speedy trial so that they could get on with running a business.
The more MS stalls, the more solid the case against them will be. If they come up with an excuse, it will be analyzed and probably debunked quickly, leaving them with fewer options. If they don't dig up every technicality they can think of, then they will lose sooner. The only option they have now to avoid inevitable humiliation in court is to stay out of court. Unfortunately for them, their FUD alone might provide enough grounds for somebody else to sue them, thus setting up the showdown they can't afford to have happen.
One thing is certain: once MS gets into court about these issues, they won't get to decide when they leave (just like SCO cannot drop charges and walk away). That makes it a huge risk for them to ever get near a court with their FUD.
And then, there is always the fact that IBM's Nazgul could beat the shit out of Microsoft with their all-encompassing Patent Portfolio. That might actually be the best delaying tactic: get into long fights with IBM, and make sure the real cases can't proceed until they are settled.
Balmer's recent threats that anyone using a version of Linux that hasn't signed up with Microsoft an "undisclosed balance sheet liability" sums up Microsofts attitude nicely. Why wouldn't it? The DOJ has been muzzled and Microsoft have been able to do anything they damned well want to, but by the end of this year there will be someone else in the Whitehouse. Maybe it'll be same-as-usual. Maybe not. I hope not :-)
PS. Microsoft Astroturfers respond to NUL: pls
Querying the USPTO Patent Database returns 37,131 patents with Microsoft's name on them. So, with 235 alleged infringements, Linux allegedly infringes on less than 1% of Microsoft's patents. The way they make out that FLOSS programmers are thieves running rough-shod over their intellectual property, I would have expected more than that.
Querying for IBM, turns up 91,006 patents with IBM's name on them. My guess is that Microsoft probably infringes on more than 1% of IBM's patents. Oracle has 5,584 with their name on them (I threw that one in as a bonus just for reading this far!).
So, for Microsoft, it's either tell what patents are infringed on to allow the alleged infringing parties to mitigate Microsoft's damages and have them proved obvious, prior-art'ed or simply worked around OR don't tell and have them invalidated for failure to protect them. Hmm, nothing works very well. Also, this activity will generate a lot of negative press. But, they have to protect the value of their IP as embodied by US patents or risk lawsuits by their shareholders. What a shame... Live by the sword, die by the sword, huh?
I'm under the belief that a monopoly cannot ever sustain itself. Ever. At least not with some ACTIVE help from the government (see ATT). In this case, I saw the collapse of Microsoft coming in the year 2008, some six or seven years ago. I saw what Linux was back in its infancy, in the late 90s, and saw it steadily improve.
I may have been a little later to jump on the Linux bandwagon back then, but I've been onboard since 99 or 00, and by the time 02 or 03 came around, I saw the writing on the wall. This whole thing was magnified by the ME disaster, BOB, and Clippy. These failures are key to understanding WHY Microsoft is doomed to failure.
ME, BOB, and Clippy are all UI designs, not core components. Microsoft has stopped making core improvements to the OS for some time. And by CORE improvements I mean innovations to the underlying OS. By now, Windows should have been FULLY virtualized and abstracted away from the underlying hardware. Microsoft has made the error of tying itself to x86 architecture to much, and that is now limiting its ability to add true functionality (like virtualization), something that is vastly needed, especially in the server market, where each service almost needs its own host.
Along comes Linux, which ISN'T tied to a piece of hardware, and has abstacted various layers so that it doesn't need to be tied to specific hardware, and it is leading into virtualized hosted environment. I suspect the next revolution in OS is going to be complete abstraction of the core OS from the underlying HW via vitualization, which will break the bonds from x86 architecture.
So, by NOT interfering (protecting MS), the US Government is actually helping Microsoft CRUSH itself by trying to maintain a codebase that is incomprehensible because it has never had to change architecture. If the US government tried to break up Microsoft all those years ago, Windows and the core application and server products might have been improved to the point that the monopoly would still exist, only in three parts.
As it looks right now, MS is a beached Whale, and the tide is still moving out. The mighty leviathan is being crushed under its own weight in an environment that is changing faster than it can. Be warned, Microsoft (or whatever happens to it) will still have remains, but it will not be the powerhouse it once was.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
In the beginning:
When this linux-child was born, like all Spartans, he was inspected.
For the strength of the code lies only in its openness.
---oOo---
The Threat:
Microsoft Messenger:
Choose your next words carefully, Leon-ix-idas. They may be your last as king.
Linux:
You bring the skulls and crowns of conquered corporations to my desktop, you insult my queen, and you threaten my people with lawsuits and FUD! Oh, I've chosen my words carefully, Microsoft. Perhaps you should have done the same! *kick*
---oOo---
The preliminary skirmishes :
Microsoft :
Send in the SCOuts to test the strength of these Spartan defences.
Linux :
Our Unix ancestors built this wall. Using ancient stones from the bosom of Greece herself.
And with a little Spartan help, your Microsoft-sponsored SCOuts supplied the mortar.
---oOo---
The battle:
Microsoft :
A thousand lawyers of the Microsoft empire descend upon you. Our patents will blot out the sun!
Linux :
Then we will code in the shade !
---oOo---
The aftermath:
Narrator:
The world will know that freemen stood against a tyrant, that few stood against many,
and that before this battle is done, that even a god king can bleed.
Microsoft:
WTF happened ? Who threw that chair ?
"Among the patents infringed upon are 45 that apply to OpenOffice and 83 that apply to FOSS applications that are not part of the Linux kernel or its commonly associated graphical interface.
This isn't just an attack on Linux, it's an attack on open source development in general. That is a spectacularly bad idea for Microsoft to pursue."
Microsoft's Unwinnable War on Linux and Open Source
They weren't enviable for very long. Here's a timeline of Microsoft's relationship with the home user:
1988: Microsoft achieves name recognition with the useless, but pretty, Windows 2.0
1990: Microsoft releases Windows 3.0, enabling shared memory (aka crash-prone, but useful) multitasking for the PC. The PC world goes wild!
1992: Just two years later, IBM releases OS/2 2.0 with true workstation multitasking, and we realize how much we got screwed. Microsoft pulled out of the OS/2 deal. At this point, they are just starting to write the NT kernel.
The rest is denouement...
1995: Microsoft introduces the Start! button and the puke-green desktop.
1994-96: Two great programs, Word and Excel reach stability, and are promptly forgotten as the whole world gets buried in PowerPoint presentations.
1997: Outlook becomes the poster-child for complex, bloated, and virus-laden software design. Likewise, IE kills Netscape and replaces it with even more viruses.
2000: A full eight years later, OS/2 style multitasking reaches a home audience with Windows 2000. Whew! Thank God!
And since then?
Nada. Unless you count XP, which is...seven years old on the inside.
I continue to be amazed that anyone is taking this seriously. There are ZERO MS patents violated by free software. If MS says otherwise, SHOW US THE PATENTS. If you won't do that, shut up and go home.
The only answer to anyone making such outrageous claims is to ask them, "Which patents?"
Imagine the following conversation:
Company: "You have 112 unpaid invoices."
Human being: "What are the invoice numbers?"
Company: "We won't tell you."
Human being: "Then how am I supposed to pay them?"
Company: "You aren't. We're just going to threaten you with them until we do what we want."
Human being: "...?"
That is exactly what MS are saying: you owe us, but we won't tell you why or how much. Now pay up.
As a Linux user, I'm wondering if I should contact MS demanding to be notified of exactly what patents are violated by software in the Ubuntu 7.01 and Slackware 11.0 distros. As a concerned citizen I am most desirous that I not use any violating software, but unless I know a) what the software in question is and b) what the patent it violates it is, I have no way of independently verifying that it is infringing. Therefore, unless they can provide me with evidence NOW that the software I am using is infringing, I will consider them estopped from ever enforcing their patents.
I'm not a lawyer and not sure if the doctrine of estopel applies, but I'm pretty sure if we all send registered letters to MS asking for immediate notification as to a) what software is violating MS patents and b) what specific patents each specific piece of software is violating that we can all plausibly claim, in the absence of an answer, that MS has no further claim on us with regard to this.
Anyone know the address of the MS legal department?
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
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
This is the NEW slashdot. Only bad car analogies allowed. Please rephrase.
Nothing is inexplicable; only unexplained -Tom Baker, Doctor Who
Try 50,000, or 100,000. Or more.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
Excuse me but did you just use 'Yahoo' as a verb synonym for 'search'? Are we allowed to do that now?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
That'd be really funny. As the saying goes "Live by the sword... ZOMG! They've Got Nukes!"
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
I really don't understand what happens at microsoft. They really do hire the industry's best and brightest. They pay them a lot of money, give them all the resources they need and...they give us vista. And asp.net. wtf?
Sig removed because it was obnoxious
don't forget that if Microsoft actually finds out that Linux and OSS in general does not violate any MS patents, that they will in turn be sued by everyone who has already paid them for these alleged copyright violations. The amount of law suits that would come back at Microsoft would be a huge mistake on their part, and they are not stupid, thus they won't allow for this. One thing I could easily see them doing however, is researching all the patents they do legally own, and then searching for ways to make open source software look guilty. Also, didn't they recently patent Vista's UAC, which due to how vague it is would mean that sudo and su would be copyright violations? Something needs to be done in this country about patent and intellectual property law, and quickly. The more they allow MS to get away with, the worse off it is for the consumer.
Relocating to San Francisco / Palo Alto... Hire me?
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
* Smiley's resemble a side-ways MS-Bob ":-)"
* When a Linux box crashes (it sometimes happens), it violates MS's BSOD patent.
* They have a patent on sloppy icons that leak colors thru.
* Hilighting of misspelled words in word processors. IBM had it first, but they stick it on the list anyhow hoping IBM won't care.
* When you use any paper-clip, real or virtual...
* The figure "8" on the keyboard looks like MS-Bob's glasses.
* Keyboards shipped with some Linux boxes have the Windows key on the keyboard.
* The Malinda Gates Foundation patented Aids, so Linux users with Aids have to pay up.
* If your Linux box is near land with grassy, rolling hills, you're violating their wallpaper.
* The angle of the envelope in the mail icon is 27.43 degrees, exactly the same as in Windows.
* The parenthesis on the DOS prompt font look too much like angle brackets, so if Linux uses angle brackets, it is violating their parenthesis patent out of association (a complex legal pathway that would take too long to explain to mortals).
* "Linux" has the letter "n" near the middle of the word, just like "Windows". And an "i".
* The mascot Penguin's smile looks just like MS-Bob's smile: smug and stupid.
* Boring packaging is an MS innovation.
* If you mow your lawn and find your car, you know you are a redneck. Oops, wrong list.
Table-ized A.I.
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 believe that anyone using my code should leave to others the same freedoms I left them. Therefore, I GPL.
They claim 235 patents are infringed by the Open Source Community, but the "Open Source Community" does not exist as a legal entity -- it's not a person, it's not a company, it's not a even group acting under a single, shared motive. Break it down into Open Source and Free Software, and then break those down into companies and volunteers, and then into those who take are professionals vs. those who are just experimenting with a hobby, and you MIGHT have some sort of law suit. Most likely though, you just have FUD. Which is enough for MS, of course --- as long as the average consumer believes they have the one true window, they're happy with their production quality and customer service.
Well, many of the patents probably have ample prior art. In addition, almost certainly pretty much all of them can be worked around.
How do we know that they can be worked around? Because the lifetime of patents is about 20 years. What did people use 20 years ago? UNIX workstations with colorful graphical user interfaces. They were doing desktop publishing, WYSIWYG editing, spreadsheet calculations, visual development, diagramming, E-mail, file up/downloads, chatting, VoIP, video conferencing, discussion boards, news reading, and all the other things people do today. There was C, the beginnings of C++, Objective C, several Java-like languages, several scripting languages, and Ingres. There were great IDEs (better than Eclipse or VisualStudio). The biggest changes since then have been the use of HTTP (replacing much of the functionality of NNTP and a few other protocols), the bloating of C++, theming, and window transparency in X11. Oh, and lots more memory, CPU, and bandwidth.
Whatever Microsoft may or may not have invented over the last 20 years, it's clearly not essential to modern desktop computer usage because modern desktop computer usage existed when Microsoft was still doing DOS.
IANAL, but it seems to me that FOSS projects should contact Microsoft's legal department with something like this: "Dear Microsoft, our project takes intellectual property seriously and we have a policy of not infringing patents. You have recently claimed that our project infringes upon some of your patents. We have examined our code and been unable to determine where this infringement occurs and we believe that our software does not infringe. We would appreciate if you could let us know specifically which patents and claims our code infringes according to you so that we can find a solution. Since you have already counted the number of instances, it should be easy for you to generate such a list." Send it with return receipt. I think if they don't respond, if they ever brought a claim, even though they are not strictly speaking required to respond, it would look quite bad for them.
Alternatively, just take Microsoft to court and ask for a declaratory judgement. One doesn't have to take it all the way to the end, just far enough for Microsoft to actually be forced to put their patents on the table. At that point, you look at them, implement the workarounds, and say "you may be right, but it's fixed now".
Microsoft mentioned the Linux kernel proper, the "Linux GUI", and OpenOffice.org as the software in violation of Microsoft patents. None of these are owned by the FSF, and only Gnome (if that is what the "Linux GUI" refers to) is the only GNU project among them.
There are two good reasons why no FSF owned code has been challenged:
1) The FSF is a legal entity, and can actually defend itself. The FUD factor is much higher for the project with no/many owners. Who is going to stand up for them?
2) The FSF is very careful about patents, it is quite common on the GCC list to see comments along the line of "the obvious technique for doing this is patented, but I found an alternative way to do it, so let's implement that". The core GCC developers seems to read patents in order to know what to avoid.
The obvious exception seems to be OpenOffice.org which is owned by Sun, but Microsoft has a cross-license agreement with Sun (like most of the large technological companies has with each other), which may make it difficult for Sun to defend OpenOffice.org. After all, thanks to the cross-license agreement, Microsoft is not accusing Sun of any wrongdoing.
Patents screwed up the first 20 years of airplane development (Wrigh),
patents delayed the development of safe mass production cars (Durea, hydraulic brakes, ignition systems),
patents delayed the widespread availability of hetrodyne radio receivers in the 30's,
patents delayed the widespread availability of copying machines (Xerox),
patents are currently blocking millions of people from cheap drugs for Aids.
The patent game is tightly connected to the merchantile theories of "what do high labor cost highly educated countries create and sell in order to buy what low labor cost countries make? They make "intellectual property", stuff protected by patent an copyright.
So that is the mercantilist clinch that prevents the United States from relaxing patent law. Neither of the major politicial parties can vote against "Keeping America competitive in world trade."
What we need is an economic analysis of the "monopoly costs to the world of unrestrained patent law" and a comparison with the global benefit of "automatic licensing of intellectual property at a sufficiently low user cost that patents enhance the quality and value of all production of the entire world."
The benefits of patents and patent revenue are the dream drug of a capitalist "Ahh, if I have enough patents I will not have any competitive pressures." Xerox rode a bunch of patents for 20 years.
But the reality of patents is the small guy is almost always screwed. The middle sized guys are gobbled up, and the big players play long, slow expensive games tying up entire industries with higher prices and inferior ideas.
Some people here in /. live in a very interesting alternate Universe.
/ 2006pr/aip/related_party/
Check the statistics of your own government:
http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/Press-Release
please tell me which of those industries has anything to do remotely with "IP exports".
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
1. they know 99% of them will be debunked
2. *IF* anything is even remotely valid it will be worked around in a matter of days.
SCO tried this with the copyright bat and lost, which was funded by MS depending on your paranoida, now it appears MS didn't learn anything OR is trying to play the same card of a different suit.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Microsoft won't list the alleged violations for a more straightforward reason: they know the OSS community won't pay.
The OSS community will either debunk the claims, challenge the patents' validity or where the patents are valid, code around them. None of these activities benefits Microsoft. Brad Smith knows this, so he's keeping the list of alleged violations under wraps and using the empty threat of a lawsuit to push risk-conscious suckers in large business to pay up.
If we in the community want to kill this off, here's what we have to do:
1. Ask the key software maintainers to make a pledge to replace any code discovered to infringe a Microsoft patent in a timely manner and for free.
2. Find an insurance company willing to insure big business against liability to Microsoft for patents based on that pledge. Specificly, find one willing to insure them for less money than Microsoft wants.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
Surely these "infringments" can be requested under the UK's Freedom of information act 2000, as it is in the public interest to know which patents that are infringed upon, and as MS have an office in england surely that makes them subject to UK law.
The problem with the BSD licence is that it allows other people to take all the hard work you did, then change it a tiny bit -- just enough so that your code no longer works with data that has been through their code -- and lock it up. (Which is precisely what Sun didn't want Microsoft to do to Java again).
Now, maybe you think that's not a problem and you can always write your own code to do the same thing as their closed extensions and then release it as Free Software. But why should you have to? Perhaps it's just me being lazy, but I don't really appreciate the thought that I might have to rewrite from scratch something for which someone else refused to release the Source Code. And weren't they being the lazy ones in the first place, expecting to be allowed to use my hard work which I intended to be for everyone as the basis for something they want to keep caged up?
The BSD licence just says "Sharing is not stealing". The GPL goes a step further and actually says "Not sharing is stealing".
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
And I have to buy another - unused - OpenBSD cd.
After a couple of moths, they're back at behaving as jerks as they used to, being rude to their own users and every human being in general.
Who are you describing, Microsoft or Theo de Raadt? :)
A DRAFT Open Letter to Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith
Dear Mr. Smith:
My name is ______. I am the maintainer for Linux kernel 2.6. I package its various components for general distribution.
It has come to my attention that that you allege the Linux kernel infringes 42 Microsoft patents. It is my emphatic belief that the Linux 2.6 kernel infringes no intellectual properties, least of all Microsoft's patents. Nevertheless, I will rigorously investigate any bona fide infringement claim and take appropriate remedial action.
Accordingly, I ask that you specify the 42 patents you allege to be infringed. Please include concise technical descriptions of the allegedly infringing components of the Linux kernel and the claims which you believe each component violates. For the sake of everyone's peace of mind, I ask that you do so no later than July 1, 2007.
Until such a time as you have done so, I insist that you refrain from making further potentially slanderous remarks to members of the press regarding the legality of the Linux kernel and thus of my behavior as its maintainer.
Respectfully Yours,
X
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
That's an amazing letter Linspire have concocted. Since when has capitulation to extortion been a matter of choice? The aim of extortion is to subvert choice. Appeasing Microsoft won't make them go away. Hitler didn't go away when Chamberlain came back from Munich waving a piece of paper. Pretty soon Microsoft will claim that all computer programs infringe "their" patents. You'll have to pay a tax just to write a while loop. Utterly uninspiring work, Linspire.
Squirts is trying to be "aggressive". He consistently talks like a fool.
- transcript.en.html#patents
Here's what Stallman really said, in context:
http://www.fsfeurope.org/projects/gplv3/tokyo-rms
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
Not a very profound statement when you consider that freedom to license software the way you want is being exercised by virtually everyone who releases software. Observe these other courageous people taking a stand:
Know when to fold them,
Know when to walk away,
Know when to run,
You never count your money
when you're sitting at the table,
There'll be time enough for counting,
When the dealing's done.
-- Kenny Rogers
And yes, I think Microsoft is bluffing as to the number of patents, and is acting in bad faith: if indeed there is infringing code, they don't want it fixed, they want to use it as leverage to kill Linux. As we've all suspected would happen, Microsoft has finally come out from behind their hillock.
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
It would be deadly to some careers of lawyers and middle management who specialize in manipulating patents for corporate benefit. But software patents have clearly been a massive dead-weight on technical development in the US, and worldwide. Thousands of poor quality, even fraudulent software patents are granted annually. (Take a look at the Ebay 1-click case for real prior art nuttiness.)
The limited benefit of software patents providing corporate revenue is wildly, wildly outweighed by the cost passed on to the consumer and applied against smaller compaanies or programmers of patent searches, patentn litigation, and patent applications to protect themselves from larger companies who are very efficient at building patent portfolios of every variation of a very limited number of new or purchased ideas.
That's what forks are for, which are protected by the GPL license. The BSD license and patents do *not* protect you from forks which you happen to duplicate by parallel development, and they don't protect you against patent claims. This is *precisely* why the BSD crowd is more business friendly, and tends to pure code bases managed by individual gurus, and the GPL license actually leads to faster development cycles and broader broader software development.
The collapse of the US tech industry would mean the collapse of the US economy. The collapse of the US economy would mean the collapse of the world economy. The US is not the only country whose economic collapse would spell economic disaster for the world, just the one with the greatest impact. The US economy is the largest in the world, therefore changes in it have greater effect on the world economy. While no single European country's economy would make a large difference in the world economy, the collapse of the entire EU economy would probably have disproportionate effect on the world economy (that is disproportionate to the relative to its size). I'm not sure of the long term impact of the collapse of the Japanese, Chinese, or Indian economies, but short term would be pretty major.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
You, as a member of the BSD license-happy crowd, failed to pay close attention to the Microsoft/MIT Kerberos case. Microsoft took MIT's code base, modified it, broke it by extending, and made it compatible only with other Microsoft servers and clients. Under a BSD style license, this would have bene perfectly reasonable, they could keep the changes secret and proprietary, and even patent the change, and no one else could write a patch to fix it.
Fortunately, the extension wasn't patented, and the patch was easy to write, but there was a rather nasty lawsuit about it and a lot of promised "compatible with Kerberos" functionality didn't happen for a long time after the software release.
Heres what is going to happen, things like NTFS, FAT32, or the SMB protocol perhaps are covered by MS patents, but all that will happen is people will just use the existing code if it's no longer actively developed. We already use code that people claim is illegal, like DeCSS, and it really doesn't matter in any meaningful way, Microsoft's claims have no bearing on the majority of the Linux using world, much of which is not in the US.
The rest of the 'items' that probably don't even fall under their worthless invalid patents, can be easily re-written to avoid whatever routines, processes, methods etc, they think they have a right to "own".
With regards to the Novell deal, if it does turn out that projects cease to be developed, they are the only one who is immune to this monkey-fuck patent crap, so in order for Novell to continue using these things they would have to develop them internally, because I guarantee that after GPLv3 people are not going to develop things FOR Novell in normal community style ala OpenSuSE only to have them turn around and play Microsoft's games.
But everything's made in China! The loss of such a huge client as the US would be a blow to the world market, it wouldn't be a collapse worldwide. The Europe, the strength of the US economy is in the exports to the US, and you're not the only country importing Japanese cars. The biggest countries that would be hurt are Canada and Mexico, whose biggest exports are to the US. The US has banned the import of soft wood lumber and beef, and while it has seriously hurt those industries, they haven't collapsed and are selling elsewhere. With the stricts controls the US government has been imposing on imports and exports, the harder they control it, the less dependant the world becomes on selling to the US.
Think about it this way. What would happen to the US economy if Walmart folded up? It would be a huge blow to the US retail economy, but they aren't the only company around. The population stays the same, prices go up as suppliers sell through smaller shops, sales will go down, they'll tighten their belt, and the economy will adapt.
The universe is held together with duct tape and karma. What goes around, comes around, and gets stuck to your forehead.
And you believed something because Microsoft said so? Who washed YOUR brain. MS has a long history of lies, deceit, and treachery.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.