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Through the Patent Looking Glass with Microsoft
Andy Updegrove writes "By now you've probably read more than you want to about Microsoft's announcement that it owns 235 patents underlying leading open source software, including many opinions about whether Microsoft's new assertions do, or don't, represent a real threat to Linux, OpenOffice, and other OSS. To get to the bottom of the issue, though, you have to take a deep dive into how patent cross licensing works these days. When you do, you realize that patents don't mean what they used to, and have far more defensive than offensive value in the marketplace today. It also becomes apparent that it really doesn't matter whether Microsoft has valid patents or not, because so many other companies do as well. Today, what companies worry about isn't asserting their patents against other companies, but maintaining their freedom of activity. In this case, the open source community can simply ride the coattails of the major vendors, because Microsoft doesn't hold enough cards to win the hand, much less the game." Relatedly The Register is reporting that the author of the main report being used by Microsoft to support their patent claims has come out against Microsoft's interpretation of his work and Jonathan Schwartz gives some free advice to the overly litigious.
Back in November 2004, Dan Ravicher complained to Steven Vaughan-Nichols that Ballmer had misread his patent study, so I'm not sure that this is 'new' news.
That Register link is dead (although even Google News indexed the article. wtf?) But many articles are repeating Ravicher's old remarks: Ravicher says his report proves the opposite of Microsoft's claims, The author of that report disowned Ballmer's remarks, etc.
you had me at #!
The first link doesn't seem to be valid. Shame, cause I was interested.
Seems like they sued El Register too! http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/05/16/ravicher_m icrosoft_oss_patent/ 404! How far are they going now! The sky is falling the sky is falling
Infiltrated dot Net
The resounding reply from all corners has been either 'so?' or 'They have nothing, and won't have or they would have already shown it'. What's more, Linus more or less dismissed the claims as nothing more than FUD. There are claims that this FUD is being used to help bolster MS's Q2 sales of Vista.
Nothing but conjecture abounds as MS is doing a SCO and not saying what they have, nor why they want to even mention it. Yet others claim that the Linux vouchers MS is touting actually makes them a Linux distributor and thus subject to the GPL.
The whole thing should pan out to be a very interesting chapter in tech history.
Someone let me know when there is real news on this topic
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The queue starts here folks, please have your $699 ready and don't shove.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
go die !
It seems like Jonathan Schwartz is alluding to Microsoft and SCO here, but he seems to be referencing a third company as well. Any ideas?
My blog
"Today, what companies worry about isn't asserting their patents against other companies, but maintaining their freedom of activity."
Last year IBM sued Amazon over IBM patents and it had nothing to do with "maintaining freedom". The whole theory of defensive patents is just an excuse for patent-mongers like IBM to continue to restrict competition.
And in a related news, US companies were recently granted patents for some ancient Yoga postures from India.
Shows how inefficient the patent granting process is. MS patents could be similar prior art.
Ballmer and M$ executives always call FOSS communism, say things about intelectual proprieties, patents etc.
.NET, M$ Office etc.
But like I said before, this is the only weapon they have... FUD... Big Heavy FUD!
Ballmer is like Adolf Hitler, he may have a magnetic speech filled with emotion... But his speech is not clear and is full of shit... He probably have a lot of shit in his head, because he is shurely shitting from his mouth O.o
Like Hitler's speech, ballmer's speech is just like a good and beautifoul music but with crappy lyrics...
"DEVELOPERS, DEVELOPERS, DEVELOPERS, DEVELOPERS" (how many times did he operate his throat?)
And M$ is the drug dealer, giving free samples of it's own drug (Windoze - In this case starter edition)... The big problem here is that is not only the user on drugs.. But the Market is a big junkie using these heavy drugs called Windows,
We need to change the market
And we need to stop giving so much attention to Ballmer's FUDs!
If Linux infringes M$'s patents, why dont M$ show us where is the violation????? What about the Showusthecode campaign? Ballmer didnt say a word about it... Just like I said! FUD FUD FUD FUD!
Spread the news. The more mainstream non techie people know about this, the better. This FUD needs to work against MS. There are a good number of larger sites addressing this, such as eweek. But making sure it is addressed as FUD will work against them. People will see that this is an act of desperation from MS. They are not used to being in competition since they normally buy or sue their potential competition out of existence anyway. The problem is like any organization, putting your hands in too many pies (virtualization, Office suites, browser, online advertising, and on and on) They have spread themselves thin. At the moment it seems they have a very broken development process as well. MS needs to focus on 2 or 3 major products and stick to that. They are too focused on competing with everyone and everything in the software and even the hardware world at times. They have no focus as a company other than marketing. That is the only working part of the company. But seeing as this comment is likely not to be read by anyone at MS of importance, it will go ignored and they will dig themselves into a hole they will have a difficult time getting themselves from.
22 of my patents are being misused by Microsoft. 18 of them are being misused by Apple and 12 of them by Linux. I will not tell you what those patents are since it would make me a millionaire and put all users through lot of pain.
O this learning! What a thing it is - William Shakespeare
is the report by Ravicher titled 'Open Source Risk Management', thats mentioned here, then this is slander.
...vividly encapsulates that post-Watergate/pre-punk/coked-up moment when you could trust no one, least of all yourself.
Back in November 2004, Dan Ravicher complained to Steven Vaughan-Nichols that Ballmer had misread his patent study, so I'm not sure that this is 'new' news.
This looks recent to me. I journaled the interesting parts of the Register article. The statements were presented as recent and are identical to those running in the stories you point to:
The Register article also quoted Ballmer citing a paper published "last summer" by a nameless "Open Software" group so this is not a rehash of the 2004 events, other than committing the same offense. Microsoft is like that. When a lie does not stick, they tell it again.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
...people and businesses should not need to hold a bunch of patents in order to maintain their freedom of activity. The fact that we are even using the word "patent" in this context shows that patents are actually working against their primary purpose: to encourage innovation.
If the rules do not accomplish their stated goal, then they must be changed.
For the cynics: if the actual goals of the rules is to harm the many to the advantage of the few, then again, they must be changed.
You don't have to know MS's patent portfolio to know that -- yes -- F/OSS violates some of them. No program longer than about 1000 lines is likely to be "clean" in this sense.
The reason it's called FUD is not necessarily 'cause it's false: it's because Microsoft is *unlikely to actually do any of the things they are threatening.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Back in November 2004, Dan Ravicher complained to Steven Vaughan-Nichols that Ballmer had misread his patent study, so I'm not sure that this is 'new' news.
This looks recent to me. I journaled the interesting parts of the Register article. The statements were presented as recent and are identical to those running in the stories you point to:
The Register article also quoted Ballmer citing a paper published "last summer" by a nameless "Open Software" group so this is not a rehash of the 2004 events, other than committing the same offense. Microsoft is like that. When a lie does not stick, they tell it again.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
.... Of a poker player who is the short stack at the table taking what chips s/he has left and going "all in" with any two cards and hoping for the best. I suspect that barring a minor miracle, the outcome is going to be that they're going to loose all their chips (not to mention any credibility they have left).
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
From the main article, "have far more defensive than offensive value in the marketplace today" and from the parent post "MS. They are not used to being in competition"
Microsoft could well be using this "patent news" in a very underhanded, but very tactical way to scare corporations away from adopting open source tools and/or OS, in an attempt to tip the balance so corporations buy Vista. Non-technical Corporation bosses would be afraid of this kind of underhanded sabre rattling tactic of Microsoft, as they would fear wasting time and effort on Linux and so go the "safe" route of using Microsoft tools & OS. ("Safe"=What M$ tell them is safe).
Its blatant scare tactics hidden behind a supposed news story, which Microsoft's own PR departments created the news story.
There are 10 kinds of people in the world... those who understand binary and those who don't.
"there is almost no difference between this "everyone has defensive patents" world, and the "no one has any patents at all" world. In both cases, companies that hold a bunch of patents are free to operate as they see fit"
See the important difference. It's the *thousands of companies who don't hold a bunch of patents. They are not free to operate as they see fit in the former case, and in fact live in a Damoclean situation where their continued survival is dependent on being below the radar of the patent oligarchy. In the latter case, they are free to operate as they see fit.
Or did you have some plan for providing these defensive patents to "everyone"?
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
After digesting this issue for a couple days I have come up with this...
Intentionally or not, Microsoft has trained corporate America to wait until the first service pack or two before adopting their new operating systems. The new hardware specs for Vista will provide a further incentive for companies to delay the 'upgrade.'
Microsoft has come up with a short-term pump-up for Vista that was briefly referenced in another thread here and was supported by a friend of mine who is in CS @ a local university... students recieving free installs are being run through an e-commerce application with the price fields zeroed... which means they are being counted as sales. I wonder how many other individuals are recieving free licenses through this method for corporate evaluation etc...
Microsoft then releases public attacks to slow corporate adoption of competing products. In 9-12 months the market will naturally have reduced the overhead for upgrading to Vista and Microsoft will have time to release some major patches.
Profit!!!
Vista is not the only product they are using delaying tactics with. In 4th Qtr '06 MS dropped Virtual Machine licenses from $499 for corporate to $99 after announcing the delay of Viridian, their new upgrade.
Sad thing is... these tactics will probably work. Good thing is Microsoft does not appear to have a winning legal strategy. Not that they need one, but we probably won't be seeing C&D notices out of this.
I hope this is all that's behind this.
Regards.
Has kind of a familiar ring to it doesn't it?
ffff black people
Have we ruled out the possibility that Novell could be working with Microsoft on this as a marketing campaign? Consider that "oh it's scary that we use Linux, but if we really need it let's use Novell because that's safe for us" could be precisely what M$ and Novell want you to think. I'll be the first to admit I know nothing of Novell's business practices, but business is business, and sometimes that means people play extraordinarily dirty. Honestly, I would absolutely love to be proven that this is wrong, but I suspect it will still remain a possibility.
As Sherlock Holmes once said...., "The parallel is exact!"
To understand that larger implications of taking your customers to court, MSFT need not look further than the RIAA. Hopefully Uncle Balmer will get the point before he goes down this path. I quite wrote what Jonathan Schwartz wrote about the implications... MSFT should focus on delivering a better product not taking people to court. This is going to end up being a distraction for a company already trying to chase the fading tail-lights of Google, Apple and Nintendo.
Or then MSFT may chose the RIAA route, we know how that story ended.... dominated by Apple.
-S
Looks like patents are doing the opposite.
Someone needs to seriously bring down the whole patent system, it's just ludicrous.
Here's some good reading about freedom of speech in software development:
http://www.philsalin.com/patents.html
Too bad he isn't alive anymore. We really need someone like him to for once and for all address this stupid idiotic system.
Schwartz is talking about not being able to sue free software out of existence. Sure, he might be alluding to M$ encouraging Sun to sue their own customers, that's a small part of the picture. After extolling the value of free software for Sun, he concludes:
M$'s current party line was made to directly counter this opinion. As delivered by Fortune, M$ has made agreements with the Fortune 500 to sell free software M$ style - with M$ as the owner. The core of Schwartz's message is that strategy won't work. Even the Fortune article caught that much, despite missing so many other problems like checking Ballmer's source for numbers. Fortune also caught the GPL3 changes that will further sink M$'s ill advised power grab.
M$'s approach is not only wrong headed, it has no foundation. It's pure FUD and even M$ has to know it. The only reasonable explanation is that Vista is a flop and they will try anything to generate further sales.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
You'd think it was "Patent Beer Goggles" then.
Ever since MS made that announcement about the 250 some patents that Linux supposedly infringes on, there have been a number of articles on Slashdot pointing out the flaws in MS's argument. In addition, almost every single comment I've read essentially parrots TFA or previous articles. While I'm not pro-MS by any means, it would be nice if someone could find an article that argues from the other point of view. Essentially, I think we should really try to have a debate on the issue, rather than just continuing the groupthink.
Keep in mind that I don't personally agree with MS's argument. I just think we'd all benefit from being open minded and having an actual debate on the topic. This applies to all topics we cover, but this one struck me as particularly obvious.
This is simply good marketing coupled with an opportunity when OSS is finally in a position where real money is finally being made. I've worked in semiconductors for over 30 years. In that business if you start a new company, if you are not a direct threat to the big guys....they all just simply sit back and wait until you are finally making some money. Once that happens the lawyers from Intel, TI, IBM, etc., etc. etc. all line up at your door. They come in and say "Gee, we think you are violating our patents. Tell you what, we've decided the stack you violate is 8' high. Now, we can litigate each one...............or for today only, we will offer you this screaming deal of 30K/inch plus a royalty of 0.05% on every product you make........hell, we will even throw in a set of Ginsu Knives with the deal cause we are such nice guys!"
The have enough clout in the marketplace to make you look bad with their FUD. They can shut you down. This is simply legal extortion plain and simple. Tony Soprano would be proud.
"TV, a medium as it is neither rare nor well done." Ernie Kovacs
There is no such thing as a defensive patent; that just does not make any sense at all. The whole point of a patent is offensive; it is a restriction placed upon the rest of humanity that they may not do something. It does not matter whether anybody gets sued, the mere existence of the patent has already done the most harm. Suing someone is just looting the body after you've already killed them.
And it is not just a software-only issue, patents are just as dangerous in many other fields. For a much deeper understanding of how patents are harmful, please read Against Intellectual Monopoly by by Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine. http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/again stnew.htm
This is quite a long read, but it is very important.
I believe that this historical attack on customers has been uniquely confined to the software industry, that is until the RIAA got a hold of the business model. For example, If I buy, in good faith, an unlicensed book, The author or his or her agent does not come after me and demand triple compensation. OTOH, if I, as a business, in goo faith properly license all my software, and conduct full due diligence to insure that no unlicensed software is installed, I can still be held in great financial liability. At one time such laws were used to stem the frankly rampant use of unlicensed software, but over the past 10 years the main objective was to allow vendors to spy on customers and make sure that competitors software is not being used.
So this MS tactic is just an extension of previously United States certified monopolistic behavior. At first it was OSS was more expensive to integrate with MS software. Then it was OSS was unreliable when used with MS software. Now it is 'you have to pay MS either way, so why bother.' The funny thing is that no one is saying Zune and MS music are a dead end because of the patent disputes. No one is saying that MS users are going to have to relicense Windows due to the patent disputes. Is MS Windows and Vista going to pulled from the shelves and will every MS user have to upgrade their PC to remove the offending technology? Somehow I think that MS Will survive these patent disputes, and so will OSS.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=234609&ci
Please shower me with gifts, thank you.
Linus is obviously going to call it FUD just as Gates will obviously say it isn't. You're not going to get an unbiased response from people who have so much to gain or lose,
Linux is GPL, so it does not have owners. Ten cents and the sum total of what Linux has in Linux licensing revenue will get you a chicklet. The only thing he and the rest of us have to lose is software freedom. The rest of the world is not going to let M$ walk away with that one, no matter how many empty threats M$ can cook up.
This is the last FUD M$ has, it's all downhill for them now. The truth is out so they have already lost.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
A lot of colleges/universities also file defensive patents. The reason you file these kind of patents is incase of a situation like with the telephone. Someone else has the same/similar idea and beats you to the patent office...suddenly your on the other end of a cease and desist or worse. By not filing for patents you are risking lots of problems down the road. I understand this.
The flip side though is once someone realizes that, "HEY XYZ is using my patent! I could make money from licensing!" those patents often becoming offensive. Most often, especially in a case of small guy owning the patent, the infrining group will settle for some amount of money, out of court, and everyone walks away happy. When the big guys have them and the small guy does something wrong, then your screwed. It's the ole, "We have more money for lawyers than you do, so go out of business."
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
Balmer: but,,,,,
Gates: I always got what i paid for
Their lips move
Yeah, but weren't they just patting themselves on the back about Vista being the fastest-selling OS ever? ;)
and it's been debunked because of time scale games - they have been selling "vouchers" for more than a year - and statistical problems, like the market has doubled in size since the introduction of XP. They need to have twice the sales they don't actually have to beat XP which was a really slow starter. Does it get worse than that?
Finally, if they are not just squeezing their suppliers to get whatever results they claim, the suppliers will also be doing well but they are not. Gateway is actually losing money and Dell has ended it's Vista only policy because of it's impact on sales. I'm not sure how HP is doing but I am sure that Vista is harmful to all.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Life needs more saving throws.
Looking at the timing, a couple of countries recently announced a push for open standards and open software for government use. Then there is the wide adoption of OSS in some coutries like India, China, ... Huge huge threat to M$ short term strategy. I think their long term plan is to embrace and extend OSS though.
Now, defensive patenting is a valid strategy for companies but doesn't work against trolls. You can't tell a troll that they are infringing your patent (except in rare cases). Having your own patents is kinda like having a gun in your pocket. Everyone with guns tries to be polite to other people with guns. There is occasional shooting. The unarmed regularly get robbed, raped, and beaten.
Regardless, M$ isn't really trolling. I do think they are throwing FUD backed by the threat of an RIAA style witch hunt. Easy enough:
1. Hang dongles on some web sites to catch unwary linux users.
2. Trace the ip_addr
3. ??!!!
4. Profit!!!
The problem they'll face is that some of us evil lawyers will happily attack their patents. Look what happened to SCO. The community really got engaged and gave lots of valuable information and insight. That gives the OSS side a huge advantage. The discovery phase of a case is often where the biggest bills are generated. In an OSS patent infringement action, the defendant simply hands over the code. The plaintiff, however, has thousands of pissed of people dredging up prior art and other ways to invalidate the asserted patents. A few hours effort from thousands of people translates into millions of legal fee dollars that the OSS defendant gets for free. Then a bunch of that gets handed to the plaintiff who spends millions trying to understand/rebut it.
On the other hand, the community has done a horrible job finding a way to get rid of the one click patent.
So, can M$ profitably sue? Yes, they can. They'll sue someone random and make lots of noise about it. Regardless of what the OSS community does, the bulk of the market will be frightened away from "risky" software. A few million is less than a percent of what M$ takes in.
Cool, the lawyers get rich.
I am a lawyer, but not yours. Anything I tell you might be a total lie intended to benefit my clients at your expense.
- 1. A tubular structure made of various proteins
- 2. A sponge-like structure between the inner and outer walls of the tube
- 3. Means to introduce liquid under pressure into the sponge-like structure, and other means for removing the liquid
- 4. A means to attach the said tubular structure to the lower abdomen of a male human being
- 5. A means to connect the plumbing system described in Claim 3 to the interior plumbing of the human being
- 6. Means to cause the tubular structure to oscillate and expand on demand.
It will be appreciated by those skilled in the art that this invention will be of inestimable use to chief executive officers wishing to lay claim to exclusive access of their products to various markets.Pining for the fjords
You can not debate a subject when the asserting side refuses to provide the details.
Imagine if I accused you of doing something bad, possibly illegal. You can't defend yourself because you don't know exactly what it is you are to have done.
Imagine going to court and being told the prosecutor is requesting you be tossed in jail for 4 years. Why? Well he doesn't want to disclose that part. Not even the details of the alleged crime, you aren't even told what crime it was.
Would that be openminded?
Microsoft has made a broad claim and is refusing to provide the details. The assertion that if they had something they would produce them is a tenable one.
Personally I think MS' refusal to state them is multifacted but one of them being they want us to start looking so we can be held accountable. It'd be an admission of guilt.
A debate requires two sides, and information to debate. MS has made an assertion, OSS advocates have made a counter-assertion. Microsoft clams up.
Now, where are the open minds in this situation?
My Suburban burns less gasoline than your Prius.
Everything that can be invented has been invented.
Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. patent office, 1899
Edit: Everything that can be invented infringes on a existing patient, 2007
That which is seen is temporary, that which is unseen is eternal, therefore, focus on the unseen things.
These tactics will work to some extent, at least in the short term, but the market is, I think, wising up to how this game is played. Even the media has started asking questions rather than just regurgitating Microsoft's press releases.
*sigh* back to work...
You hit the nail on the head. Bravo!
The entire sham is corporate-speak for 'look out, buddy, don't go messing with that stuff or you'll get hurt'.
In a way, I wish the RICO Act covered this kind of behavior. Conspiracy to Bluff or something.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Clearly the solution to this whole situation is to have Microsoft play tic-tac-toe over and over again....
There's nothing to say in favor of Microsoft other than "Well, sure, if they have valid patents which Linux developers cannot implement around, then Microsoft need only get an injunction from a court against distribution of Linux." Microsoft hasn't done that, so everybody is saying "This is FUD until we see the patent numbers and you point us to the infringing code."
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
We all know how broken the current patent system is, especially the 'software patent' evil. Can we use wiki-like system to undermine it? Create a wiki for everybody to record something new, no matter how small/useless it might look like, and dedicate it to public domain. With properly managed time stamps, it can be a collection of all 'prior art'. (It's just like doing something oppsite to wikipedia, which stresses so much on unoriginality.)
Music pirates are actively and knowingly breaking copyright law, Linux users are not breaking any laws. Yes, Microsoft claims they are violating their "intellectual property", but patents are not like copyrights, you have to first prove your patent is valid. So far Microsoft hasn't even said what patents they are claiming are being violated.
STFU about slashdot bias.
Microsoft's Unwinnable War on Linux and Open Source
Microsoft, threatened by the encroachment of competition from open source, has long waged a detached propaganda war against free software and in particular Linux, but has recently escalated its conflict into a full blown attack. Here's what's happening, and why it will greatly accelerate the company's undoing.
In a way, I wish the RICO Act covered this kind of behavior. Conspiracy to Bluff or something.
Hey, now there's an idea, slap MS with a RICO Act. While they've already been found guilty of being an illegal monopoly, this doesn't fit as a violation unfortunately. Well maybe it can be seen as extortion, fraud, or racketeering.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I'm just wondering... but wouldn't that be slander/libel/defamation?
The elements that must be proved to establish defamation are: (1) A publication to one other than the person defamed; (2) of a false statement of fact; (3) which is understood as being of and concerning the plaintiff; and (4) which is understood in such a way as to tend to harm the reputation of plaintiff. Source Here
If Microsoft loses/gives up and this is their purpose, could THEY be sued?
"The quickest way to end a war is to lose it" -Orwell
The problem is that for people whom this scare tactic is targeted at the OpenSource community at large is not an entirely reliable source, made up of technocrats and geeks who work regularly with arcane and understandable stuff. This vs Ballmer who runs a very large corporation who can talk on their level as a businessman who to many people is a reliable source to be taken at face value.
This Microsoft FUD campaign really needs to be challenged, IMHO. I am an attorney, and I don't think that Microsoft has valid patent claims against me personally, and I am using Edgy Ubuntu and Mepis 6.5 and SuSE 10.0 and SuSE 10.2. The Mepis 6.5 SuSE 10.2 I am using in my law practice; and the Edgy and SuSE 10.0 I am using to make a film about Microsoft's anticipated loss of market share due to the growing popularity of FOSS. The film is called the Digital Tipping Point, so you would think that if Microsoft has a desire to shut up anyone, I would be among them. At any rate, I have created a list of people who would like to be sued by Microsoft. Please feel free to sign up. The more the merrier! It's a wiki page. Here is the tinyURL:
l e=Sue_me_first%2C_Microsoft
http://tinyurl.com/2wlemy
Here is the full page:
http://digitaltippingpoint.com/wiki/index.php?tit
Yeah, MS is pulling a fast one, we all know that. But - it is working, at least right now. And tomorrow, the mainstream media will have forgotten. Today, the headlines are "Microsoft: Everything just stolen" and a Linux penguin in the article. Tomorrow, we will not read "Microsoft's patent claims debunked". We'll read about what celebrity goes to jail, which senator was found dead with a whore or that intelligent design is being discussed in the educational board of Backwater City.
It's a short-term victory. But in a world where stock market and mainstream media have an attention span measured in hours, more often than not that's all you need.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
and they don't license it, either.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Just an idea: Why not have someone who has a bunch of code in any of the mentioned projects sue MS for libel, slander, whatever? Truth is a defense, so they'll have to lose that case or put the evidence on the table.
IANAL, but maybe someone who is can comment.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Oops.
You're mixing up two things.
First, software patents are arguably bad. But we can't blame Microsoft or any other company over that. As long as software patents exist, companies need to get them.
Second, software patents are being abused. That's something we can blame Microsoft for because they are abusing software patents. What they should do is (1) only file software patents on ideas that are clearly new, and (2) deal in a straightforward and open way with infringement that comes to their attention
I have no problem with IBM suing Amazon. I do have a problem with Microsoft not suing open source projects and instead using the patent system for spreading FUD.
So, in that context, there is almost no difference between this "everyone has defensive patents" world, and the "no one has any patents at all" world
There's a huge difference.
Existing companies with big portfolios and cross licensing agreements have a nice oligopoly, whereas new entrants have a really hard time to enter the market.
Anyone find it ironic that the last two initials of his name is MS? And now MS wants to take over OSS?
....
I feel sick
"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." -- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
You can sue almost anyone for almost anything, just look at scox vs. IBM, scox vs. Autoworks and even scox vs. the whole world! If Microsoft is really suggesting that all of these patents are being infringed than a defamation suit would be interesting, at least discovery would force then to reveal which patents they are alleging being infringed
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
It is perfectly true that X11 is not a part of Linux - although most of it is old enough to be considered prior art with respect to any patents Microsoft may have, so it wouldn't even matter if it was. About the only "new" GUI is Berlin and that is no longer under development.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
"With business down and customers leaving, we had more than a few choices at our disposal. We were invited by one company to sue the beneficiaries of open source. We declined. We could join another and sue our customers. That seemed suicidal."
Gee, I wonder who those companies would've been?
Interesting bit of writing by Jonathan. However, I do wish it would read more like "don't even try it MS, or else", instead of a friendly warning that it'd be a poor business decision. But I guess they are partners and all, so I can't expect it to be as unfriendly as the days where Sun obsessed about MS instead of their own products.
Linus: Fine, you've agreed to a meeting, and you know what this is about.
...
...
BillG: Yup. So what are we guys gonna do. Maybe a little contract where each Linux user owes us $20 for patent license?
Linus: Oh yea, this is exactly what I had in mind! I like your sense of humor. No, I'm here to ask which line of code violates which patent. And get this fixed.
BillG: I'm not telling.
Linus: Oh yea? Ok. File kernel.c. Does line 1 infringe?
BillG: No. And I told you, I'm not telling!
Linus: Does line 2 infringe?
BillG: No.
Linus: Line 3?
BillG: No.
Linus: Line 4?
BillG: No.
...
...
Linus: Line 4032?
BillG:
Linus: Well?
BillG:
Linus: All right. I have a numbered list of all your software patents here.. So, does line 4032 violate the first patent?
BillG: No.
Linus: The second?
BillG: No.
Linus: The third?
BillG: No.
...
...
Good god, you spend all your waking hours FUDing Microsoft and "evangelizing" free software and you don't even know how the GPL works??
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
So we can safely say that in that sense they're no different from you. What was it about a lie that becomes truth if you repeat it enough? Well, I forget. You're the expert.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
As a thought, what if the Microsoft patents were not just FUD? What if some were substantial and legally strong? What if they were not able to be worked around?
We all run to our pitchforks right away to storm the castle without really thinking it might not just be one monster inside.
The real question is who is Microsoft going to sue? The patent laws were drafted based on somebody copying an idea and selling it for a profit. The thinking being that nobody would spend time copying a product and giving it away for free. I don't think there are any precedents for this situation. I guess they could try to get an injunction against distributing the software but in the internet world the cat is already out of the bag. All this will do is drive the big companies out of the free software world, but whoopdie doo.
Brilliant. Anyone who uses linux, or open office on any platform, who doesn't sign up is chickenshit.
I don't therefore I'm not.
Is the market really wising up? Reading /. makes me believe that there is a strong front against MS and their patents and that MS is going down and ... But I am quite certain that approx. 99.9% of MS users do not even know or care or even want to know about these press releases, the same way 99.9% of the users do not even know it is possible (or do consider stupid) to have a PC without Windows and Office. I look around in my office and know that all other (engineering nonetheless) staff still think: "It is free and open-source because it is not worth paying for" (despite their extensive use of Ethereal :-) )
- "I say the whole world must learn of our peaceful ways...by force!!" Bender B. Rodriguez
"If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today. ... The solution is patenting as much as we can. A future startup with no patents of its own will be forced to pay whatever price the giants choose to impose. That price might be high. Established companies have an interest in excluding future competitors."
1991 Bill Gates, Microsoft
The quote above is the primer to what Microsoft is about. It is about "excluding future competitors", plain and simple. Let me make my case for why.
Let's assume FOSS developers do _not_ want to violate the law. As there is not a _single_ instance of _any_ FOSS project being charged (I think we can all agree SCO doesn't count) much less found guilty of violating either copyright or patent, the previous assumption seems valid by any reasonable metric. Certainly the numerous calls to simply point out what might be considered a violation from many quarters would reinforce that assumption, as would the open nature of development. You simply can not expect to succeed with an intentional violation when that violation will exist open to the scrutiny of the entire world.
Now lets go over some hypotheticals.
1) Microsoft's patents are valid.
2) They successfully prosecute someone with deep pockets, let's say IBM.
2) they are awarded the maximum damages possible.
4) There is no counter action.
What could the hypothetical consequences be of those hypotheticals?
1) IBM has (wildly, astronomically high) a charge of 4 billion to pay out, huge bite but they will go on.
2) All offending code has to be adjusted to deal with the patents, lets say it takes a year (again wildly inflated for our hypothetical).
This is an ideal set of hypotheticals and would seem to satisfy the stated desire and requirement of Microsoft toward their fiduciary shareholder responsibility and business 101.
Now for any other company 4 billion would be the lottery but for MS it a quarters proffit. While shipping reduced functionality software would be a blow to FOSS until they deal with rewrites, it won't be a killer. It could stall adoption, it could send some to Novell, it could even eat into the install base. But the truth is it's FOSS, even if all the paid programmers leave, it will continue. In all the countries that haven't yet introduced sw patents, among all the poorer countries that face the choice of reduced functionality software or the increasing difficulty of pirating it will go on.
Microsoft suing and wining doesn't change the rules of the game, it doesn't get them what they want. So what do they want?
MS has a monopoly of some 90% on desktops, market share of some 60% in servers, what about 95% of office suites. This is the bulk of their revenue. Their first directive is to not lose revenue, their second directive is to increase revenue.
There are three primary ways MS can increase revenue (not withstanding the marginal increases to be had from increased efficiencies)
1) Derive more revenue from their current market share.
2) Increase their market share.
3) Successfully enter new markets.
Yea, I know much of this is elementary, bear with me.
Microsoft's ability to increase revenue from current market share comes from two quarters, price increases and reducing piracy levels. The primary constraint on price increases comes from Linux, without it they are once again the lowest price offering (granted OSX as a broken out item is less than XP but as a system it is generally higher). While they have historically drastically undercut UNIX much of the current server market can't support UNIX pricing levels, the point being that for the current installed base there are modest limits to what they can achieve through price increases. Piracy is another matter. If we assume an average global piracy rate of 50% we are talking about real money. To take advantage of tha
It looks like The Register has pulled the Ravicher article as the second link above now gives a 404. I wonder why. You can still read it in the the Google archive though.
-deane
The Register link did just refer to my 2004 story. By the by, Dan Ravicher, who's been traveling in Europe since this whole thing blew up, tells me his position hasn't changed a bit since then. What a surprise, eh?
Steven
http://www.linux-watch.com/
Thanks (at last) for a link.
Here's what the article stated about how Torvalds handles patent issues:
"Linux founder and leader Linus Torvalds has taken that approach. Finding patent infringement has always been a responsibility of the patent holders," he said in a 2003 interview. "It is a fact that I do not encourage engineers to look up patent information."
Here's what I said:
"But I thought Linus made a point of not investigating possible patent problems with Linux so that he couldn't be accused of deliberately violating them."
So I call BS on all this "you didn't read Torvalds" crap. If you guys had a real argument you would have made it a long time ago, so this is where I'm going to stop.
...I believe that this historical attack on customers has been uniquely confined to the software industry, that is until the RIAA got a hold of the business model...Actually there is another well known case. That of the Association of Licensed Automobile Manufacturers vs Ford's Customers:
From http://artofinvention.tripod.com/Automobile-Selde
I think it is interresting to note the conclusion: "The public was not intimidated". We might soon find out if indeed "History often repeats itself"!!
The relevent question is whether Linux is violating MS patents
As Dan Ravicher the author of the study said, "Linux potentially infringes X patent,". He didn't say Linux definitely violates MS patents, only that it potentially does. MS and specifically Ballmer says Linux does violate MS's patents not potentially does. There's a world of a difference.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Moron.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."