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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.
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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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
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.)