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Ubuntu Founder Says Microsoft Not A Big Threat

Posted by Zonk on from the my-buddy-and-me dept.

Golygydd Max writes "Who says that Microsoft and open source developers are enemies? It's not Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth. He says that Microsoft is not the patent threat Linux and open source developers should be worried about, and that the software giant will itself be fighting against the software patents system within a few years. 'He said the most dangerous litigants are companies not themselves in the software business, small ventures or holding companies that get their principal revenue from patent licensing. He singled out former Microsoft CTO Nathan Myhrvold and his company Intellectual Ventures, which is stockpiling patents at a rate that alarms large companies such as IBM and HP, as an example of such a potentially dangerous company.'"

4 of 128 comments (clear)

  1. Lobbyists by iamacat · · Score: 4, Informative

    Nah, once big software companies feel threatened rather than empowered by patents, lobbyists will make sure that laws gets passed to protect them. One onerous requirement might be for a patent holder to maintain a credible product in commercial production in order to sue others for royalties. This will be phrased to stop patent-only law firms that skim companies without innovation themselves, but will take care of open source authors quite nicely.

  2. Re:Microsoft to Ubuntu by h2_plus_O · · Score: 5, Informative

    what the fuck does Ubuntu mean?
    it's actually a pretty cool concept, tho (as with any good idea) it's been variously interpreted and applied.
    from Wikipedia:

    "... the concept of ubuntu defines the individual in terms of their several relationships with others [...] while the Zulu maxim umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu ("a person is a person through (other) persons") may have no apparent religious connotations in the context of Western society, in an African context it suggests that the person one is to become by behaving with humanity is an ancestor worthy of respect or veneration."
    In other words, it's a contextual view of humanity as being constituted of relationships. We are the relationships we have.
    --
    If there's one thing I won't stand for, it's intolerance.
  3. Re:Microsoft to Ubuntu by Zonk+(troll) · · Score: 3, Informative


    sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jre sun-java6-plugin sun-java6-fonts
    sudo update-java-alternatives -s java-6-sun
    sudo -b gedit /etc/jvm
    (add "/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun" before the other entries, no quotes)


    Then you get a Java that isn't unusably slow. It'd sure be nice if Ubuntu did this by default, or at least provided a n00b-friendly (ie, no command line) way of doing it.

    If you're using Eclipse and would like for it to not take 30 seconds to display code completion, do this:


    sudo -b gedit /etc/eclipse/java_home
    (add "/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun" before the other entries, no quotes)

    --
    "The Federal Reserve is a fraudulent system."--Lew Rockwell
    End The FED. -
  4. Phil Salin about patents by a1mint · · Score: 3, Informative

    An absolute *MUST* read by anyone talking about patents and freedom of speech in software.

    Too bad the guy is dead now, he could have helped us all out a great deal !

    http://www.philsalin.com/patents.html