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Microsoft Sees No Conflicts With Patent Initiatives
AlexGr writes "According to Eweek's Peter Galli, Microsoft sees no contradiction between its open-source community building efforts and the more-than-thinly-veiled legal threats at Linux and other projects. Horacio Gutierrez, Microsoft's vice president of intellectual property and licensing, actually states: 'One makes the other possible, especially at a time like this, when interoperability is so important. Microsoft recognizes the importance of interoperability, which is why we are doing the things we are in our products, why we created the Interoperability Executive Customer Council, and why we are listening to customers.'"
"There IS no Conflict"
u-bend
Threatening us with lawsuits is part of their plan to HELP us... How did I not figure that one out... It's so obvious
"Microsoft Sees No Conflicts With Patent Initiatives"
MS is a corporation. So among other things, we know that:
(1) It doesn't actually "see" anything. It's comprised of individual humans (mostly) that see things.
(2) Because it's actually a collection of minds that don't necessarily agree with each other, it doesn't tell us much that it's engaging in two actions that are potentially un-reconcilable. When we hear that a *person* "sees no conflict", we find that interesting because we figure maybe the person has discovered some reason that they two ideas in question can be reconciled. For a corporation of multiple persons, maybe no such reconciliation of the two ideas exists.
Plus it's also quite plausible that MS management has private motives that are very different than its public motives. In that case perhaps the (inauthentic) public motives are in logical conflict, but the private motives held by MS's management are actually completely self-consistent.
I would write another Open Letter, but at this point, I give up. They won't respond.
Brad Smith & Co: If you're listening at all, just give up the threats or sue us. Piss or get off the pot. Otherwise, maybe some open source developers might get fed up and sue YOU for slander and libel.
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So they're thickly veiled threats?
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Of course they see no conflict. Alternatie would be that they admit that have a conflict, and then do what? There action is not a shorterm play. The reality is that MS is scared to death about the longterm of the software industry. The OSS model kills legacy applications, which is a good thing in most peoples minds. At some point, you need to stop charging for same application. Winzip comes to mind here... If OSS didnt exist, this simply would not happen.
What customers say: "This open source stuff is starting to look pretty good, and free isalot cheaper than what I'm paying now." What microsoft hears: "All this extra money and constantly updated software is confusing and scary. I wish someone would destroy these companies and maintain the status qou."
IOU one (1) signature
TIECC - This Is an Exceedingly Clumsy Concept.
What does "Interoperability Executive Customer Council" mean? An interoperability "council" of customers' executives? An executive council of (for?!?) customers?
Try as they might, I cannot see how M$ can declare war on either side of the Patented/Open software fight. Do they really think that they can exist in both camps at once and still come out a winner?
If I'm not mistaken, the Art of War deals pretty specifically with choosing one's sides/opponents carefully.
If they wish to push for interoperability, why threaten (however thinly-veiled) the Open Source community? Particularly when they themselves are "trying" to be more open?
Then any adopters of Linux ( rest of world ) will be afraid of "embracing" Microsoft, for fear of the lawyer letter in the mail.
Then Microsoft is relegated to an American-Only protocol with not a helluva lot of political clout outside the US.
This will leave businesses which have embraced the Microsoft Representative with a crippled system incapable of communicating to every customer.
Unlike open source, which will.
The businessman who shook the hand of the Microsoft rep may have to stand before the CEO and explain why he should keep his job, given the company's competitors can talk to everyone, and his company, under his signature, can only talk to a subset of the customer base.
The handshake with the Microsoft rep could be the handshake of death for many corporate CIO, as the love of universally compatible systems - and systems open to verification of their operation - become the norm.
Microsoft has now shown their hand... its got claws in it. Do you want to trust it? The smiling face of someone anticipating getting you into their cat trap could turn into a gun pretty fast if it doesn't get its way.
I don't expect the American government to do much, but I do expect compatibility with the rest of the world will do it.
When you live to face the ramifications of your selections, ignorance is NOT bliss.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
This seems to be a very widespread phenomenon; apparent illogic in public positions.
At even the hint of a suggestion that Microsoft has made a living from using other people's ideas, Bill Gates will immediately start into a harangue about how Microsoft is a leader because of its innovation. As most people familiar with the subject (and not predisposed to believe what Microsoft/Bill Gates says) already knows, Microsoft is not an innovator.
Many very big corporations like Microsoft, and all politicians, have learned to make statements that are based on false logic, falsified logic, and plain illogic. Big Tobacco denying the link between tobacco and cancer, Big Oil explaining their profits. I'll leave the political stuff alone because that seems to bring out the trolls.
That Microsoft will openly state that there is no tension between its 'support' of open standards and software, and their other work which supports and extends 'closed' technology is not a surprise. But what disappoints is that this rather open hypocrisy seems to be so readily accepted, especially by the mainstream media.
Have we become so jaded that truth and fact no longer matter? Am I the only one who tires of this open hypocrisy?
Best regards.
There needs to be a law in economics that states that any corporation big enough, will starts to show symptoms of the corporate equivalent of Alien hand syndrome once it has crossed a specific size.
The recent mix-up at Microsoft (one hand is trying to be nice to open-source because FOSS is the current hyped buzzword of the day while at the same time the other hand is desperately trying to find a way to crush this "evil" concurrence that threatens to overthrow them from their dominant position in the market) is a perfect illustration of such dual minded corporate behaviour (for the exact reason stated above : it's made up of too many people to have a single coherent goal).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
How many friggen times do I have to say it. They are after IP cross licensing. They will do anything. Open Source has no real need to cross license. Microsoft has a great need. They have been getting sued over and over and over and over, and loosing nearly 100% of the cases. This means they have to cross license instead of outright stealing. Open Source is starting to set the stage and those that participate have large portfolios of IP. If they can't enter into a legal cross license they will threaten suit in the law instead.
Microsoft is NOT innovative. These are hard cold facts. They have repeatedly stolen IP from other companies. No one trusts them. If IP went away they'd be happy. If IP doesn't they'll use their strong arm tactic to force companies to cross license. They can't afford to keep loosing hundreds of millions and even billions of dollars to lawsuits. If they can't outright steal they will steal in a round about way.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
The moderator might examine the subject (sense of humor).
It has been found to be useful , even in real life circumstances.
NB: As a start to developing a sense of humour(ease into it) , you might begin by reading the works of Camus.
There's a market developing in Free software - a small market, mind you, at the moment, but showing every sign of growing - and Microsoft want to own it. It's as simple as that.
Doesn't mean they actually need to produce Free software though - they just need to own the mindspace. Their strategy over the last few years, right up to the recent events, has amounted to
- "Oh, but we do embrace free software"
- "Uh, but we're cautious because there may be some IP problems associated with it"
- "Look - we said there may be IP problems, and we found some!"
The next step being, of course- "Hey, but as long as you stick to MS-brand "Free" software, you'll be fine..."
It may be 4 steps rather than the stereotypical 3, but "Profit!" is still at the end of it...What part of "a well regulated militia" do you not understand?