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Ballmer Suggests Linux Distros Will Soon Have to Pay Up
An anonymous reader writes "Via Groklaw comes comments from Microsoft's Steve Ballmer at a UK event, in which the company once again threatens Linux distributions that haven't signed up with their program. '"People who use Red Hat, at least with respect to our intellectual property, in a sense have an obligation to compensate us," Ballmer said last week ... Ballmer praised Novell at the UK event for valuing intellectual property, and suggested that open source vendors will be forced to strike similar deals with other patent holders. He predicted that firms like Eolas will soon come after open source vendors or users. Microsoft paid $521m to settle a patent claim by Eolas in August.'"
Ahhh...but that's the beauty of the threat...they never will initiate the lawsuit, the publicity and the damage to linux is it's goal. Keep possible corporate users from going to linux.
Kinda of like saying you will impeach the president, but in reality there is no basis for the charge. It is the damage it does to the person that is the goal.
Now to all you liberals on here who will start flaming me for this example, don't...you only will only prove that you are lazy sheep and only regurgitate what your leaders tell you to...
What Dr. Evil isn't realising is that contrary to what he might think, Linux isn't actually a threat to Microsoft at all.
We've been waiting for the proverbial Year of the Penguin since around 1999; it still hasn't happened, and I don't think it's an unsafe bet that it most likely isn't going to, at this point.
Linux is fringe, and the sociological plague that its' userbase refers to as a "community," are their own worst enemy where it becoming anything remotely close to mainstream is concerned. It being fringe is exactly how said community like it.
Yes, yes...so Michael Dell has got on the bandwagon by shipping a few machines with Ubuntu. Go back to sleep. It is entirely unsupported, and close to unacknowledged by the company themselves...it enjoys around the same status as Blizzard's stance on using Linux with World of Warcraft.
The only two things Ballmer accomplishes by continuing to make these sorts of noises is making himself look like a moron, and adding fuel to the delusion held by the few Linux zealots who actually do want to advocate the system, that they're making some kind of concrete progress.
It's been said before. If you want mainstream UNIX, that isn't presided over by a group of basement-dwelling, adolescent genetic aberrations, go and buy yourself a Mac.