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.'"

Comments

Which IPs in particular?

[ubrgeek]

I couldn't tell from the article, but which intellectual property is MS saying open source solutions are infringing on? Or am I misunderstanding the issue?

Re:Which IPs in particular?

[Linker3000]

Dunno, but I note that at least one M$ product infringes my Patent #911112999:

"A method of arranging for the decimal value 65535, and calculations resulting therein, to be consistently rendered as 100000 so as to confuse the shit out of those persons performing the calculation"

hmmm...

[Enoxice]

The real life equivalent of the AI meeting with the player every turn to say "we demand tribute for our patience" and demanding gold and technology. Too bad I can't have my usual response: a full-out attack, leaving their names to the annals of history! muahaha!

I don't play too much CivII, do I?