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Torvalds Says Microsoft is Bluffing on Patents
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft's aggressive defense of its intellectual property, which includes claims that Linux violates a number of its patents, is nothing more than "a marketing thing," according to Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux kernel. "They have been sued for patents by other people, but I don't think they've — not that I've gone through any huge amount of law cases — but I don't think they've generally used patents as a weapon," Torvalds said. "But they're perfectly happy to use anything at all as fear, uncertainty and doubt in the marketplace, and patents is just one thing where they say, 'Hey, isn't this convenient? We can use this as a PR force.'""
FUD used for marketing
News at 11
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Microsoft does not use their patents as a weapon because their revenue continues to surge despite the increase in the popularity of Linux.
If/when Linux becomes a significant threat to growth, you can be sure Microsoft will use all tools at its disposal, including parents, aggressively.
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I've never understood how a programmer/direction manager/geek like Torvalds could raise so much interest over his opinion, but I do understand the draw to him. I rarely agree with what he says, but in this case it is truly spot on.
Microsoft is in trouble, and it has nothing to do with "anti-monopoly" legislation, or corporate badgering, or any of the sort. Microsoft is in trouble. This is defensive posturing in hopes of the market taking note and taking action by putting Microsoft ahead of the pack that has overtaken it.
For years we had geeks here call for Microsoft's abolishment, but lonely me with a few other market economy believers have said that Microsoft will fall from grace as IBM, Compaq, and GM had -- because they lost their competitive edge. The future is not in desktop software, that Microsoft heralded in with great accomplishment. Microsoft tore us out of the client-server picture, and now we're heading back there. They don't understand the situation, and their "Desktop first" mentality makes it near impossible to turn around.
Why they care about Linux is beyond me, though. The backend platform is slowly becoming useless as the protocols for integrating features-on-the-screen are quickly becoming irrelevant as the idea of hardware abstraction is truly coming to be. I remember when Microsoft's NT was released, with their first attempt at a hardware abstraction layer. I held out high hopes for it, but it was a failure, pure and simple. Today, though, we ARE hardware abstract in the processes most important to many of us: HTML, PHP, SQL, and the rest have become their own important entities, regardless of what is behind them.
Lately I am finding myself moving away from the desktop, more and more. Other than graphics design and CAD, I am almost entirely performing my computing duties in client-server mode. I've moved to Google Docs (buggy, but SO convenient since I have no need for a hard drive or memory stick), Google Mail for Domains, my blogs for newsletter dispersal (Wordpress) and phpBB for group comms. The underlying software and hardware is irrelevant to me as all my servers run different OS and hardware combos.
Microsoft is screwed, plain and simple, but I don't think any Linux providers are in better shape. The more I delve into relatively open source code (Wiki, WP, PHPBB, etc), the more I am amazed at what the masses can do to create better code for the reasons important to me. As I produce these low or no cost apps to my clients (not Linux, mind you), I am able to charge more for saving them the downtime and bugs and glitches and software costs. I can't wait for more server farms to become available as those costs will come down more, so my customers won't even need much of their own hardware.
In 1984, when I first connected my Hayes 300 baud modem, I would never have believed we'd return to the client-server days. I remember the reason for logging onto a BBS was to get stuff to my desktop; the idea of using it as a form of communication AND laboring was foreign to me, even when I ran my own BBS. Now, I can't imagine downloading anything when I can conveniently edit it, print it ("to PDF"), and distribute it almost entirely online.
Ballmer: Linus Skyvalds, I am your father.
Skyvalds: Noooooooooooooooo!
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
I do tend to agree with you about the value of Linus' opinion in this matter. I do think he is correct for the simple reason that IBM is pushing Linux. When it comes to patent's IBM pretty much is the expert. Microsoft's patents are more valuable to them as a treat than if they where used. The have seen the SCO case and the last thing they want is for there patents to be tossed out as obvious. It would weaken them and could bring down the EU on them.
It is far better to let them hang out in the dark and be an unknown threat than to be show as a paper tiger in court.
Of course if they get pushed into a corner then all bets are off.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
The patents involve Xenix. Look it up sometime, it may seem oddly familiar.
That's funny-- the patent lifetime is 20 years in the US. Since Microsoft sold it's derivative of AT&T's Unix to SCO[1] in 1987, it seems unlikely that the patents involve Xenix in any way.
Microsoft didn't really do any real research on Xenix. It was a pretty straight-forward 16-bit port of the AT&T source code, with lots of BSD code thrown in for flavor. This was a big deal mostly because they were getting Unix code to run on standard microprocessors. Once that was done, they licensed Xenix to SCO and a bunch of other companies, who ported it to their own platforms. Most of this was done in the early 80s. Back then, Microsoft wasn't applying for too many patents. And, since this was a port of existing code, there was little opportunity for "worthy" patents. If there were, they would've been granted over twenty years ago, and so would have expired by now.
Anyway, not to put too fine a point on it: it's extremely unlikely these patent threats involve Microsoft's port of AT&T's UNIX.
[1] SCO as in, "Santa Cruz Operation," not as in "We used to be Caldera, but wanted to confuse people into thinking we're Santa Cruz Operation."
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
He wants them to prove him wrong. Can you imagine the scenario where Microsoft has filed suit against Linus Torvalds for his work on the kernel? There's a lot of big companies (IBM, Sun, Nokia, Google, Red Hat, Oracle) that have a lot of money invested in this kernel. There's a couple of organisations (SFLC, OIN) that have been founded to pretty much retaliate against any such situation. Then there's the legal ambiguity about whether Microsoft can even use their patents to attack Free Software now, since they may be party to GPLv3.
Pretty much every big company probably has some servers running Linux. Big financial companies together probably have hundreds/thousands of Linux servers. Those companies are Microsoft customers, and will not be happy if Microsoft starts taking legal action. Microsoft's threats are just part of their annual "be very afraid" tour.