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Has Microsoft's Patent War Against Linux Begun?

Posted by timothy on from the begun-this-clone-war-has dept.

Glyn Moody writes "Microsoft has filed a suit against TomTom, 'alleging that the in-car navigation company's devices violate eight of its patents — including three that relate to TomTom's implementation of the Linux kernel.' What's interesting is that the intellectual property lawyer behind the move, Horacio Gutierrez, has just been promoted to the rank of corporate vice president at Microsoft. Is this his way of announcing that he intends going on the attack against Linux?"

2 of 644 comments (clear)

  1. STOP by CSHARP123 · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    We need to stop this socialist OS called Linux. How dare companies use this in their devices in this economy. People work for free to create this OS and where is the contribution to society. MS on the other hand should be encouraged to sue companies like RedHat, IBM etc.
    Ballmer the saviour of capitalism is boon to IT world. GO BALLMER
    Stop Tom Toming about MS suing Tom Tom, damn european socialists might do something.

  2. Haiku and ReactOS by PipingSnail · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Roll on Haiku finally getting an ISO of their OS ready. Then real work on getting an Ubunutu equivalent of Haiku can start. Haiku has been non-ISO for too long, but recent developments (native GCC/G++ 4.0) mean that may end soon.

    Ditto for ReactOS.

    Then issues like this can go away (I hope).

    For the record: I make my living writing software for MS operating systems. MSDN is awesome and makes OSDN look pathetic. But this type of thing by Microsoft only works against them, so I wish for a solution that sidesteps that mentality, hence Haiku and ReactOS.

    Software patents should be abolished - compete on the quality of implementation.