[GLLUG] Claim: Linux violates 235 MS patents

[Chick Tower]

I suspect this intimidation will continue for years before it ever goes 
to court, and it may never go to court.  MS will probably be able to 
suppress F/OSS adoption by corporations for a long time for just the 
cost of a few interviews and many visits to corporate customers.  I 
think it will take preemptive attacks against the validity of MS's 
patents, one by one, or the invalidation of the patentability of 
software, to end it.  Or perhaps a test case that decides that the users 
of software cannot be sued for patents and copyrights which that 
software infringes upon.  Of course, then the patent gun would be 
trained upon developers, leading to all F/OSS development being based in 
other countries.  Then we might finally get a ruling as to which set of 
laws apply to a server in one jurisdiction displaying information on a 
monitor in another jurisdiction, and probably routed through many other 
jurisdictions.  I'm too tired right now to figure out the rest of the 
future until the end of the universe, so that is left as an exercise for 
the reader.

                                Chick

Michael Rudas wrote:
> Ohhhh, boy.  Here's the other-shoe-drop in the MS/Novell deal... or is
> the loose shoe being used to slap us, collectively, on the side of the 
> head?
> 
> "Microsoft takes on the free world"
> 
> <http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/05/28/100033867/index.htm> 
> 
> 
> I wonder how far they'll try to take this?  Or, perhaps, die trying?
> 
> -- Mikey