[GLLUG] Claim: Linux violates 235 MS patents

[David Crampton]

I may be an optimist here (I've been accused of worse), but hasn't
F/OSS made leaps and bounds of progress relating to normal
business/office activities (OpenOffice.org) and repairing the "It's
too hard to use" stereotype (Ubuntu)?

Of -course- M$ is going to try and stop its competitors.  It has since
it was fighting OS/2 Warp.  As long as people are involved enough to
keep developing F/OSS software, it'll still exist.  This doomsday
stuff is just subscribing to the culture of litigation fear that M$
has always attempted to create.

In the immortal words of Douglas Adams... Don't Panic.

On 5/14/07, Chick Tower <c.e.tower at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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
>
>
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>


-- 
Dave Crampton
--
http://davidmcrampton.com
--