[GLLUG] Claim: Linux violates 235 MS patents

[Richard Houser]

Charles Ulrich wrote:
> On Monday 14 May 2007 16:19, Junus, Ranti wrote:
>> Since MS declines to list those 235 patents, I won't be surprised if
>> the bulk of the patents themselves are probably have prior art. 
>> Right now, they rely on the uncertainty.

Microsoft has already been convicted of anti-trust violations and still 
pales compared to IBM's patents.  I can't really see this going far in 
Microsoft's favor.

> Er, maybe I'm not comprehending some aspect of this, but I don't believe 
> it's within the FSF's power to revise the GPL and have those revisions 
> legally apply to all software that shipped with the previous versions. 
> In order for Moglen's card to work, all of these would have to happen:

Many products ship with a clause that allows the end user to use any 
future version of the GPL at that user's option.  In those cases, it is 
completely legal for the FSF to modify the license after the fact (the 
user could keep using GPL v2 if they prefer).

The bigger issue is that the FSF holds the copyrights to many key 
portions of GNU/Linux that are economically unfeasible to fork and 
maintain as a collection.  Based on the FSF's decision, gcc, the 
standard libraries, and much of the userspace would move forward in a 
way that would leave those enforcing software patents behind.  In fact, 
I didn't read anything in that statement that I don't recognize from the 
early drafts as well.

> - Linus would have to update the kernel's GPL to match the FSF's new 
> version. He's stated in the past that he has no intention of doing this 
> for a number of reasons.
> 
> - Novell would have to ship Linus's updated kernel. We all know that 
> most Linux distributions lag the latest official kernel by around a 
> year for stability and driver testing.

Neither Fedora or Mandriva lag anywhere near this much.  Fedora Core 6 + 
the current updates is running 2.6.20 (shipped with 2.6.18) and Mandriva 
usually releases with the current kernel or one point release back 
depending on release schedule.  Mandriva in particular updates a lot of 
individual drivers and includes many kernel patches not in the Linus 
kernels.