Billionaire Ballmer: Asking for trouble and for more money
The enemy
Microsoft claims software like Linux violates its patents – May 28, 2007 — I guess these guys finally gave up on the idea that SCO would do this for them. This is a seriously bad idea.
But now there’s a shadow hanging over Linux and other free software, and it’s being cast by Microsoft. The Redmond behemoth asserts that one reason free software is of such high quality is that it violates more than 200 of Microsoft’s patents. And as a mature company facing unfavorable market trends and fearsome competitors like Google, Microsoft is pulling no punches: It wants royalties. If the company gets its way, free software won’t be free anymore.
OK Microsoft..show us the patents!!! And show us the violations. IBM will have a field day with this.
found by Dennis Duffner
YES, YES YES YES….
Come on MS, UNLOAd all your code for us to see.
LETS see how much of it, is PURE.
OPEN it up for all of those corps to look at, and find that 10 year OLD code you stole…
“IBM will have a field day with this”, and Apple, and Sun Microsystems, and the European Anti-Trust courts…
I think Lawrence Lessig is right, we should just do away with patents completely. It is killing innovation and just making a lot of patent lawyers rich.
You knew it had to happen. Microsoft has watched SCO screw up for years in their attempt to shut down Linux and M$ has been losing market share every year.
I guess they finally decided that the only way to kill Linux is to do it themselves. But, like Dennis said, I can’t wait for IBM to lay into this.
What? IBM doesn’t have any patents to throw back at MS? Is Ballmer too stupid to realize that MS as the most to lose in this feces-throwing contest?
I don’t get the sense that this is the same bungled approach that SCO took. Microsoft went out and got a boat load of patents and then warned the open source community about them. SCO claimed it always had the patents. Further, I think the open source community will be hurt far more than Microsoft if there is patent infrigement and it sticks. Microsoft can simply pay the fee and royalty. If Microsoft were to win, the next thing coming down the road is a stronger BSA knocking on people’s doors and telling them to get rid of Linux or they’ll be sued. Much like the real cold war, its a scary time for software.
Read the article guys its fascinating. This is a high stakes gamble on Microsoft’s part. Worst case for Microsoft, they could end up subjected to GPL and could be ordered to open their code.
Apparently they made a distribution deal with Novell, because Novell owns patents that Microsoft’s server software violates.
Let the fun begin!!!!
Ahhh yes…now Linux is slowly making its way into the mainstream, so someone is getting a little worried for the future. Hey…I understand business is business, money makes things go, protecting your assets, keeping your company profits up…but this is just sad. Lets all of a sudden pull a bunch of patents out of the closet and threaten people with them. Like someone said in an earlier comment, M$ has the cash to take the hits and keep going. Sad thing is, they will probably be able to win with a lot of them, if they have some concrete evidence. Just how far can this go though? I mean, there are some concepts and ideas that are not patentable, or shouldn’t be. Are we going to patent or copyright algorithms? Copyright words like ‘house’ or ‘computer’ or ‘Hello’ ? If someone writes a routine to open a socket in C, and someone else wrote one just like it because….thats the logical way to write the routine…is someone going to be sued over it? How far will this idiocy go, and what will it cost the average person?
I know one thing…they’ll pry my copies of linux from my cold, dead fingers. 🙂
Ah, that’s the beautiful thing about patents. If there is evidence that someone else invented and documented the idea before you, your patent instantly becomes null and void. The Linux Kernal has been around at least 15 years now, and M$ appears only to have gotten onto the patent game in the last 5-7 years or so.
If they push the issue, IBM has the legal staff and pockets to slug this one out with M$. They will simply claim that Winblows violates several hundred of their patents and attempt to force release of significant portions of the Winblows source code during discovery. M$ will have no choice but to back down.
There will be years of legal wrangling, and very little will trickle out at the end of everything. M$ is just trying to throw a little FUD out there.
Don
This is going to be fun.
Folks, it’s time to stop paying MS Tax™….
2,
I like the idea of releaseing copyrights..
But the corps LOVE to STEAL them, change the code, and make it Their own.
They like waiting for you NOT to pickup the BILL to keep the copyright, and jump on that.
They LOVe to watch the college students come up with IDEAS, and they Need to pay bills…
I dont mind persons being PAID for patients, Just STANDARDize the Payments…
ALSO, make it so that IF a patient ISNT registered, ITS NOT A PATIENT. A corp cant HOLD in a safe a Idea, dated and stamped, and when SOMEONE makes it work…POPUP and DECLARE,,, THATS OURS, PAY US.
The BESt trick about Patients, comes around this way….
YOU CAN COPY ANYTHING, as long as you DONT make money from its sale…Think about that.
NOW try to find anything in the patient office.
to the rest of you;
THIS will only work if they have a DECENT judge….
remember there are 1000 monkeys making CODE in MS…and 1 person fitting All the pieces together to make the OS.
It will take YEARS to descramble all the COW PUCKY, in that code.
Let it be examined by EVERY corp and programmer, to Dis-avow ANY infringement on MS’s side…FIRST.
100,000,000++ programmers in the world, and you THINK you can copyright an instruction set???
Lets look at the FIRST implementaion, and DOCUMENTED use of that 1 instruction set…GOD this is going to be fun.
Anyone got a copy of the ULA, for the languages CREATED by MS??? Maybe they said something like….”Anything you create with this language, IS OURS”…..
FOOLS !!!
No, not MicroSoft. The people that have posted with comments like “well now MS will have to open up their code”.
Who the hell is going to pay the legal costs? I would not be surprised to see the current SCO battle end up costing more then $50 million. IBM isn’t a charity that has that kind of money to throw around. They will only do it if there is an end result that will benefit IBM. All Microsoft has to do is singly charge small and medium sized Corporate Linux users. Most will settle out of court before putting up millions to defend their IT department’s software.
Yes, it could go the other way and MS could lose big time. I don’t think that would be their game plan though. They will take a lot of small settlements over the one big decisive battle.
Very slow day. Hmmmm. Let’s pull something licentious from our back of worn out tricks. Yes, let’s fw date it, too- May 28th.
Ballmer Pees on Linux over Patents.
John: it’s been done. I’m not sure why you had to lift a rock to get this piece to run, but it’s already been done, John. We know about Steve and his madness. We know he’s stepping in doo-doo. There is no new information here.
The second Ballmer litigates, it will be the legitimate end of Microsoft. I hope he considers that.
And I hope you can find some fresh headlines today. Stop putting them in the washer, then pulling them out of a drawer to hang as banners on your site. Droll, that.
I solved one of my MS problems i got A Mac
As a user of Linux on a couple of machines I say this will full respect:
Abandon Linux.
… and create a totally new one.
This time, make the OS easy enough for the average person to use. Linux is just too darn hard.
The more I read about Novell’s deal with Micro$oft, the happier I am I switched from SUSE to Ubuntu the day after they announced it.
I don’t know about anyone else but one way or another, I will never pay another dollar to Micro$oft for anything, most especially for Linux, an operating system they had nothing whatsoever to do with developing.
We all seem to have a short memory but before there was ever a ‘Windows” or a Macintosh with OS X, there was a Xerox PARC operating system that preceded and looked just like both of them. Hell, even the ‘mouse’ came from Xerox PARC and Unix was around long, long before Micro$oft even existed. Where do they get off buying up patents to harass the Open Source community? Is this their idea of free market capitalism?
I can only hope IBM and other large corporations choose to fight instead of paying for nothing because it seems cheaper in the long run to stay out of court. If they try to pay off Micro$oft, what’s to stop Micro$oft from buying up a few hundred more questionable patents and doing it all over again?
This whole thing is infuriating. Sometimes it seems like we all have to pay Micro$oft, just because they’re a huge company with lots of money and they insist on it. It’s not even as if they’re very good at what they do – they just happen to be a near-monopoly. The federal government seems to want to interfere with everything in our lives; let them iterfere with this patent nonsense!
First you here about Microsoft wanting to open up to Linux. Then the next story is about Microsoft suing for copyright infringments.
I think Microsoft is self destructing before our eyes.
Balmer needs to open his eye’s as to what is happening!
Nobody really feels sorry for Microsoft. Quit crying foul!
Nobody cares Steve!
Just more M$ FUD in light of the Dell-Ubuntu deal.
M$’s purpose is the same as with their backing of SCO. Slow down the growth of GNU/Linux by creating uncertainty for the end user, who doesn’t want to be exposed to any $$$ problems. Now that their puppet SCO is folding they have to take up the fight directly. Hope they lose again.
Greg Allen hasn’t heard of Ubuntu
http://www.ubuntulinux.org/
or if he has he’s a liar. Ubuntu is easier than Window$.
M$ can intimidate corporations like this but the individual user will continue, slowly but surely, to turn to open source. M$ went from a home user base into corporations. Can they survive in the long run without the home user?
In the big picture: corporations in America have gone from making things, to marketing things, to marketing their stock. Sure they can make money at it but sooner or later the government has to step in and change the incentive so that tangible things are being built again. Lawsuits and press releases do not an economy make.
More FUD.
How many times has M$ stolen code from small vendors, and been taken to court over it. If they go through with this, they will have to open up their code to public scrutiny, and become vulnerable to more lawsuits, for code that they have stolen.
#19, Milo,
While Ubuntu is good, is still isn’t perfect. For someone used to easy installing then Windows XP still wins hands down. I use both systems and I hate it when I have to install another program on Linux. I never know up front if it will work, where the problems are, or if I’ll need to find another piece of code to do it. Ubuntu is much better then my last foray with SUSE 7.1, but not yet perfect. And I wish it was.
#16: Right on!
#19: Yes, this is about M$ trying to slow down the ever accelerating growth, expansion, and adoption of Linux (e.g. Ubuntu’s recent growth). And it is also negative PR for the uninformed masses, who now have another reason to shun what they have been misled into beleiving is a ‘pirated’ OS (Linux) in favor of good ‘ol, 100% pure M$ crap.
Fusion, you are only correct if you are speaking about any Linux program. If you stick to the programs that are endorsed by Ubuntu you almost never have problems. Furthermore the headaches or viruses and spyware are gone to more than make up for any problems you do get and the support through the forums is better because it’s support, not manipulation. Within that context it is better than W$.
#15 Greg
I doubt it, they will keep it criptic and will continue with their “If you are not a C++ guru then you’re not worth using this OS.” And any attempt to make it user friendly usually ends up with the Linux fandom yapping “This is the worst Linux version ever!”
I am not really sure why Microsoft is worried. GNU/Linux is going nowhere in the home market. They do have a solid base in the backoffice and server market but it is not really for the OS but the applications (Apache, MySQL). Yes, I know those applications have been ported to Windows, VMS, OSX, and for that manner the BSD propers, however, the license agreement under these operating systems do not exactly foster a community and therefore the submissions of code back is nonexistent.
GNU/Linux does not need to get easier. It has been easy to install for some seven years. What really needs to happen is that the projects need to begin to push software at consumers in a more friendly way. This has to begin by seeing people charge for software outside of the kernel and basic userland (utilities, elect). People have to get paid in order for the system to evolve.
It shows that Microsoft is now fully in the hands of the lawyers. They no longer are trying to compete by making better products. The way lawyers increase their status in a company is by making publicity-generating moves like this. I.E. It’s a play by the non-engineering part of top Microsoft management to increase their power at the expense of those who actually produce software.
#22, I run Devil Linux and IPCOP on a couple other machines, and am running Ubuntu on one of my main machines. Devil and a number of other distros can be a chore to install new stuff on at times, especially if you aren’t a seasoned linux user, but the last Ubuntu distro was fully as easy as Windows….if not easier. With the package management system included, you don’t even have to surf the net to actually find programs – there are thousands of them listed for install by default. Absolutely, you can find some apps that are hard to install if you look for them…but most are very straightforward, unless you need to do heavy customization. If that is the case…well, in Windows, you often can’t do that customization period so…
#8 – If someone writes a routine to open a socket in C, and someone else wrote one just like it because….thats the logical way to write the routine…is someone going to be sued over it? How far will this idiocy go, and what will it cost the average person?
Yes!
I understand that the guy who invented the resealable plastic bowl deserves to have his invention protected. But that doesn’t mean that the plastic bowl with a lid infringes on the resealable plastic bowl. Nor does it mean that the resealable plastic bowl, with a small plastic tab to make reopening it easier, is actually a whole new invention deserving of its own patent. And I’m pretty sure the little plastic tab was already patented by someone else and that that patent holder isn’t suing the jerk who put the tab on the resealable plastic bowl. And God forbid a plastic tab finds it way on to the plastic bowl with a lid.
I gotta go and buy some freaking sandwich baggies.
I worked with Unix (HP-UX) for 20 years and used to love the C shell scripting. It’s very easy to quickly write just about any utility you want. The OS if very complicated though. And it seems to me that MSDos came directly from Unix. …and isn’t it still running under Windows?