Comments

1. #1 Ted

   May 14, 2007

   Microsoft is emboldened by the IP culture in the US regardless of left-right politics. It finds a very favorable climate for government protectionism through enforcement of IP — on one hand the US government supports free-trade, on the other it practices protectionism relative to large corporate clients.

   The focus of this type of FUD is not on the consumer (who is generally disinterested), but on the corporate purchaser and on software supportability roadmaps.

2. #2 Corkscrew

   May 14, 2007

   For one, the Linux kernel itself is truly open-source. Not only that, but it is documented where each of the millions of lines of code came from: who wrote it, and when. Nothing was copied directly.

   I think that would be copyright, rather than patents. For copyright to apply, it’s necessary that the work in question be derived from someone else’s work. For example, The SCO Group’s claims against Linux originally talked about copyright. This issue was adequately dealt with by the mechanisms you cite, with the result of SCO getting absolutely murdered in court.

   Patents are an entirely different beastie. If I file for a ludicrous patent on Monday at 9:00, and you (completely independently) produce something that falls under that patent’s remit at 9:01, and the patent is granted, you’re screwed.

   And, given the recklessness of the USPTO in recent years, the chances are that anything as big as the Linux kernel probably does have patents on it. Microsoft probably does have legal rights to some of the content of Linux and, given how insanely broad and basic many patents are, it may not be possible to work round those issues.

   However, this is exactly the same position that proprietary software has been in for some time. It’s impossible to produce a decent piece of software without unknowingly treading on turf that someone has already staked out. So why is it that most patent lawsuits come not from software companies but from patent trolls and the like?

   Mostly, it’s because patent litigation is a war of mutually-assured destruction. If someone infringes a load of your patents, it’s quite likely that you infringe some of theirs (unless you’re a patent troll). If Microsoft assaults Linux, they will immediately be buried under lawsuits from a million and one FOSS-using companies, including big guns like IBM. They’d get slaughtered.

   So yeah, no risk, just not quite for the reason you suggested.

   Disclaimer: IANAL, I just read lots of articles at groklaw.net.

3. #3 Ted

   May 14, 2007

   The SCO Group’s claims against Linux originally talked about copyright. This issue was adequately dealt with by the mechanisms you cite, with the result of SCO getting absolutely murdered in court.

   The stupidity of SCO is legion.

   As far back as 1995 I was receiving faxes from SCO telling me not to use Linux because of all the risks with the same faxes going to my bosses. I was a client of SCO products and used both Linux and SCO and had told their salesperson as much.

   First they tried going over my head. When that didn’t work, they tried the “use of Linux is irresponsible” etc by jamming the fax. Man, do I wish I kept those faxes.

   From my perspective it was a piece of trash marketed and sold under deceptive practices — i.e. they wouldn’t sell you all the components the first time through to keep the price low, and then would nickel and dime you to death, i.e they’d know there was a serious bug in something like the TCP stack, but wouldn’t lead with the resolution, instead waiting for someone to open a ticket for days on end with associated downtime, only to respond, “Oh, yeah we have a patch for that bug”. The patch would be dated two years previous.

   Absolute crap on toast.