Microsoft says Linux violates 235 patents!

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Kiran.dks

Kiran.dks

Technomancer
Microsoft says Linux violates 235 patents
Microsoft claims that free software like Linux, which runs a big chunk of corporate America, violates 235 of its patents.

Free software is great, and corporate America loves it. It's often high-quality stuff that can be downloaded free off the Internet and then copied at will. It's versatile - it can be customized to perform almost any large-scale computing task - and it's blessedly crash-resistant. A broad community of developers, from individuals to large companies like IBM, is constantly working to improve it and introduce new features. No wonder the business world has embraced it so enthusiastically: More than half the companies in the Fortune 500 are thought to be using the free operating system Linux in their data centers.

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 (Charts, Fortune 500), Microsoft is pulling no punches: It wants royalties. If the company gets its way, free software won't be free anymore. The conflict pits Microsoft and its dogged CEO, Steve Ballmer, against the "free world" - people who believe software is pure knowledge. The leader of that faction is Richard Matthew Stallman, a computer visionary with the look and the intransigence of an Old Testament prophet.

Read Full Story: CNN
 
nileshgr

nileshgr

Wise Old Owl
A surprising news but not much latest. This news was on Digit Mar 07 too. MS' business is probably affected by the linux and open-source community. So CEO of MS Steve Ballmer is seeing somehow to drop linux which is almost impossible! There a more than lakh Linux and OSS users.
 
praka123

praka123

left this forum longback
So if Microsoft ever sued Linux distributor Red Hat for patent infringement, for instance, OIN might sue Microsoft in retaliation, trying to enjoin distribution of Windows. It's a cold war, and what keeps the peace is the threat of mutually assured destruction: patent Armageddon - an unending series of suits and countersuits that would hobble the industry and its customers.
"It's a tinderbox," Moglen says. "As the commercial confrontation between [free software] and software-that's-a-product becomes more fierce, patent law's going to be the terrain on which a big piece of the war's going to be fought. Waterloo is here somewhere."
Yes, free software is a more sophisticated concept than many people think, and it is subject to a legally enforceable license of its own. That license was written by free-software inventor Richard Stallman, who anticipated 20 years ago all the threats free software faces today. Foremost among those threats, Stallman understood, were patents.
A gifted developer and prickly, uncompromising individual, Stallman, 54, quit his job at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab in 1984 to found what he considered to be a social movement guided by ethical principles. He set forth those goals in the GNU Manifesto, where GNU (pronounced with a hard "g" and rhyming with "canoe") was an acronym for "GNU's Not Unix." (It's a "recursive" acronym, an inside joke that programmers get. Trust us.) Free software would guarantee users "freedoms" that were ordinarily forbidden by proprietary software licenses, including the ability to see the source code, alter it, copy it and redistribute it.
But while many people assume that Stallman simply ignored intellectual-property law, he actually mastered it and enlisted it in the quest to achieve his goals. He demanded that all contributors to GNU projects assign their copyrights to the Free Software Foundation, which Stallman set up and controlled. That meant that anyone who distributed free software covered by those copyrights had to abide by a license Stallman wrote, called the GNU General Public License (GPL).
The GPL has teeth: Lawyers for the Free Software Foundation have been able to force developers who incorporated free software into proprietary products to open up their source code, for instance.
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*money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/05/28/100033867/index.htm
Come eat me M$!I'll be using FOSS.Hope M$ lovers understand the evil.
*www.nosoftwarepatents.com/
I know the main reason.Dell is soon selling Linux -preinstalled PC's.guess who is worried?
 
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abhijangda

Padawan
Actually Microsoft hate Linux and other companies which are competitive with it (as most of the companies do). So MS can see it's future in the black bcuase of the increasing popularity of Linux.
 
Digit_Dragon

Digit_Dragon

Old Stock in New Bottle!!
Yep! Its competition that makes news.....find faults in others.
Even in this forum we see mac guys fights against windows...Windows with Linux....
It has to be there for good.
 
mediator

mediator

Technomancer
But he does break down the total number allegedly violated - 235 - into categories. He says that the Linux kernel - the deepest layer of the free operating system, which interacts most directly with the computer hardware - violates 42 Microsoft patents. The Linux graphical user interfaces - essentially, the way design elements like menus and toolbars are set up - run afoul of another 65, he claims. The Open Office suite of programs, which is analogous to Microsoft Office, infringes 45 more. E-mail programs infringe 15, while other assorted FOSS programs allegedly transgress 68.
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Now thats hilarious! :D
I hope they r happy that *nix department didn't copy the idea of BSODs.
 
praka123

praka123

left this forum longback
remebers Gandhiji's :
"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."
Now it seems M$ is approaching 3rd way. :-|
 
eddie

eddie

El mooooo
Microsoft will keep saying these things without doing anything. They have done it in the past and they are doing it now as well. The main reason behind it is that Windows Server operating systems violate lots of IBM's server patents and if, ever, Microsoft sues Free Software world then IBM will be there to support the community. Now we all know what IBM's attorneys, popularly known as The Nazguls ( :D ), can do in a court room. Just look at SCO and you will understand. Microsoft (specifically the Monkey Boy) will keep making these cheap shots but nothing concrete :)
 
OP
Kiran.dks

Kiran.dks

Technomancer
Microsoft has all the rights to file a law suit if the patents are broken. Currently, I am not sure about what exactly the patent issues are. But if it's genuine, there is no problems at all. Anyone in such scenario will do the same thing. That is the reason of filing the patent. No one will tolerate it being broken. It's like breaking into company's property.
 
eddie

eddie

El mooooo
^ Yeah well why not...sure come out and sue...but the problem arises when the core of your server operating system business is infringing innumerable patents itself. Would you risk that core and mess with a company (IBM) that is known to destroy opposition in court rooms? Microsoft is much smarter...they will just keep throwing these claims to scare Linux customers rather then actually doing something. They are happy to dent Linux business in what ever small way they can do...its much better and safer that way.
 
nileshgr

nileshgr

Wise Old Owl
mediator said:
Now thats hilarious! :D
I hope they r happy that *nix department didn't copy the idea of BSODs.
Click to expand...

This is too much. OpenOffice and other OSS products are not copied from MS OFFICE etc. Infact Mr. Bill himself copied Unix from The Unix developers when it was being distributed 4 free. He copied the Source and made such a complicated OS. Grrrrrrrrrrrrr......... :mad:
 
mediator

mediator

Technomancer
Chill out! All I'm asking is when did we started having patents on the design process? How can one copy the source of closed source app and still output the correct md5 of it?
Its not possible that in a world of trillions of people, all to have different thinking and ways of designing things. If the design cannot be same, then atleast it can be similar.
But then again what's the hype if the design is the same? After all the design copy happens a lot in software industry even MS copies stuff from other OS etc! What about the print mechanism and other functionailty that the UNIX had? The basic connectivity from telnet is even copied from UNIX.
So yes, I'm not bothered who copied from whome! But the source code shudn't be exact and a ditto copy! But saying that buttons, bars etc are copied from windows is just toooo childish!
 
OP
Kiran.dks

Kiran.dks

Technomancer
eddie said:
^ Yeah well why not...sure come out and sue...but the problem arises when the core of your server operating system business is infringing innumerable patents itself. Would you risk that core and mess with a company (IBM) that is known to destroy opposition in court rooms? Microsoft is much smarter...they will just keep throwing these claims to scare Linux customers rather then actually doing something. They are happy to dent Linux business in what ever small way they can do...its much better and safer that way.
Click to expand...

This is not about implications. I am speaking about the patent issue in particular.
 
mediator

mediator

Technomancer
Means a lotta people still don't know what Linux is! Ask ur mtnl admins about linux and then see the look on their faces! They still don't know if there's any other OS besides windows!

The more the world's business leader will talk about it, the more the people will get acknowledged about it!
 
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