Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 18:50:06 -0400
From: "Mike B." <omni at omniphile.com>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: "Every breath you take ... Every move you make  ..."
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>,<WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>

At 5/23/2007 12:27 PM, Michael Walsh wrote:
> > omni at omniphile.com 05/23/07 12:19 PM >>>
>
> >than the Evil Empire.
>
>Open source?  But MicroSoft sez: Give Us The Money:
>http://www.linuxworld.com/newsletters/linux/2007/0521linux1.html
>
>This should be interesting ...

I would like to see those patents thrown out...I doubt that any of
them would withstand a proper challenge.  Most open source software
started out as unix software, most of which predates Microsoft, and a
large number of software patents were granted incorrectly by the
Patent and Trademark Office due to overwork and under-education on
the part of that office.  Patents that violate basic requirements for
patentability (novelty, obviousness, prior art, etc.) have frequently
been granted, and occasionally upheld by non-techie judges who just
don't understand the issues they are being asked to decide.

That won't happen of course.  Microsoft will just sink its fangs into
the open source vendors and bleed them for license fees, since
fighting it is beyond most of their means (this happened with SCO and
Linux a few years ago, though most didn't cave in), and the majority
of the open source community will continue to do what they've always
done...write software for their own use and to give away where
patents really don't matter...and the government will have been used
by one citizen to beat up on other citizens to the detriment of all
citizens once again.

Unless the two very largest open source vendors decide that this is a
threat to their businesses and tell Billy Gates to put up or shut up
and let it go to court where they will keep it tied up in various
legal tricks until he's old and grey.  One of them has a history of
that sort of thing, so it's not beyond possibility.  I am, of course,
talking about IBM (the other is Hewlet-Packard...the largest computer
company in existence).

Given that IBM has more patents than any other US technology company,
I kind of wonder how many of them Microsoft is violating with Vista,
Office, Outlook, etc..  Dueling patents anyone?

-- Mike B.
--
"What do you mean trolls regenerate!?!" -- Famous Last Words