This just makes me want to find new ways to put Linux to use. I have always been a supporter of Windows and various MS products but this latest news just really pisses me off. The fact that they are not being specific about what patents "may be" violated is even more troubling. I don't think they realize how much this stance could hurt them. Linux is already getting more and more popular, now they are probably going to draw attention to it even more, and drive more of their customers to it. It's interesting that this happens shortly after Dell starts selling pc's preloaded with Ubuntu Linux. I think MS is getting worried, and they should be.Microsoft says GNU/Linux violates 235+ Windows patents
After many earlier rounds of saber-rattling and FUD, Microsoft has announced that Free Software users -- including everyone who, like me, uses Ubuntu Linux -- are violating at least 235 of Microsoft's patents, though they don't say which ones. Microsoft are now threatening end users of GNU/Linux (that's you and me again) with lawsuits unless we pay them protection money. "Nice operating system you got there, it'd be a shame if something were to happen to it."
The Microsoft position is this: even if you don't use Windows, you still have to pay them as much money as they would have gotten for selling you a copy of it.
The free world appears to be uncowed by Microsoft's claims. Its master legal strategist is Eben Moglen, longtime counsel to the Free Software Foundation and the head of the Software Freedom Law Center, which counsels FOSS projects on how to protect themselves from patent aggression. (He's also a professor on leave from Columbia Law School, where he teaches cyberlaw and the history of political economy.)
Moglen contends that software is a mathematical algorithm and, as such, not patentable. (The Supreme Court has never expressly ruled on the question.) In any case, the fact that Microsoft might possess many relevant patents doesn't impress him. "Numbers aren't where the action is," he says. "The action is in very tight qualitative analysis of individual situations." Patents can be invalidated in court on numerous grounds, he observes. Others can easily be "invented around." Still others might be valid, yet not infringed under the particular circumstances...
If push comes to shove, would Microsoft sue its customers for royalties, the way the record industry has?
"That's not a bridge we've crossed," says CEO Ballmer, "and not a bridge I want to cross today on the phone with you."
