Microsoft, Linux, RH and patents....

[Andy Green]

Kim Lux wrote:
> On Wed, 2006-11-15 at 19:09 -0700, Craig White wrote:
>>> What am I missing here ?    
>> ----
>> the label... FUD 
> 
> Is it really that simple, that Microsoft doesn't have a leg to stand
> on ?  I think its FUD too, but surely there must be more to it than
> that ?

Well you can say it would be very poor FUD if it didn't leave you 
thinking "there must be more to it than that".

RHAT have obviously been alive to the threat from a patent attack 
knowing they have several powerful enemies that are all patented up, 
hence their ripping out of chunks of stuff like MP3 support.  If anyone 
doubted their wisdom they ain't doubting any more.

MSFT have difficulties Antitrust-wise launching an extermination on 
Linux as a competitor just when they have been making an effort to make 
Antitrust and other suits go away (and their erstwhile tormentors the 
Democrats have hands on some of the levers of power).  If they do launch 
an attack, they will select some specific patents to do it with, and 
because Unix and X and httpd and so forth predate MSFT's "innovations" 
the guts of the Linux kernel and the OS apps should be relatively 
unaffected.  Many chunks of the kernel are implementing open standards 
which other powerful companies have interests in, eg, USB / Intel, and 
Microsoft can't be airly stepping on those toes.  So it is part of the 
FUD action to say that "Linux" as a whole is under threat by "patents".

What might happen in a war is specific patents will be deployed, bits of 
Gnome and KDE will have to be redone to operate differently, bits of 
Open Office, and so on.  And after the war people will have to tread 
carefully, but RHAT treads carefully already.  During the war, a lot of 
damage will be done to Microsoft and perhaps even legislative perception 
of software patents in the US.

In addition, many of the patents may not stand up, plenty are filed as 
defensive ammo to make nonagression pacts with other patenthoarders and 
not meant to ever be deployed.  Microsoft keep using the 'innovation' 
word precisely because of their insecurity about just how much they do 
apes what has already been done by others, and that has to affect the 
viability of their patent stockpile generally.

But you only have to look at the awesome value MSFT themselves demanded 
from Novell to "license" all the patents they may think are violated by 
SLE* to an arbitrary number of SLE* endusers, yep that's right, they 
paid Novell $3xxM, not the other way around ;-)

As it stands it is pure FUD, I'm giving it the resounding *shrug* it 
deserves.

-Andy