Microsoft is claiming that open source software violates 235 patents that it holds. The article claims that Microsoft is seeking royalties from end users of open source software, but I suspect that what Microsoft really wants is to discourage people from adopting open source software entirely. I don’t think that will work.
Everybody knows that SCO has been a stalking horse for Microsoft in its lawsuit against IBM, and that case hasn’t had any appreciable effect on the market for Linux or other open source tools. Now Microsoft is taking the direct approach to shaking down users of open source software.
The patent article is worth reading, just to catch up on the legal machinations both Microsoft and the Free Software Foundation have employed to try to gain an advantage in this dispute.
May 14, 2007 at 10:28 pm
I met RMS years ago, and and asked, “Hasn’t open\free software already won?” He said, “No.” I argued that propriety software would always exist, but propriety software applications would always migrate to open\free. The idea of CEOs writing, interpreting, and even administering, the laws governing their own industry… I didn’t see that happening again, not in the US. Worse, Microsoft doesn’t come close to the worst of them. Gates never made money off people killing each other, let alone started wars that paid him profits.