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Story: Microsoft denies Ballmer Linux 'warning'
Posted by: Arthur B. (Thursday 25 November 2004, 9:22 PM)
Don't fall for FUD.
"That is a wrong feeling because Microsoft gives them unlimited indeminifcation and so any MS customer sued for a MS product will have the full legal capacitiy of Microsoft at hand."
Do read the very fine print involved before saying that again. There's a world of difference between what Microsoft says and what it actually does in the end. As history has shown time and time again.
"The software is never sued, only companies can be sued. And that there was no court case so far does not mean that there has been no litigation or that no developer was threatened because of possible patent infringement. Just to cite one, the Author of the VirtualDub Software was threatened by Microsoft to remove the reverse-engineered ability for read Microsoft .asf files directly."
Microsoft does not need patents or even laws to threaten (or destroy) people or companies. Also something history has proven time and time again. You may also recall that Microsoft has been convicted of abusing their monopolistic powers more then once. One more reason to get rid of software patents.
"Also, as long as open source companies are small, the probility that one of them is willing to go to court in defense it low. It's more likely that small open source companies will try to find another way to get rid of the problem, so there will not be much public info on that."
Last time I checked companies like IBM, Novell and HP aren't considered to be small. Also, various pro Open Source organization have said that they will counterstrike any company trying to use patents to stop Open Source. Mutual Assured Destruction, if you will. Yes, MAD.
But indeed, it's more then likely that Open Source programmers will find ways to work around a problem rather then wasting too much time and effort on keeping things non flexibel. That's not to say how various companies with invested interests will react. As such the whole software patent thing is something like a small group of dealers starting a war because they happen to deal in arms. Never mind the victims.
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