begin quoting Andrew Lentvorski as of Tue, May 15, 2007 at 03:54:30AM -0700: > Ralph Shumaker wrote: > > >Why be amazed? Even now, they're obfuscating the supposed patents being > >violated because of how weak they are. > > > >If they had found even just *one* truly crippling patent violation, they > >would have stormed into court with an army of lawyers. They've got > >nuthin and they're bluffin hard. Unfortunately, their opponents are > >easily bluffed because of their fear of the unknown. > > > >They must realize that they don't have much of a legal leg to stand on, > >or they would nip open source in the bud instead of implying to their > >own customers the threat of legal action. > > Microsoft is trying to walk a tightrope. It doesn't really *want* a > showdown. FUD is better for it than any specific result. It probably > loses on any outcome of a real showdown. FUD is the ideal, I agree.
Must they lose? I'm not entirely sure. I *want* them to lose, but I need to guard against my wishful thinking. > In addition, if it sets the terms correctly, the payments a company will > have to produce will be far under the legal cost of actually challenging > Microsoft. That's how good extortion works. Keep the cost of complying > under the cost of taking you on. Indeed. And, if I understand things correctly, if you pay for protection, and later someone else beats 'em and shows that the patent is invalid, you don't get a refund. So that's good for M$... get the money while they can. > The options: > > If its patents are invalid, that gets exposed and life goes on. > Microsoft loses. In general, patent enforcement has been a losing game since the Wright Brothers, hasn't it? That's my hope. Let 'em come on and chase us with patents. It'll drain their coffers, and distract 'em as well. > If its patents are valid and are *upheld*: > > A) Open source removes the infringing IP. Life goes on. Microsoft loses. Penalties need to be paid. Microsoft takes ownership of code as payment. Microsoft claims "derivative work" status on a bunch more code. Linux ends up in a quagmire like BSD did in the 90s. By the time all the legal issues are resolved, Vista has become entrenched. Microsoft wins. (This round, at least.) > B) Open source can't remove it. Open source shuts down in the US. > Microsoft wins a short term victory. Vista succeeds. Microsoft wins. US companies don't allow their employees to contribute to or use open-source. The rest of the world is a problem delayed... but a problem delayed is a problem half-solved. Worry about that next quarter. > But provokes a firestorm it is > unlikely to survive. It should be dead a half-dozen times over if that were the case. > Anti-trust filings will return (Linux was one of its defenses, after > all). OS X is doing better, *and* runs on x86 hardware. M$ doesn't need Linux anymore. It has competition on x86, thankyounotatall Mr. Jobs. > Software patents will get challenged in general. This removes some of the big sticks in IBM and Sun's arsenal. Microsoft wins. > Open source > projects relocate to outside the country wholesale. Companies relocate > all open source servers to the border in Canada. ...raising total cost of ownership for open-source software. Microsoft wins. > Even if MS won, it would be a Pyrrhic victory. It would provoke *so* > much enmity, that people would start dumping it out of abject fear. This should already have happened, but it didn't. People who are using Linux already have some enmity towards Microsoft, in general, so there's no net loss there. People who don't use open-source will not be inclinded to start. -- I /hope/ they lose, but I don't /think/ they will. Stewart Stremler -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
