M. Fioretti wrote: > Microsoft doesn't have nor want to sue: they
But Microsoft has announced that they will sue for patent infringement. The only thing they have not said is when the first lawsuits will happen. _When_, not _if_. If Microsoft is smart, they will retreat from that position. Remember, both individuals, and a SOHO business has _nothing_ to lose by going to a jury trial. Microsoft has everything to lose, if they get into a jury trial regarding its patents. What a confused jury will do is unknown --- but confused juries have a tendency to not convict. [IOW, a pro bona team of jury selection consultants needs to be put together now. At the same time an optimal generic legal strategy for defendants should be constructed. That Microsoft can know if it does not matter, because it will essentially consist of: * Try the patent laws; * Try the specific patents; * Try Microsoft; The first, because that can result in Jury Nullification of Patent Law. The second, because it can result in the Patents from being ( "Can", because a jury might rule them valid, even if it the testimony demonstrates beyond reasonable doubt that the patents are obvious applications of material in the Torah, and the prior art can be found in the Mahabharata.) The second, because the use of lawsuits can be viewed as nothing more than a SLAPP --- especially if other lawsuits have ruled the patents to be invalid. [The Halloween documents can be cited as further evidence in support of it being a SLAPP.] > like the one described in the "Summary of the Previous Season" part of this: > http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/9594#mpart7 See my comments below the "#####" line. > community still wastes time telling to itself how ridiculous it is to > think that there are patents violations in Linux, OpenOffice or a) The Linux developers do not deny that there are patent violations in the Linux kernel. The source code specifies some of the patents that might be violated. The OOo developers are simply asking for a list of Microsoft patents that potentially infringe. [That Microsoft says to reveal that list would result in their invalidation, indicates that the patents were issued despite Microsoft knowing that they are based upon obvious applications of prior art, and should never have been issued in the first place, and thus, Microsoft knowingly applied for the patents in bad faith.] b) What the FLOSS developers are claiming, is that the patents were wrongly awarded by the USPTO, because the USPTO has no qualms about issuing patents that are obvious applications of prior art that dates back to 15,000 BP; c) There is at least one collaborative effort to examine every software patent issued, with an aim of finding/citing both prior art, and documenting its "obviousness" based on what was known at the time that the patent was filed; ##### The following is a quote from the relevant article: >Think of all the large companies and public administrations where most of the existing partners, customers or suppliers use Microsoft Office formats. Depending upon what country one is in, those public administrators might be using something other than MSO. Large companies have shown signs of moving away from Microsoft, on purely competitive grounds.[The TCO for Linux with OOo is lower than the TCO of Windows and Microsoft Office.) How far that trend will trickle is debatable. In some respects it looks like Microsoft is losing at both ends --- individual consumers, and large corporations. >Laziness and the wish to ignore what software is are very powerful. Both of those are a result of a lack of education. >In such a scenario, the first time a manager sends an OpenDocument file from an employee or supplier back with an "I can't open this" note, the sender will set the default file format of OpenOffice.org to OpenXML and never go back. * Roughly 25 governments around the world have mandated the use of ODF. Other file formats are to be rejected. Thus, in this scenario, the manager will keep flipping between ODF for governments, and OpenXL for businesses, until he decides, enough is enough, and tells his suppliers, and customers that they either use ODF or look elsewhere. "Joe's Diner" might not have any customers, or suppliers changing to ODF. Walmart, OTOH, would push at least a quarter of the businesses in the world to change to ODF. * A number of significant players in various fields have adopted ODF as their file format. The ripple effect from those players will be along industry lines. Companies in related fields will either have to learn to live with two, or three different file formats, or adopt one file format, and have all documents they receive converted into that file format, and outgoing documents converted in to the file format of the industry that they are sending it to. >Why compromise a career or a sale annoying people in this way, especially if "I can still use this cool free software, can't I?" Will it annoy people more, or less than when the document created with MSO2000 can not be opened by the recipient who uses MSO2000, because those two programs are incompatible with each other? [Or pick any other version of MSO. I am using MSO2000 as an example, because I was giving a CD of documents in that format, which won't open in my copy of MSO2000. they can be opened in my copy of OOo though --- at the loss of the markup, which does not matter to me.] >Sure-until the agreement expires and the next version of OpenXML breaks compatibility. This is where future proofing becomes critical. PHBs are far more concerned about future proofing data now, than they were five years ago. The 2K scare taught them the importance of data in a format that can be easily transformed into something that won't break. Year 2038 is not that far off, and has the same set of issues. {Perhaps less comprehensible to Joe Sixpack that Y2K, since gravestones won't suffer from the 2038 bug, but they did suffer from the Y2K bug.) The only time one can be confident that a document is future proofed, is if there are two or more competing programs that can create/read/write/edit the file. That simply doesn't exist with OpenXL, nor is it likely to. It does exist with ODF. xan jonathon --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
