Andrew Douglas Pitonyak wrote: > In the unlikely event that they did pursue a user, they will
You are assuming that they will follow the model that SCO used, and not that used by the RIAA. OTOH, considering that they did fund SCO, they might be stupid enough to follow that doomed strategy. > Also, Novell does OOo development and they have a "get out of jail free" That "get out of jail free card" does not apply to anything in OOo, Samba, and roughly half a dozen other FLOSS programs. > After all, what would MS be able to extract from me even if they won? a) Use the court cases as proof that all FLOSS programs are pirated; b) Use it as the basis of an amnesty program [Pay $500 for MSO Professional Edition, and we won't sue you.]; c) Use the lawsuits as a bargaining chip when companies threaten to switch to FLOSS. [Use FLOSS and pay your attorney more than you would have paid us,. And then pay us three times the amount that you would have paid us, had you used legitimate software with a legitimate licence.]; > It does not mean that one morning, someone at MS will not wake up, and do > something really really stupid. A more probable course of action is for Microsoft to sell the relevant patents to one of the startups that it has funded, whose business model is to buy patents, and generate revenue by filing suit against organizations that have violated the patent. xan jonathon --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
