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akshaysrinivasan
March 6th, 2007, 04:28 PM
I don't know if anybody is aware of the claim by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer ,that all of us open source users are just law breakers using Microsoft's IPR.The comment came Novell and Microsoft agreed not to sue each other for 5 years.I am not intending to start a war against Microsoft ,i just wanted to know if any of you had any rights about what IPR we are breaking?It's quite funny when a company like Microsoft speaks like this ,after all their Windows is a imitation of Mac OS.

tigerpants
March 6th, 2007, 04:38 PM
I don't know if anybody is aware of the claim by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer ,that all of us open source users are just law breakers using Microsoft's IPR.The comment came Novell and Microsoft agreed not to sue each other for 5 years.I am not intending to start a war against Microsoft ,i just wanted to know if any of you had any rights about what IPR we are breaking?It's quite funny when a company like Microsoft speaks like this ,after all their Windows is a imitation of Mac OS.

MS is in no position to talk about patent/copyright infringements, neither are Apple for that matter. Just a load of hot air from the massive vent that is Steve Chimpy Chumpy Ballmer.

izanbardprince
March 6th, 2007, 04:41 PM
Everybody has patents, if anyone uses them, they all sue each other.

It's the same idea as Mutually Assured Destruction during the cold war, where the best way to be safe from the Soviets was to have thousands of nukes of our own.

Now it is quite possible, and probable, that Microsoft does own patents that Linux has violated, remember that you can patent an idea, not the implementation.

bonzodog
March 6th, 2007, 04:48 PM
Not just that, but trying to sue linux distros is a little like one battleship fighting with an entire armada - they can only hit one target at a time - they are hopelessly outnumbered, and to add to that half the Linux fleet is effectively invisible or out of range.

They cannot sue outside the US, and I just wish people would remember that the world is not the USA. Just because someone in the US says something, doesn't mean anyone outside the US has to take any notice. Half the time, it's totally irrelevant, and is ignored by everyone else.

Not just that, but I believe that no-one will ever be able to sue Ubuntu as a distro, not even MS UK. You see, Ubuntu is based on The Isle of Man, which is a Crown Dependency of the UK, but not answerable to all of its laws, or it's Tax System. Mark Shuttleworth pays almost no tax at all, as he is based there.
Clever, if extremely dodgy. The isle of Man is just one of those countries that never quite joined in with the rest of the world, like Switzerland, and The Channel Islands.

izanbardprince
March 6th, 2007, 05:15 PM
Not just that, but trying to sue linux distros is a little like one battleship fighting with an entire armada - they can only hit one target at a time - they are hopelessly outnumbered, and to add to that half the Linux fleet is effectively invisible or out of range.

They cannot sue outside the US, and I just wish people would remember that the world is not the USA. Just because someone in the US says something, doesn't mean anyone outside the US has to take any notice. Half the time, it's totally irrelevant, and is ignored by everyone else.

Not just that, but I believe that no-one will ever be able to sue Ubuntu as a distro, not even MS UK. You see, Ubuntu is based on The Isle of Man, which is a Crown Dependency of the UK, but not answerable to all of its laws, or it's Tax System. Mark Shuttleworth pays almost no tax at all, as he is based there.
Clever, if extremely dodgy. The isle of Man is just one of those countries that never quite joined in with the rest of the world, like Switzerland, and The Channel Islands.

You do realize this means war? :lolflag:

Daveski
March 6th, 2007, 06:32 PM
I don't know if anybody is aware of the claim by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer ,that all of us open source users are just law breakers using Microsoft's IPR.The comment came Novell and Microsoft agreed not to sue each other for 5 years.I am not intending to start a war against Microsoft ,i just wanted to know if any of you had any rights about what IPR we are breaking?It's quite funny when a company like Microsoft speaks like this ,after all their Windows is a imitation of Mac OS.

Good question. There is a good site which is dedicated to getting just this answer out of MS: Which bits of our code do you have an issue with?

http://showusthecode.com/

akshaysrinivasan
March 7th, 2007, 06:26 AM
I also heard MS itself hass violated more than a dozen Patents.Some fellow in MS went as far as calling the Open Source community a threat to the american way of Life!Its quite funny why Microsoft puts itself in such an ignoble position.I think the Open source Community is brilliant ,even our President(India) Dr.A.P.J. Abdul Kalam supports it.

Foudre
March 7th, 2007, 06:38 AM
MS has a few years now has been violating the mp3 copyrights, they were releasing the codecs with their stuff for years without the rights to do so, as a result they had to pay a few billion, and yes you can sue acrossed countrys in big corpartions, due to international treaties, but not every country to every country. STill not sure but i bet ms has a germany branch, I know they have a uk one

Anthem
March 7th, 2007, 06:50 AM
I don't think it's actually in question that Linux violates a ton of Microsoft patents with a stock install. Between the kernel, X, the desktop environments, and the associated programs, a generic Ubuntu install probably violates HUNDREDS of Microsoft patents. And that's a conservative estimate. You can't write hardly any software today, proprietary or Free, that doesn't violate software patents.

The real question is, if these patents were brought up in a court of law, would they stand up or be overthrown? The US Patent Office will give you a patent for just about anything, and Microsoft has repeatedly shown that it's willing to patent stuff that showed up in Open Source first.

Software patents are evil, and we should try to get rid of them. But people that claim Linux doesn't infringe on MS patents are delusional. The company has patented FAT32, for goodness sake, and it's been in the kernel for YEARS. Is the patent valid? The courts say so. Why is it there? Because to sue Linux for patent reasons would be an admission that Microsoft has lost technically. And that's not yet an admission MS is willing to make.

Don't kid yourself... patents aren't like copyright. There's no "code" to show in a patent lawsuit.

IYY
March 7th, 2007, 07:25 AM
It's possible that Microsoft has a case. It's also possible that it doesn't. We know two things for certain, though:

1. If Microsoft told us which patents we are violating, the coders will fairly quickly be able to write new code to replace the "offensive" bits. This has happened many times before in the Linux and GNU communities.

2. Microsoft has absolutely no intention of ever suing or even telling the public what the violations are. This is simply because it is far more profitable for them to throw around vague accusations (their old tactic of Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) than to go to court and (even if they do win this difficult case), gain little after the programmers rewrite the code.

steven8
March 7th, 2007, 08:02 AM
It is about IP - Intellectual Property, or. . .we made that first.

There is a great line from "Pirates of Silicon Valley", where Steven Jobs has invited his good friends from microsoft, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer over to his MAC Convention, and while they are all watching the 1984 Mac commercial, some Apple guys are unpacking the computers they brought back from China. On these computers are the first copies of windows 1.0. Steven Jobs is incensed when he sees the computers, accusing Bill of thievery. Bill says, "Steve, every car has a steering, but nobody claims to have invented it." May be fictional, but Bill needs to take his own advice. :)

tigerpants
March 7th, 2007, 10:48 AM
Some fellow in MS went as far as calling the Open Source community a threat to the american way of Life!

In that its not driven by pure greed? :)

ssam
March 7th, 2007, 10:55 AM
the open invention network (http://www.openinventionnetwork.com/) is a pretty good defence against patent attacks.

Tomosaur
March 7th, 2007, 11:07 AM
Don't kid yourself... patents aren't like copyright. There's no "code" to show in a patent lawsuit.

This keeps coming up everywhere - and I always feel like I have to ask the following:

Would you prefer:

1) "Show us the code!"

or

2) "Show us the bits of the Linux kernel and/or GNU software which violates your Intellectual Property!".

"Show us the code!" is obviously the better choice, but it should not be taken literally. It's a short and to the point request of Microsoft to get it over with or to shut the hell up. By not protecting their intellectual property / patents - they are running out of time to do so. There is only a limited amount of time to start legal proceedings once the patent owner is aware of the infringement, but the act of accusation is libelous, and slanderous if the accuser has no intention of taking up legal proceedings to allow a fair and just court of law to make it's own decision. If MS is unwilling to start legal proceedings for whatever reason, then the FOSS community can theoretically take MS to court on libel grounds (even though they won't, as MS have been careful to avoid slamming any particular person or organization so far. Hopefully Ballmer will make a slip of the tongue sometime soon.). There's no denying that Microsoft influences the opinion of their user-base - particularly the opinion of those people who are unaware, or don't know much about, Linux, the FSF, GNU etc. Even though MS aren't saying 'you violated our copyright', they ARE saying that code in the kernel or whatever does violate their IP. If developers don't know what MS 'owns', then they can't change it. It's just a way of saying "Put up, or shut up".