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atlfalcons866
May 25th, 2007, 12:13 AM
why is microsoft going to sue open soruce?

Mazza558
May 25th, 2007, 12:14 AM
why is microsoft going to sue open soruce?

They're not. It's all FUD, my friend

juxtaposed
May 25th, 2007, 12:16 AM
They can't sue a concept :P

You mean the patent threats?

They are doing that plain and simply to make people scared away from using linux.

If microsoft starts a patent war, we have Novell, IBM, and Sun with massive ammounts of patents backing us up.

Mutually assured destruction - except that if microsoft did attack, we wouldn't be destroyed :P

Znupi
May 25th, 2007, 12:16 AM
Open-Source is just a concept. You can't sue a concept.

Edit: lol juxtaposed you beat me to it :D

rolando2424
May 25th, 2007, 01:09 AM
why is microsoft going to sue open soruce?

Because we rule / rock / pwn j00 servers? (and etc.)

starcraft.man
May 25th, 2007, 01:45 AM
This is a good article (http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS6083062770.html) to read.

People just fail to realize that the world is already using linux daily, in almost anything hardware related, you just don't know it ;). MS cannot sue the whole world, the world has more people/lawyers and more money >.>.

melancholeric
May 25th, 2007, 01:52 AM
This is a good article (http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS6083062770.html) to read.

People just fail to realize that the world is already using linux daily, in almost anything hardware related, you just don't know it ;). MS cannot sue the whole world, the world has more people/lawyers and more money >.>.

Right. Except that they don't care about users like you or me. They care about Fortune 500.

And they're not going to sue per se, they'll just go ... "hey, I see you're using Linux, it infringes on our patents, and we really value our intellectual property, so it'd be kind of great if we could set up a licensing contract so we wouldn't have to litigate .... "

Or, "Nice company you've got here. Be a shame if something bad happened to it."

Think about it. Large companies are extremely risk averse. And have deep pockets. And many of them use Linux.

starcraft.man
May 25th, 2007, 02:04 AM
Or, "Nice company you've got here. Be a shame if something bad happened to it."


LOL... sounds like the mafia/mob asking for protection money :p

Sadly, MS really isn't far from them on some days...

aryah
May 25th, 2007, 02:09 AM
since theyre no software patents in europe (yet, a new attempt of introducing them is mounting, as is defense against it), for now they cannot really be affective even if they wished to try and litigate, however unfounded.
I think they wont do anything untill they can sue across the globe, or be sure theyre never be able to.
In either case, I hope europe stays safe from this kind of abuse...

Sammi
May 25th, 2007, 02:22 AM
If Microsoft sues any open source users, then the Open Invention Network will sue back.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Invention_Network

The Open Invention Network (OIN) is a company (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_%28law%29) that acquires patents (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent) and offer them royalty free (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royalty_free) "to any company, institution or individual that agrees not to assert its patents against the Linux (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux) operating system (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operating_system) or certain Linux-related applications". [1] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Invention_Network#_note-0)

Based in New York City (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City), the company was founded on November 10 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/November_10), 2005 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005) by IBM (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM), Novell (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novell), Philips (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philips), Red Hat (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Hat), and Sony (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony). Gerald Rosenthal is the chief executive of the company. Rosenthal had previously worked at IBM, as vice president of Intellectual Property and Licensing. [2] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Invention_Network#_note-1)

OIN has the Commerce One (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commerce_One) patents that cover web services, which potentially threaten anyone who uses web services. OIN's founders intend for these patents to encourage others to join, and to discourage legal threats against Linux and Linux-related applications.

The list of key applications considered by OIN, according to Mark H. Webbink, includes Apache (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_HTTP_Server), Eclipse (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eclipse_%28software%29), Evolution (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novell_Evolution), Fedora Directory Server (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fedora_Directory_Server), Firefox (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Firefox), GIMP (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIMP), GNOME (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNOME), KDE (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KDE), Mono (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mono_%28software%29), Mozilla (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla), MySQL (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MySQL), Nautilus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nautilus_file_manager), OpenLDAP (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenLDAP), OpenOffice.org (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenOffice.org), Perl (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perl), PostgreSQL (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PostgreSQL), Python (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Python_%28programming_language%29), Samba (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samba_%28software%29), SELinux (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SELinux), Sendmail (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sendmail), and Thunderbird (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Thunderbird).
Microsoft would not risk an all out nuclear Armageddon with Linux users and distributers, because they wouldn't survive the fallout while Linux would. It's the beauty of free software. If noone owns it, then noone can stop it.

FuturePilot
May 25th, 2007, 03:59 AM
Because they don't like competition:rolleyes:

atlfalcons866
May 25th, 2007, 04:05 AM
yeah thats why i bet they invented xbox.

kevinlyfellow
May 25th, 2007, 10:40 PM
I personally feel that the latest patent threats were not so microsoft can scare away linux customers, but were to get more companies to pay microsoft to use linux. Linux is too valuable for most companies to be scared away from, they are much more likely going to make a deal with microsoft so that they don't get sued. This is what the whole Novell deal was about.

atlfalcons866
May 27th, 2007, 06:40 PM
could microsoft sue because they created fat32 and ntfs?

23meg
May 27th, 2007, 07:22 PM
why is microsoft going to sue open soruce?

They won't; they'll just threaten to sue. It's a business strategy, typical of them.

http://www.redhatmagazine.com/2007/05/14/summit-2007-eben-moglen-on-microsofts-summer-of-fear/

Jenda
May 27th, 2007, 08:01 PM
Let them sue :)

This is an open invitation for MS to sue: http://digitaltippingpoint.com/wiki/index.php?title=Sue_me_first%2C_Microsoft

(Note: that invitation is intended to express our doubts that they will ever sue - read up ;))

kevinlyfellow
May 27th, 2007, 09:31 PM
could microsoft sue because they created fat32 and ntfs?

No known ntfs patent
http://www.ntfs-3g.org/support.html#patent

Here's freedos's take on the vfat patents
http://www.freedos.org/freedos/news/press/2006-fat.html

Daveski
May 28th, 2007, 12:22 AM
Simple really - this will either scare companies away from the growing Linux market share - or, MS might make some money from companies that use Windows and Linux.

If the market share is growing for Linux, then Microsoft must be losing market share. This seems to be a ploy (or the start of a ploy) to extract as much money as they can from customers who are starting to turn away from Microsoft.

Alterax
May 28th, 2007, 08:01 AM
Going back to the OP, I find it very interesting that Microsoft wishes to claim that the Linux Kernel breaks so many of their patents, but at the same time, they conveniently neglect to say which ones.

Ironically, there is so much that the Windows environment uses that was already in existence before even the original Windows was developed: Windowing environments, a graphical user interface, the TCP/IP protocol. All of these existed in the Unix and mac environments back when Gates was just learning to program. Yet hearing them talk you would think that they invented the computer to begin with, and the electricity that runs them.

It is my opinion that Microsoft has no intention of actually making a lawsuit against the open-source community, as it is next to impossible (if not completely so) to sue the proverbial linux-makers. They are no fools; they know this, and it is for precisely this reason that I think they are bluffing when they state that so many of their super-secret patents are infringed upon. It's merely a scare tactic to try to keep those who are less educated on the subject from exploring GNU/Linux options; nothing more and nothing less.

--Alterax

kevinlyfellow
May 28th, 2007, 08:20 AM
Going back to the OP, I find it very interesting that Microsoft wishes to claim that the Linux Kernel breaks so many of their patents, but at the same time, they conveniently neglect to say which ones.

Ironically, there is so much that the Windows environment uses that was already in existence before even the original Windows was developed: Windowing environments, a graphical user interface, the TCP/IP protocol. All of these existed in the Unix and mac environments back when Gates was just learning to program. Yet hearing them talk you would think that they invented the computer to begin with, and the electricity that runs them.

It is my opinion that Microsoft has no intention of actually making a lawsuit against the open-source community, as it is next to impossible (if not completely so) to sue the proverbial linux-makers. They are no fools; they know this, and it is for precisely this reason that I think they are bluffing when they state that so many of their super-secret patents are infringed upon. It's merely a scare tactic to try to keep those who are less educated on the subject from exploring GNU/Linux options; nothing more and nothing less.

--Alterax

Yeah, they don't intend to make it known since they have no incentive to make it known. They could contact the devs, and the violation would be fixed, but that doesn't help MS to get money. They will only reveal a patent if the lack of using the patent is going to cripple the competition.

SoulinEther
May 28th, 2007, 09:09 AM
Going back to the OP, I find it very interesting that Microsoft wishes to claim that the Linux Kernel breaks so many of their patents, but at the same time, they conveniently neglect to say which ones.

Ironically, there is so much that the Windows environment uses that was already in existence before even the original Windows was developed: Windowing environments, a graphical user interface, the TCP/IP protocol. All of these existed in the Unix and mac environments back when Gates was just learning to program. Yet hearing them talk you would think that they invented the computer to begin with, and the electricity that runs them.


Actually... Bill Gates helped invent some of those things... just not for his own company (Microsoft). No?

crouger92
July 22nd, 2007, 08:22 AM
in answer to the op:

microsoft is evil. in the second austin powers they should have based dr.evil in a building along Microsoft Way, Redmond and not Starbucks, Seattle.

its a business ploy; money and power is what they want. So keep using Linux and don't give it to them!!!!:guitar:

Quillz
July 22nd, 2007, 08:31 AM
why is microsoft going to sue open soruce?
They're not.

Jonq
July 22nd, 2007, 08:42 AM
well if they are its because their latest os sucks and they in need of income lol