Linux acts much more like OSX than Vista does, the popular foreign Ubuntu version is often claimed to be almost an exact copy of OSX look/feel.
That falls under export controls. This doesn't. Is that too hard to grasp?
Just because Clinton removed export controls on software doesn't mean they shouldn't exist. Only free software utopias such as yourself support such free giveaways of US technology to adversaries.
it also affects small proprietary software companies. They don't have the defensive patent portfolios of the big guys, so the end of this trend will be that the only people developing software are the large corporations.
Ridiculous. Most patent claims are made by the small against the large. To my knowledge, Microsoft has been sued several times by smaller firms for patent infringement, but has never actually launched a suit against someone else, especially smaller companies.
You are again evading the point. Vista was designed to work a lot like VMS, a proprietary operating system, by former DEC employees who took their knowledge with them. Linux was designed to openly published standards for UNIX-like interoperability. So which one is the copy?
Then there's of course QDOS, which was basically an 8086 port of CP/M, but not done by DRI, the owner of CP/M. After Microsoft licensed this blatant copy, they hired away the guy who developed it from his company to port it again to the 8088 so they could call it MS-DOS. That's not a copy?
Just because Clinton removed export controls on software doesn't mean they shouldn't exist.
They exist for everyone or no one. Somebody writing software covered by ITAR would have it blocked whether it was for proprietary or free software. BTW, ITAR hurt our software industry the most, since they lost competitiveness in foreign markets due to having to sell downgraded systems overseas while local foreign companies were making fully-capable systems. This was especially true for anything using public cryptography since software developers all over the world knew how to implement it and could sell their products based on it (but we couldn't).
Ridiculous.
Not. This article is about Microsoft gearing up to squash a smaller competitor through patents.