If those words are actual quotes of Torvands I’d have to say the guy is a jerk. Some of his comments have validity, like tell them where the infringments are so they can fix them, but just blowing off Microsofts claim is foolish. They could not financial fight Microsoft if Microsoft has valid complaints. 90% of the world’s computers run on windows. They had better pay attention and find another way to respond. Name calling will not go over good in court.
“...but just blowing off Microsofts claim is foolish. They could not financial fight Microsoft if Microsoft has valid complaints. 90% of the world’s computers run on windows. They had better pay attention and find another way to respond. Name calling will not go over good in court.”
It takes a fool to sue someone who has nothing. Tell me, who will M$ sue? Linus doesn’t have enough money to pay for one cubicle at Redmond. The thousands of volunteers who work on the code have, on average, even less.
And, that code is already “in the wild”. M$ cannot sue enough people to make it go away. 40% of the world’s Internet servers, if not more, run on Linux. It’s not likely they’d choose M$ Windows as their platform should linux prove to be a legal liability.
I actually found his response quite refreshing - and I'm a lawyer.
That's generally how he is. He's a simple guy: show the facts or shut the hell up. Otherwise he can't be bothered.
They could not financial fight Microsoft if Microsoft has valid complaints.
There is a an organization that has a collection of patents held for open source software, many of which are likely infringed on by Microsoft products. They have promised to sue if open source is attacked. Plus, many of the claimed patents are over OpenOffice, owned by Sun, which has its own defensive portfolio. And the kicker is that IBM has a huge vested interest in Linux, and they have more patents than anyone.
Torvalds can say this because he know Microsoft would start a firestorm of patent suits that would paralyze the industry. Think of the cold war Mutual Assured Destruction, and one side was actually dumb enough to fire its missiles.
Torvalds is playing shrewdly. Inviting MS to lay its cards on the table was a good move; Microsoft's failure to do so damages its credibility.
Apparently you don't know that Linus wrote Linux. He would know if he intentionally violated Microsoft patents.
He would also know that any claims of "patent infringements" are bogus due to the nature of patent law applied to technology in the past 20 years. Many patents are completely bogus.
“They could not financial fight Microsoft if Microsoft has valid complaints.”
IBM would do the fighting and they hold older and better patents. Go look at the stock price of SCO and see who is really at risk.
Torvands called it right: FUD! (fear, uncertainty, doubt).
You might find it interesting to read Torvalds’ biography.
He’s been at the forefront of the open source movement for very good reason.
Yep he's foreign national here known for his big mouth. When questioned about patent lawsuits in e-mail previously he said "just hire a hit man and whack the stupid git". His idolizers think it was cool of course, as you see he even has a couple of them here.
An ex-coworker/friend of mine does some filesystem work, requiring least tangential involvement with the kernel community. He has described Torvalds as a jerk (or words to those effect) on more than one occassion. Apparently the guy is also a control freak, to the point that people think it is detrimental to kernel.