Microsoft's Ballmer Warns Asia of Linux Lawsuits (Microsoft pulls a SCO in Asia)

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp. Chief Operating Officer Steve Ballmer on Thursday warned Asian governments that they could face intellectual rights-infringement lawsuits for using rival open-source operating platforms such as Linux.

Linux is open-code software that is freely available on the Internet and easily modified by users.

Its growing popularity with companies and governments around the world, and particularly in Asia, is a threat to the global dominance of Microsoft's proprietary Windows platform.

Ballmer, speaking in Singapore at Microsoft's Asian Government Leaders Forum, said that Linux violated more than 228 patents. He did not provide any detail on the alleged violations, which the Linux community disputes.

"Someday, for all countries that are entering the WTO (World Trade Organization), somebody will come and look for money owing to the rights for that intellectual property," he added.

Linux users got a scare earlier this year when software developer SCO Group Inc. sued a company for using Linux, which SCO claimed contains software code that it owns.

SCO is also embroiled in a lawsuit against IBM, claiming that the computer giant illegally built SCO's software code into Linux.

Singapore's Ministry of Defense last month switched 20,000 personal computers to run on open-source software instead of the Microsoft operating platform.

Other governments in the region are also looking to develop open-source software. China, Japan and South Korea this year agreed to jointly develop open-source software running on Microsoft's rival Linux operating platform.

The Chinese government, in particular, sees its reliance on Microsoft as a potential threat. Conspiracy buffs believe certain patches in the Windows code might give U.S. authorities the power to access Chinese networks and disable them, possibly during a war over Taiwan.

Ballmer said the security fears some governments had about using Microsoft software were overblown.

"We think our software is far more secure than open-source software. It is more secure because we stand behind it, we fixed it, because we built it. Nobody ever knows who built open-source software," he added.

Actually Ximian Evolution can connect to an Exchange server and offer all the same features outlook does.

I stand corrected. Thanks.

I played with Evolution just a bit once. It was a bit busy for me, but, then again, so is Outlook/Exchange. Pop, IMAP at most is about the most I have a desire for in a mail client. Don't even like my NNTP client in the same app. That's just me though.

Seeing as video drivers can do things like, well, set the clock speed of the gpu and ram I'm having a hard time understand how you would prevent them from impacting stability.

Because the drivers should not live in Kernel land (use Kernel Memory Space) short of s Bus going drivers should not touch the core of the system. If a video driver fails I should lose my monitor and get a ton of crap put out to an error log.

But the whole reason you have a driver is the O/S by itself doesn't know how to interact fully with a piece of hardware.

What they understand is that a Turing machine teaching you the essentials of an OS. Other than the system Bus, Memory, Processor, and maybe some storage you should not *need* anything else to keep a system running. If the monitor, mouse, keyboard, speakers, Ethernet, .... go the system itself should not crash.

Something along the lines of... well, we can add another layer of abstraction and keep the system more stable, or we can not and have faster video. Seeing as there are a lot of people who rely on NT to deliver good performance on applications such as Microstation, they chose the latter.

NT was there shot at a server environment, people run web servers, database servers, mail servers and the lot on them. It was a long time from designing NT to releasing an NT Kernel intended for the desktop. So when putting together a server whats more important fast flashy graphics or stability (Hint on my *nix servers I rarely even install X).

Maybe I'm naive, but I have a feeling this was a hotly debated topic inside Microsoft. Maybe it was a wrong decision, but if you want to debate it you can't ignore the impact it would have on performance.

Sure we can, with Video cards themselves having so much memory all MS needed to do with another layer is provide a solid API (I know well documented API's are hard to get out of Redmond) so they can let the card do all the work.

SGI puts video performance in its own layer and I think they are kinda known for something to do with graphics..

Other than the system Bus, Memory, Processor, and maybe some storage you should not *need* anything else to keep a system running.

OK, so you need the memory, processor, and system bus to keep the system running? The Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP) is attached directly to the primary system bus (unlike older PCI cards which where on the PCI bus, separated by a bus bridge between the primary system bus). The AGP controller also has a direct line into the memory controller. (I'm not quite sure of the workings of PCI-express so I won't going into that).

But at least with AGP clearly a layer of abstraction was removed with the switch from PCI to AGP cards. AGP based video cards can view the main memory and video memory as one dynamic pool.

What I'm trying to get at is that you are claiming that removing drivers from Kernel land could in some way prevent a system going down from a driver error. In that claim you are making one big assumption, and that is that the hardware is as encapsulated as you feel the software is / or should be. That may be true, but I don't think that is necessarily will be in a general case. Adding that abstraction may add complexity to the hardware design, and that will have to be paid for either in transistors or speed. There is always a trade-off.

Maybe there is a very good separation in hardware in between the AGP card and the system bus which will prevent a problem no matter what crap the AGP cards starts to spew... but I haven't heard of it. I will be perfectly honest, now days I mostly deal with DSP hardware, so it is perfectly possible that I just missed out on that. The important thing isn't whether there is or not, it is whether or not you instinctively make that assumption or verify.

But in any case that is what I meant by my comment about the CompSci vs CompEng or EE view. There are just as many engineering trade-offs taken in hardware as there are in software.

If the monitor, mouse, keyboard, speakers, Ethernet, .... go the system itself should not crash.

Sure, that's why I pointed out driver problems can be mitigated to a degree, certainly a bad mouse vs a bad video card hardware or driver are two very different.

MS needed to do with another layer is provide a solid API

I think this overlooks a lot of the vendor specific portions of the drivers, and assumes MS would have a lot more information on the video card than is realistic.

-paridel

I think this overlooks a lot of the vendor specific portions of the drivers, and assumes MS would have a lot more information on the video card than is realistic.

No, not if MS says to the vendors this is our API, you will use it or yyour sttuff will not be compatable with our system (Obvilusly this is something that has to be done when a new system is released NT was the perfect chance). Let the card manufactures make good use of the 256M they are putting on the card.

I cut my Linux teeth on Knoppix. Knoppix is good, but in my opinion, Mepis is better. You can order the SimplyMepis CD for $9.95. Like Knoppix, it will run "live" from the CD without installing, but if you do decide to install it, it is easier than Knoppix and has even more goodies.

I've installed both, and Mepis is a bit more user friendly...in fact, it's billed as "Point and Click Linux". It also works pretty well with older hardware...right now, I'm running it on a 433 Mhz laptop with 196 MB of ram, and it is plenty fast enough to get work done.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.