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

Reuters ^ | 11/18/2004 | Reuters

[Prime Choice]

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.

[TechJunkYard]

Cisco Aironet, Orinoco, Linksys, Intel Pro/Wireless, Lucent WaveLAN. Considering that the vendor "workaround" is to recompile the drivers, edit configuration files, and basically waste about 3 or 4 days in endless nonsense, I'm not going to waste any more time on it.

WaveLAN is a little old, but I've got the Orinoco and Linksys cards to work with the standard Prism2 drivers. Oh, and the old D-Link Air cards too.

Here's the resource I used: http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_Tourrilhes/Linux/

Several of us have now stated that we've got the stuff to work. If it's too difficult for you, if it's a waste of your time, then go back to Windows and be happy.

[Prime Choice]

Perhaps when you make enough money to throw away tens of thousands of dollars on a themed wedding for your wife you won't be quite so bitter.

He does have a wealth of bitterness in general, doesn't he? It'd be sad if it wasn't so funny.

Congrats on the wedding, BTW. : )

[Knitebane]

Thanks.

[N3WBI3]

Umm I have never in my life used novell, and I could give a crap if 'you buy it' because the only OS bigot aroud here is you..

[N3WBI3]

Thats Kinda funny because other than changing the order of services on one distro (Fedora C2), I have never had trouble with a wireless card.. I have never even needed vendor drivers the ones included in the distro take care of Orinoco, Linksys, and Intel Pro/Wireless devices (I have never tried the others)

The order of servicesin fedora is troublesome but nothing a quick chkconfig wont fix..

[MarkL]

That may have been true of Windows 98, dude. But not XP. You might want to upgrade your 486.

Hmmmm... The first thing I tried to run on my brand new Dell laptop, which came with WinXP Pro, was the Windows XP Tour. About 30 seconds into the tour, the system blue screens and reboots! I've never been able to get much farther than that on the tour. And I've now had the system for almost 3 years.

Mark

[Paridel]

Windows XP came out somewhere around October 25, 2001 right? That means that's it's only been out just over a three years... you were running it way back then?

You are a braver man than I. I stuck with 2000 until Spring 2002 at least if I remember right. I have friends that refuse to move to any new MS products until SP1 is released, and while I certainly don't follow that rule, I do like to stick with what is working for me.

Anyway, the real question here is why were you trying to run the tour? When I first read your post I was thinking to myself... strange... I don't remember it crashing on me before. But then I quickly realized that it could format your hard drive 30 seconds into the tour for all I would know. ;-) I always new someone must run the darn things, cause Microsoft seems to be pretty fond of sticking them in their products...

-paridel

[Paridel]

I'm just curious, in your experience is there native support for most wireless devices you help people configure or do most people end up having to use some type of Linuxant / ndiswrapper (i.e. loading standard Windows NDIS drivers for use on Linux)

I'm asking because I have a Dell Inspiron 8500 (very nice machine by the way) with a built in Dell TrueMobile 1300 Wireless LAN Mini PCI card and that seems to be the only way it is supported under Linux at the moment. I'm not really clear if I'm just an odd man out or if that is typical of 802.11g devices built in to newer laptops.

-paridel

[ohCompGk]

I think the main things you need to consider before jumping are the apps you run on top of the OS.

In a business environment you have to consider third party apps of which few release Linux versions. Insurance companies, pharmacies, car dealers and such usually rely on occupation specific apps that tie them into MS. If this is not your case (and you are considering for a business environment) then download Open Office (openoffice.org) and run it on windows to see how comfortable you are with it as an office product. This will be your biggest step. OSAS has a good cross platform accounting system that you can get your feet wet in Windows before you switch (not free though). As far as making the jump from Windows to KDE goes, it's no worse than a new version of windows.

As far as development goes, you should develop in the environment you are developing for. Web development still favors MS. I've found nothing in the Linux world that compares to Dreamweaver and Gimp comes in second to Photoshop. Perl and php have always been a text editor type of development so they don't matter (although KDE's text editor works great with color markup of just about any language).

As far as servers go, Linux has it hands down. MS has never been able to compete with *nix in this market.

Games... throw them in the trash and start over although there are many games released for Linux plus a whole bunch of free ones.

As far as stability goes, I've crashed them both. Like my ski instructor told me when I was young "It's not how many times you fall it's why you fall". Linux does have a stability record that is hard to argue with no matter where your loyalties lie.

If you do decide to make the jump be sure to check the hardware compatibility list for the distro that you've chosen. If you're running a newer Dell or IBM you shouldn't have many problems other than internal modems. Linux just won't take to WinModems in spite of several attempts by open groups. If you need a modem go out and buy an external one. Orinco/Lucent 802.11b works just fine with Linux. They are all the wireless products that I have experience with and I did beat my head against the wall a few days to get them going the first time I tried (several years and versions ago).

[MarkL]

My laptop is a Dell Inspiron, and at the time, the only options I had were WinME or WinXP (home or pro). I wanted Win2K, but I would have had to buy a Latitude, and they weren't available with a DVD player back then.

I wanted to see what was new in Windows XP, and I had a little bit of time on my hands. I just found it odd, and all my co-workers thought it was hillarious.

Mark

[melbell]

"Give Linux a try. Then come back and report on how much time you waste. It'll be a hoot."

wow...You make so many rediculous assumptions...I have been using Linux for almost 3 years now. And I never once regretted making the switch.

You have made SO MANY ignorant comments in this thread that it makes me sad...I pity you.

[Stratman]

Cool stuff. Thanks.

I don't play many games, so those aren't an issue.

I mostly just use office, browser and email applications. (Word, Excel, Mozilla and Outlook).

My other main computer application is stock trading. Once I pass the bar and have money again, I will resume day-trading. I have seen one software package out there somewhere for technical charting and I am sure there are others.

Are there programs that convert files? For example, if I download an excel spreadsheet can I convert it to the Linux program without any hassle?

I haven't crashed XP, and in fact have only crashed one Microsoft system. Then again, I defrag and virus check regularly (at least 1 a week and usually more often), scan for spyware and have a firewall (zone alert).

I have one main issue with Microsoft, and that is cost. It amazes me that the evil empire charges as much as they do for their programs. I can't believe that they cost that much. I was pricing Red hat software awhile ago, and their basic package was incredibly cheap. I liked that.

I am a soon-to-be-attorney, and will probably work either independently or with a small firm.

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

Yes, even on XP (at least the home edition). My son's computer (three months old) crashes at least once a month.

[N3WBI3]

Are there programs that convert files? For example, if I download an excel spreadsheet can I convert it to the Linux program without any hassle?

Actually openoffice.org reads and writes to xls, doc, ppt, and others so that you can deal with people using windows. Try out openoffice.org on your windows platform first. There is a windows, Linux, OSX version and they are pretty much the exact same across platforms. putting it on windows first will giev you a feel for what it offers / lacks.

You als might want to install firefox on you windows box, its my default browser when I use windows and like open office its the exact same across operating systems. This will give you the look and feel, it will also let you know if any of the sites you use act hinky (there are a very few out there which only do ie)

I haven't crashed XP, and in fact have only crashed one Microsoft system.

It sounds like you do pretty standard stuff, and as GE says so long as the only things you use are MS certified youre pretty stable with XP (I have seen it lock and crash more than once but it is an imporvement). My issue is that I have to say in the MS area on the application side to keep the os from crashing, thats really a serious design flaw. Miscorsoft is not alone in this (I have seen Oracle hurt the redhat kernel) but ms is the most proliffic example of this.

It amazes me that the evil empire charges as much as they do for their programs.

Not their programs, their OS. I have no issues paying for good software and Office / Exchange Server are two really decent MS programs. I think its sick how much they charge for an Operating system.

I was pricing Red hat software awhile ago, and their basic package was incredibly cheap. I liked that.

Depending on how much support you need you can just use Fedora and pay nothing. But the redhat WS is not bad cost though I have never used the support for it.

[Paridel]

and all my co-workers thought it was hillarious.

I agree, it is a pretty funny story. ;-)

-paridel

[Bush2000]

... the only OS bigot aroud here is you...

LMFAO! You guys are the biggest Linux salesmen around here. All you do here is extol the virtues of Linux and open source crapware ("Linux good! Microsoft bad!"). So your anecdotal "stories" about crashing WinXP machines are worthless tripe. You have an OS axe to grind. Go ahead and deny it -- your posts speak for themselves.

[Paridel]

I never once regretted making the switch.

I'm a little more curious as to why you made the switch. By that I mean why did you stop using Windows, not why did you start using Linux. My Linux box is pretty useful for development purposes, and of course I have a number of servers that I run on it, so I certainly can't and won't argue with the utility of a Linux box. I really like being able to throw up a quick perl/cgi hack to do stuff like converting pdf to ps, etc that I can connect to remotely from my laptop, etc.

But I can't really do without a lot of applications on windows, and I still prefer MS Office to anything on Linux, and I have a lot of tools for embedded development I can't get on Linux. I'm sure most people have programs that can't run on Linux that they miss, ones without open source alternatives, or where the open source alternatives just aren't quite as good.

With active kvm switches being so cheap now days, and the price of a decent homemade Linux box being a couple hundred bucks, why not use both? There is always dual booting if you can't bother with the hassle of two machines. Why only Linux? If Linux was really able to (at this point in time) completely replace windows I don't think people would be bothering with wine or vmware, but the beautiful thing is that there is no reason you have to give up Windows to use Linux.

I guess it is because I'm an engineer, but I view an operating system as simply a tool, and Windows and Linux are better suited to different tasks not just by their innate qualities but by the applications available for them. Administered correctly either one should be stable and secure. There are applications on both that I don't want to live without, so I use both.

Because of that I don't try to convince people to come to my side of the fence and use on o/s or the other. But there are people who spend an inordinate amount of time trying to get something working on Linux when it works fine under windows and I often wonder why they bother. This goes both ways, I have a friend who wasted way more time than he should have trying to get apache and postgresql working on an XP machine, which is equally dumb.

-paridel

[Constantine XIII]

ROFL!

[melbell]

Actually, I *DO* dual boot. Mr. Melbell's computer dual boots also, and then we have 2 linux only boxes that we use as servers just on our local network.

I didn't mean that I completely switched from Windows to Linux. Well, for a while I did, but then I got into some games that are only ported for Windows, so I got Mr. Melbell to set up Grub so I could easily boot to either OS. Now I only use Windows for games. I have winex, but it's better for running smaller softwares, not so hot at Games (from what I have found).

As for MS Office, I use Open Office on Linux. I like it but it's a little more difficult to get used to than MS Office is. But I cannot spare the hard drive space on my Windows drive because it's only 13 gigs and a couple games will completely eat that up.

But that's the ONLY thing we do in Windows. Everything else, we boot to Linux. I would very much like to have a second box all to myself, to have Linux on one and Windows on the other, and then just use a switch to change monitor, keyboard, and mouse back and forth. But the switch for monitor that we have (to switch between our two servers) makes the picture look bad...like purple or something. If you have a good one you can recommend please let me know! As I do have an extra computer on the floor in the computer room that isn't being used and could easily be set up to run my Linux! :)

[Prime Choice]

You have an OS axe to grind.

The only axe I have to grind is people trying to blow sunshine up my butt about how wonderful Windows is when it's the biggest distributor of viruses, trojans and worms on the entire planet. Hell, Microsoft's malware alone generates more security incidents than any OS has a right to, yet the corporate heads ramble on and on about how "secure" their crap is while bellyaching that they got their dumb asses 0wn3d AGAIN by some punk kid with a Visual Basic compiler.

And the best you can do is whine about our preferring Linux over the crap you champion. Get a frickin' life, chimp.