Bracing for MS Patent Suit Attack

Wired News ^ | 14 November 2002 | Robert McMillan

[ShadowAce]

Hackers like Jeremy Allison would rather pore over source code than legal documents, but the recent Microsoft antitrust settlement decision has the Samba leader thinking about lawsuits. Patent lawsuits.

The open-source developer fears that, having settled its long-running antitrust suit, Microsoft will now become more aggressive in competing with open-source software. And for Samba -- software that allows Windows machines to read files on Linux servers -- as well as other open-source projects that compete with Microsoft's products, that may mean dealing with patent lawsuits.

[ShadowAce]

Ping

[B-Chan]

From the title, I thought for a moment that this might be a Gundam-related thread.

[ShadowAce]

Ping

[rdb3]

The Penguin Ping.

Wanna be Penguified? Just holla!

Got root and cornbread stuffing?

[TechJunkYard]

Such [patent-infringement] lawsuits, [Cox] says, are "currently the normal technique for attacking competitors in the U.S.A., regardless of the validity of any patent involved."

Also used for various get-rich-quick schemes too.

[ShadowAce]

Yeah--Don't forget the British Telecom lawsuit against Prodigy earlier this year regarding hyperlinks.

[Dominic Harr]

I'm just going to say this once, then sit back and watch the opinions of others:

The very fact that the consensus media spin is "Settlement is big win for MS' should be the first clue here.

This settlement was *exactly* what was needed. Perhaps it even went too far. MS *has* been curbed. Just watch.

Do NOT fall for the media spin. Do NOT act like D party members ("if it's in the press, it must be true").

The very fact that pretty much none of these stories even mention the substance of the conviction (MS's use of fraud and coercion) should likewise be an interesting piece of data for you to consider.

MS will now have to compete in an industry without the use of coercion and fraud -- something they've never done before.

MS has only succeeded where they could use coercion and fraud to leverage one product to sell another.

I sincerely hope what is left of FReepers here wouldn't just swallow a media spin hook, line and sinker!

This should be interesting to see.

[dyed_in_the_wool]

MS will now have to compete in an industry without the use of coercion and fraud -- something they've never done before.

Does this include buying the competition?
It seems to me it's the philosophy of embrace and extend that has gotten MicroSoft where it is. Precious little has been either coercion or fraud.
Basically it has either bought the standard, bought a sub-standard standard and given it away, or developed an alternative and given it away.
Sun was the first one to call J++ what it was and sue. Netscape quickly jumped on board. Nobody in the first case (like Visio) would complain because they got wheelbarrows full of cash.
There's a good analysis of the judge's ruling over at InfoWorld.
You may be right, but I'm not so sure. Let me see the leash work and then I'll believe that the dog is chained.

[Bush2000]

MS has only succeeded where they could use coercion and fraud to leverage one product to sell another.

Rrrrrrrrrrright, Harr. People were dragged kicking and screaming to buy Windows-based computers. /SARCASM

[Bush2000]

It should be amusing to watch the GPL cheapskates fight patent-infringment lawsuits. I wonder whose pockets will empty first?

[dheretic]

I wonder whose pockets will empty first?

The taxpayers whose courts will be tied up hearing yet another frivolous lawsuit. Microsoft cannot compete on merit so it uses the law as a big stick to bludgeon its competition to death.

[Bush2000]

The taxpayers whose courts will be tied up hearing yet another frivolous lawsuit. Microsoft cannot compete on merit so it uses the law as a big stick to bludgeon its competition to death.

Maybe you haven't studied this issue in school, college boy. Patents protect intellectual property from infringement. If developers like Samba and others tread on other peoples' IP, they have the option of licensing the technology or not. But if they don't pay, they better be prepared to defend themselves. It's simply the way that patent law works. You may not like it but it's been that way since Benjamin Franklin's time.

[dheretic]

Patents protect intellectual property from infringement.

Information is not something that can be rightfully owned. The SAMBA developers have a right to implement whatever technology they choose to that does not put national security at risk. Microsoft has a right to take any ideas from open source projects it wants and use them in its products. The SAMBA developers should just tell Microsoft and the US Government to fsck off and go about their business. And if it comes to it, any Americans on the team should leave the country to spit on the government which limits their creativity to protect its revenue stream.

[demlosers]

what happened to Gary Kildall?

Legend has it that in 1980, Kildall missed a crucial meeting with IBM about buying his operating system for their coming PC because he was out flying one of his planes. In reality, Kildall was only late for the meeting. But he still missed the boat by refusing IBM's offer of a $200,000 royalty-free license fee for CP/M. Bill Gates came up with a very similar OS called MS-DOS and sold it to IBM for $50,000. Kildall claimed Gates stole CP/M's best features and threatened to sue, but never did. On July 6, 1994, Kildall walked into a Monterey biker bar. He got into a brawl and consequently died of head injuries.

Interesting. Something else I found:
Is it true Bill Gates was/is a hacker and thief?

[altair]

I sincerely hope what is left of FReepers here wouldn't just swallow a media spin hook, line and sinker!

This is old news. We've been concerned about software patents from day 1. To name one example, gzip was invented because the compression algorithm we were previously using was patented. To name another example, the newest compression program is called bzip2. The "2" is there because it turned out that the original bzip used a patented algorithm.

Speaking as the developer who personally removed all the GIF files (converting them to PNG) from the XEmacs distribution, this is serious.

[ThinkDifferent]

Patents protect intellectual property from infringement.

That's well and good in theory, but in practice software patents are applied for and granted on obvious and pre-existing ideas, and then used as a weapon of intimidation to extort from companies and individuals that can't afford to defend themselves.

[TheEngineer]

Oops... I thought this was going to be an article about the junior US Senator from New York's 2008 presidential campaign...

Bracing for Ms. Pant Suit Attack.

Need to keep my monitor cleaner. :-)

[HiTech RedNeck]

If M$ can, it will in a heartbeat, get a court injunction declaring Linux to be verboten in the USA and whatever other countries it can. And as to the ensuing litigation, "someone" just articulated the mindset well: "whose pockets will be emptied first"? I wish Torvalds well in changing the open source license and the inevitable infinite-pocket challenge THAT will face as well -- since to date the licenses have been open ended and trying to revoke that will be non trivial.