Microsoft to take down Linux and OpenOffice

[Durandal]

I really wish Macs had more programs that actually ran on them. If they did, I'd be looking at their OS right now as a very viable alternative.

What's missing for you besides games?

[Napoleon the Clown]

I really wish Macs had more programs that actually ran on them. If they did, I'd be looking at their OS right now as a very viable alternative.

What's missing for you besides games?

Moslty that, though according to someone on another board there's next to nothing for data recovery programs.

[bilateralrope]

Here is groklaw's article on this patent threat (emphasis mine):

Ooh, ooh, the bogeyman is gonna getcha with his stupid patents. Or maybe not.
Dated: 23:45 Sunday 13 May 2007
I'm being buried alive in email about the Fortune article about Microsoft's patent saber rattling, which I thought so unimportant I put it in News Picks earlier. Here's why I'm not unduly worried so far.

My reasons for not worrying are:

1. The recent KSR decision by the Supreme Court on obviousness means that suing anybody will result in a lot of those patents being thrown out. Yes. You've seen some of the issued Microsoft patents and you laughed. Extrapolate. The Microsoft v. AT&T case also has interesting implications. The patent landscape has radically altered.

2. FSF has told us that its lawyers believe that Microsoft has already become a distributor of GPL'd Linux, thanks to the SUSE vouchers and other things, so there is the defense against any patent litigation right there, because even GPLv2 has an implied patent license. Here. Read this: "Potential Defenses of Implied Patent License Under the GPL" [PDF]. Here's just one sentence: "In general, patent rights may be substantially limited due to an implied license when the target infringing activity is covered by the GPL." The GPL has power, and if Microsoft is now a distributor, that power works against it. I hope everyone out there understands now the importance of GPLv3. Read the article and you'll see that even Microsoft acknowledges that it can't use the Novell deal as a template, as it wished, for other such deals, because of GPLv3. Thank you, Eben Moglen.

3. Prior art searching is better organized. The NYU Peer to Patent Project begins in June. We're perfectly ready, and the more we volunteer to work on that project, the more we will develop skills in prior art searching. Didn't you notice that Microsoft is quoted in the article as saying that it doesn't wish to be specific about its patents, for fear the FOSS community will challenge them? Does that sound like they are sure their patents will survive a challenge? If *they* are not sure, what are *you* paying for, and sight unseen to boot? Are any of these patents court-validated? Even one?

4. What kind of companies threaten to hurt you if you don't pay them protection money? Do you want to do business with that type of company? Can Microsoft risk that inevitable reaction?

5. To actually sue, Microsoft has to sue its own customers. Microsoft itself has told us that its customers mostly use Linux too in a mixed environment. I believe SCO can provide them a useful example of how well it works out when you sue your own customers. I just can't believe Microsoft would do it.

6. The Pentagon uses FOSS. Is Microsoft going to sue the Pentagon? If it did, would it win? Even SCO knew better than to follow through with its threats to the Pentagon, and they are dumb as rocks.

7. This is, to me, Darl II: "Our precious IP is worth beeelions, and you must honor our sacred intellectual property, which is behind this curtain. We can't exactly show you or identify it with specificity, but trust me, it's worth oodles and boodles, and you are violating it. We just can't show you precisely where and how. But we don't want to sue you, so we will let you use Linux anyway, if you just sign on the dotted line and pay us for code we didn't write but we'd like to tax because it's winning in the marketplace and we don't know how to make money fair and square against it."

Notice I didn't even list large corporate friends of FOSS with large patent portfolios or OIN's patents or even antitrust law, which I've been told can trump patent law, when push comes to shove. Go to Google and type in antitrust patent and you'll see. Anybody think Microsoft might be vulnerable there?

In short, I took it that the Novell deal isn't working out as well as they thought, and maybe customers aren't clamoring for those vouchers, and it is harder to find customers than they expected, and now GPLv3 ruined their dreams of wealth from that sort of a deal, so it's FUD time! They want all the EV1's, so to speak, to sign up right away before they smarten up. Or maybe Microsoft wants to bully Red Hat into signing up for a peace agreement before GPLv3 is final. Good luck with that. But it struck me like a dog that has decided to back down from a fight which growls one last time and then slinks away. Not that one wishes to relax as long as a mad dog is in the neighborhood. You never know. And for sure we know now that the kinder gentler Microsoft was just a mask over its snout.

Of course, I'm not a lawyer. Here's one, Dennis Crouch of Patently-O:

Microsoft refuses to state which particular patents are infringed in an attempt to avoid retaliation from FOSS advocates. However, the statements certainly put Linux and its users under a dark cloud -- potentially sufficient for a declaratory judgment action under MedImmune v. Genentech (2006).

I hope no one bothers, personally. Let Microsoft sue if it wishes. If there is one thing we've learned from the SCO saga, it's that FUD doesn't kill you, so long as you know better than to give in to it. I'm not saying that Microsoft isn't a serious problem if it chooses to be annoying, but the stakes are so high for Microsoft too that I took the article as an admission that it's all over for patent peace agreements, and from now on it's Microsoft going door-to-door, threatening to bust companies' knee caps if people don't pay up. That isn't really a longterm business plan for a company that cares about its brand, particularly not after the Supreme Court has so radically altered the patent world. Microsoft's real problem in the marketplace is that folks already hate the company's business tactics. Making folks hate them more doesn't sound so smart. Even those who pay up in fear will be looking for a way to get away from a company that acts like that, don't you think? No one respects a bully. And so I take the article as a test, to see what the reaction will be more than an immediate threat. So boo loudly, please, and maybe Microsoft will get hit by the Cluetrain.

And if not, I guess Groklaw will be busy for the rest of my natural born days. I don't mind. I like doing Groklaw. And as for paying Microsoft for running a GNU/Linux system, and I do, I plan on paying them the exact amount I paid SCO.

There are quite a few links on the groklaw article if you want to see the sources.

[Durandal]

Moslty that, though according to someone on another board there's next to nothing for data recovery programs.

There are a few out there. But Leopard will ship with Time Machine, which should be all the data recovery your average Joe needs. Besides, if you realize it quickly enough, you can recover lost data through the clever use of shell scripts.

[Pu-239]

http://wayback.sourceforge.net/ orhttp://n0x.org/copyfs/ looks interesting for data recovery (not really a backup though in case of media failure).

Since MacOS has FUSE, might work there. No need to wait for Leopard

EDIT: Hrm, wayback seems abandoned. Well, there's copyfs.

[Durandal]

Too bad ZFS doesn't have a FUSE plug in.

[brianeyci]

So when a pharmacetical company adds a worthless piece of nothing to a drug when the patent is about to run out, that's okay? Because that's EXACTLY what a lot of drug companies do to draw out the patent rights, and it's a major abuse of the system to keep the fat cats rolling.

That really works both ways. Generic companies could add one worthless piece of shit and shit out a generic drug in an ideal world.

Intellectual Property is a very sticky issue. The basic concept is not a bad one. Inventors should profit from their developments. Artists should be compensated for their works. Companies should be able to get returns on their investments when they develop something new to help cover the cost of the research. Of course, both the patent system and copyright law have been hideously abused over the years into festering masses of what they were supposed to be. Pharmaceutical Companies make nonsense changes to drugs to keep the patent fresh. Entertainment companies keep copyrights going for decades after the death of the creators that originally created the content. There's a LOT more to the issue than just saying "the people who make the most money are wrong". People who make a bare fraction of what Microsoft makes still make a lot of money off of patented perpetual energy machines, pyramid power bullshit, anti-grav, and other bullshit. The systems are broken and in desperate need of revision, or at the very least a fix to stop basic abuses.

Yeah there's a lot more going on with the broken patent system. But if the patent system is so broken, don't you question the whole rationale of copyright? Here's why I don't believe it: people will pay to get the original product. People do that for Nike, they do that for Rolex, they do that for anything and companies even capitalize on this, printing certificates of authenticity. Knockoffs, even if they're exactly the same, aren't bought by anybody who can afford the original. For people who can't afford the original, they wouldn't be buying it anyway so the original company's profits are not harmed.

As for research, in an ideal world that would be covered by taxes, not profit. If you cover by profit you get what we get in our world: companies trying to market drugs on television commercials to people who don't need it, hoping for brand name recognition when the only person qualified to dispense drugs should be a doctor.

In my opinion anything worth keeping secret should be kept a trade secret. If it goes public, I have a hard time getting upset if someone commits a copyright violation, depending again on how much money they have. It all reduces to money.

The perpetual motion machines is really a consumer protection issue, like working seatbelts or lightbulbs that don't explode. I don't see what it has to do with copyright. If someone makes an X, and X makes people happy for whatever reason, then it's fine. The only problem is if X is a fraud and I don't think the patent office can ever or should ever be the front line in consumer protection. In short, I don't give a fuck if someone patents a perpetual motion machine.

[Pu-239]

Too bad ZFS doesn't have a FUSE plug in.

Actually, http://www.wizy.org/wiki/ZFS_on_FUSE , if you mean a zfs for fuse.

[Resinence]

But he does break down the total number allegedly violated - 235 - into categories. He says that the Linux kernel - the deepest layer of the free operating system, which interacts most directly with the computer hardware - violates 42 Microsoft patents. The Linux graphical user interfaces - essentially, the way design elements like menus and toolbars are set up - run afoul of another 65, he claims. The Open Office suite of programs, which is analogous to Microsoft Office, infringes 45 more. E-mail programs infringe 15, while other assorted FOSS programs allegedly transgress 68.

Now that Microsoft had identified the infringements, it could try to seek royalties. But from whom? FOSS isn't made by a company but by a loose-knit community of hundreds of individuals and companies. One possibility was to approach the big commercial Linux distributors like Red Hat and Novell that give away the software but sell subscription support services. However, distributors were prohibited from paying patent royalties by something whose very existence may surprise many readers: FOSS's own licensing terms.

Source

Seems like a good place to add We are here!
Nice collection of quotes

Hmm, I was thinking for a bit and realised. Microsoft won't release the patent violation details because they only get one chance at this, once the OSS community knows what parts of code are in violation they will change them just enough within a few days, and thats the end of that.

[K. A. Pital]

So, as I expected, it was a MicroFUD. Very well. I don't like FUD but it doesn't pose a direct threat, more like a hollow launch. Duh.

[Hotfoot]

That really works both ways. Generic companies could add one worthless piece of shit and shit out a generic drug in an ideal world.

Except that it doesn't for some reason. My point is that the little bitty laws that have been attached to patent and copyright laws since their inception have been overly detrimental.

Yeah there's a lot more going on with the broken patent system. But if the patent system is so broken, don't you question the whole rationale of copyright? Here's why I don't believe it: people will pay to get the original product. People do that for Nike, they do that for Rolex, they do that for anything and companies even capitalize on this, printing certificates of authenticity. Knockoffs, even if they're exactly the same, aren't bought by anybody who can afford the original. For people who can't afford the original, they wouldn't be buying it anyway so the original company's profits are not harmed.

You're massively confusing patent, trademark, and copyright in this argument. You patent a new technology, you trademark a brand, and you copyright information such as music, movies, books, and so on. Nike and Rolex are TRADEMARKS, not PATENTS. Now, if Nike makes some new rubber to put into the heels of its shoes, THAT is patentable.

Now, on to the idea that people will pay for name brand products when they have the money. This is true, though not universally so. People who have good money handling skills will look for better bargains when the two products are of similar quality. The thing is, not all knockoffs are of similar quality, which creates the illusion that the name brands are almost always better. Moreover, there are plenty of people on the streets of major cities who make a fair chunk of change selling fake name brands at low, low prices.

Now, as to copyright itself being an inherantly flawed principle (by which I assume you mean the concept of "those that create should be compensated for their effort"), allow me to paint you a picture. Let's say it wasn't just legal, but simple to get free music, movies, games, books, and so on copied from the original sources, do you really think that "common decency" would have people sending the original creators money for their works? Sure, some people might, but would it be enough to allow the creator to continue producing said content? Moreover, the laws protect the original creator of a work, so that if something is plagarised, the original creator can take the plagarist to task (re: purple pussy).

My big problem with copyrights and patents is that the systems are broken. I think it's a mistake to say that just because the systems are broken that the core concept behind the systems is flawed. For example, making the Star Wars prequels was not a bad idea in itself, but the execution of it was so horribly botched that the movies ended up sucking in comparison to what they could have been.

As for research, in an ideal world that would be covered by taxes, not profit. If you cover by profit you get what we get in our world: companies trying to market drugs on television commercials to people who don't need it, hoping for brand name recognition when the only person qualified to dispense drugs should be a doctor.

Well now you're talking about a world where all research is government funded with no exceptions for entrepenuers. You've swung completely into the other extreme. Never mind that the government could be just as greedy in this example, charging companies a tax on using the formula and so on. Of course, we also get to wonder where this magic tax money is going to come from in the first place. More taxes on the middle class? Wait, maybe we can slash the military budget to almost nothing!

In my opinion anything worth keeping secret should be kept a trade secret. If it goes public, I have a hard time getting upset if someone commits a copyright violation, depending again on how much money they have. It all reduces to money.

Well now you've fallen into the dangerous territory of determining what is worth keeping secret and what is not. Is an AIDS vaccine worth keeping secret? Is the recipe for KFC worth keeping secret? What if it's massively beneficial to the world, or massively harmful? Where is there oversight? The FDA, fucked up though it is, does exist for a reason.

The perpetual motion machines is really a consumer protection issue, like working seatbelts or lightbulbs that don't explode. I don't see what it has to do with copyright. If someone makes an X, and X makes people happy for whatever reason, then it's fine. The only problem is if X is a fraud and I don't think the patent office can ever or should ever be the front line in consumer protection. In short, I don't give a fuck if someone patents a perpetual motion machine.

The patent office should at least run a baseline test of "does this do what is claimed of it". Right now, all it does is run a baseline test of "does this match any existing patent". If not the patent office, then another organization which can make a patent void in some way.

[brianeyci]

I think it's a mistake to say that just because the systems are broken that the core concept behind the systems is flawed.

Maybe you're right. But then again this same rationale is used to support communism and for-profit healthcare, as things that could be but are not.

I guess the best way to look at this is look at countries where copyright infringement is rampant, and see if the compensation of artists is to such a degree that they can't live a good life. Fair is relative, which is why I always look at money. There is no easy answer to this, but pharmaceutical companies which rip off consumers, Microsoft wanting to bury free open source software and companies who worried about cheap generic AIDS drugs undercutting their profits therefore killing millions of Africans are real. I guess I'm just more of a pragmatist when it comes to copyright, because I see it as a victimless crime, at least in our society.

[Hotfoot]

You can't just look at one factor like money to determine what is fair. People who sell fake name brands in Manhattan and people who create bogus patents to create an air of respectability are abusing the system too, and it's not an abuse that should be tolerated.

I'll be honest, copyrights and patents are so fucked up right now that I'm ambivilent to skirting the law so long as the original creators still get enough compensation to continue working (and if they're dead, fuck it, the estate doesn't deserve shit).

Remember, people argued against socialized health care by criticizing a broken example, the VA hospitals in the mid 90's. It cuts both ways, what really needs to happen is that we need to come up with a solution that benefits everyone in some way. Obviously it will benefit companies less than what they are experiencing now, but if there is no consideration on that angle, it's not going to be fair and frankly the chances of it going through into law are so piss poor as to not even being worth mentioning.

[Lost Soal]

In my opinion anything worth keeping secret should be kept a trade secret. If it goes public, I have a hard time getting upset if someone commits a copyright violation, depending again on how much money they have. It all reduces to money.

Well now you've fallen into the dangerous territory of determining what is worth keeping secret and what is not. Is an AIDS vaccine worth keeping secret? Is the recipe for KFC worth keeping secret? What if it's massively beneficial to the world, or massively harmful? Where is there oversight? The FDA, fucked up though it is, does exist for a reason.

There's a far better question, how the fuck do you keep these things a trade secret. Say Honda spends billions creating an viable engine which is pollution free and easy to aquire fuel.
The only way for them to keep it a trade secret is to not use the bloody thing. The moment they start selling it, every other manufacturer buys one, opens it up, goes "ooh, so thats how its done" and starts selling their own versions. There goes all the money they spent developing the thing because now all people do is decide which brand they prefer, and since the competetors don't have the R&D costs to recoup, their versions can be cheaper.

Similarly with ant drugs, you put it on the market and the competetors put it in their labs to find out what the composition is and sell their own copies of it.

[Admiral Valdemar]

If a design is blatantly copied, say, Honda's VTEC engine, then they can seriously ruin that copy-cat company's day. There are patents that mean such a design is safe from imitation within certain limitations. Obviously no one can patent the ICE itself, since EVERY car uses internal combustion. However, if yours uses a special valve or computer chip or something that identifies it and is suitably unique, then imitation is harder to do without infringing that patent.

Though that doesn't stop a company going another route to achieve a similar goal. Look at Dyson's bagless vacuum cleaner which is a huge success, then see how many knock-off designs appeared from Electrolux, Hoover and so on. Same concept, different execution. Depending on the product, you may or may not be able to do this well, if at all (the patent holder has to prove the supposed copy design is not significantly different to classify as a separate product, rather than a direct copy with a different badge).

When it comes to drugs and computer code, things get somewhat iffier.

[Darth Wong]

Copyright should be split into profit rights and other kinds of copyright, and the profit rights should be limited to 17 years, just like patents. That would solve a lot of this software copyright nonsense, not to mention making a shitload of music royalty-free (and really, why the fuck should musicians get lifetime royalties when inventors don't?)

As for patents themselves, the obvious solution is to tighten up the patent application process, but that won't happen. The American legal system is wonderfully optimized to allow the strong to bully the weak.

[bilateralrope]

And now Microsoft is saying they won't sue. Link

Microsoft Won't Sue Linux Users, Company Exec Says

Instead, Microsoft said it wants to create more arrangements that mirror the company's deal with Linux distributor Novell.

By Paul McDougall
InformationWeek
May 14, 2007 04:00 PM

Despite its claim to own 42 patents used in the creation of the Linux kernel and hundreds more embedded in other free software programs, Microsoft does not plan to take a page from The SCO Group and sue users of the open source operating system, a senior company official said Monday.

"We're not litigating. If we wanted to we would have done so years ago," said Horacio Gutierrez, Microsoft's VP for intellectual property and licensing, in an interview.

Instead, Microsoft wants to create more arrangements that mirror the company's deal with Linux distributor Novell. In November, the two agreed to share intellectual property and pledged not to sue each other's customers. "We created a bridge between two worlds that before were perceived to be unbridgeable," said Gutierrez.

Microsoft's problem: The Free Software Foundation -- the group that controls Linux licensing terms -- is mulling changes to open source copyrights that would prohibit Linux distributors from entering into the type of quid pro quo that Novell has with Microsoft. Version 3 of the General Public License is expected to be published in July and many believe it will incorporate such changes.

Microsoft isn't happy with the proposed revisions. "The latest version of GPL v.3 attempts to tear down the bridge," the company said in a statement released Monday.

Even so, Microsoft would not likely use the courts to try and extract royalty payments from corporate Linux users that it believes are violating its patents even if it's no longer able to strike deals with Linux distributors. "The bridge that we built is one bridge, one particular way of dealing with this problem," said Gutierrez. "It's not the only way in which the problem can be addressed," he said.

The SCO Group, a Unix developer, incurred considerable industry wrath after it sued Linux users Daimler Chrysler and Autozone in 2004 for license violations. Like Microsoft, SCO believes Linux contains software code that is protected by its patents. The company has also sued IBM over intellectual property claims.

The issue was thrust into the spotlight on Sunday, when Fortune magazine published a story in which Gutierrez and Microsoft chief counsel Brad Smith claimed that the Linux kernel violates 42 Microsoft patents while other free software -- including Open Office -- infringes on an additional 193. It was the first time Microsoft put a specific number on its Linux patent claims.

Gutierrez said the comments were made not as a threat, but with the intention of highlighting an intellectual property issue affecting the entire computer industry. "It's important for everyone to understand that there is a real problem with Linux patents and that there is a need for a solution," he said.

Microsoft currently collects royalties from some companies that use Linux in their computing environments, Gutierrez said. However, he declined to indicate the number, the dollar amount Microsoft receives from those payments, or identify any of the companies by name.

Gutierrez also said Microsoft is not likely to publicly list which specific patents it believes are infringed upon by open source software. "We're not going to have a discussion publicly with that level of detail," he said.

Microsoft has made the patents in question known to corporate Linux users and distributors, Gutierrez said.

[Xisiqomelir]

GPL 3 can't get here soon enough.

[Darth Holbytlan]

Copyright should be split into profit rights and other kinds of copyright, and the profit rights should be limited to 17 years, just like patents. That would solve a lot of this software copyright nonsense, not to mention making a shitload of music royalty-free (and really, why the fuck should musicians get lifetime royalties when inventors don't?)

Could you clarify what you mean by "other kinds of copyright"? Why wouldn't simply limiting copyright terms to 17 years be sufficient?

[The Yosemite Bear]

how about preventing someone from copywritting something that was already public domain. So that say one writter can't sue another for stealing the plot of a shakespear play....

[The Dark]

Microsoft had nothing here. Most likely, it would have negated the patents. No court has ruled on the legality of patents on software, and the precedent from the early days was that code could not be copyrighted, because it was mathematics, and math is (to use non-technical terminology) public domain.

Also, Microsoft could have lost bigtime. Given that they distribute coupons through the deal with Novell, there's a possibility of countersuit that, as a distributor of Linux, they would be required to open source all of their software. Regardless of the actual merits, a judge could level an injunction banning the sale of all Microsoft software until a determination could be made as to whether they were profiting from private sales of open source software. Both would be highly unlikely, but I can't see Microsoft taking that risk.

[The Yosemite Bear]

Not to mention that they stole the Windows format from Apple, and won because the code was math based...

[Darth Holbytlan]

how about preventing someone from copywritting something that was already public domain. So that say one writter can't sue another for stealing the plot of a shakespear play....

That's already the case. You can make a derivative work based on something in the public domain (such as making 10 Things I Hate About You based upon The Taming of the Shrew), but the copyright only covers the original elements you added.

[Xisiqomelir]

Oh good, I was afraid Cravath, Swaine and Moore wouldn't have anything left to do this year after destroying Boies Schiller.

Addendum, I was also afraid that Groklaw would just become a frozen archive. Now I can keep reading PJ.

[General Soontir Fel]

Copyright should be split into profit rights and other kinds of copyright, and the profit rights should be limited to 17 years, just like patents. That would solve a lot of this software copyright nonsense, not to mention making a shitload of music royalty-free (and really, why the fuck should musicians get lifetime royalties when inventors don't?)

Could you clarify what you mean by "other kinds of copyright"? Why wouldn't simply limiting copyright terms to 17 years be sufficient?

One issue is the right to produce derivative works. I can write a sequel to a Jane Austen novel, and the only problem with publishing it would be finding someone to accept the deal. If I tried the same with Lord of the Rings, I'd get sued by the Tolkien estate. The official copyright standard (US) is 75 years or the lifetime of the author, whichever is later, but the law has been changed through lobbying efforts to extend that (the best known case of that is Disney's Mickey Mouse).