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Redmond (WA) - Microsoft's next big legal endeavor will be to bring down Linux, OpenOffice.org, and others for infringing on a total of 235 patents.

The software giant's head lawyer, Brad Smith, has blasted the two software alternatives as being blatant rip-offs of the expensive products created by Microsoft.

http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/32016/118/

And they're going to do this, how?

Admiral Valdemar wrote:And they're going to do this, how?

By swamping them in legal costs they can't absorb.

Well well, here's a hypothetical. Suppose Microsoft is right and OpenOffice and Linux are infringing on patents. Many patents. Should I give a fuck about Microsoft's screeching. I don't think so, because Microsoft already has so much fucking money.

Now where are the tards who are going to say, "how much is too much money," strawmanning my argument from the gap between rich and poor to no rich people at all. I bet they won't defend Microsoft with the same logic as they use to defend the average, hardworking middleclass aka average gas guzzling suburban assweed. I don't mind wealth redistribution one bit.

Intellectual property to make money has always been a gray area to me. The most intellectual people -- academics -- work and love libraries and publish their works to try and reach the largest audience. They don't watch over their intellectual property like greedy corporate dogs. When I decide who's in the right and wrong about intellectual property, I find I always have to go back to the bottom line: who is making more money. If you make one tiny change and copy the rest, then it's technically not the original and I couldn't give a fuck.

Nothing will come of it. OpenOffice will just become one of those "underground" programs. One of millions.

I love the internet.

Tanasinn wrote:Nothing will come of it. OpenOffice will just become one of those "underground" programs. One of millions.

I love the internet.

OOo is getting more and more accepted as an alternative to MS Office in business and education. If it's taken out of circulation, any effort to break or ease Microsoft's dominance of the market will be set back several years.

I wonder if this may just be postering from a legal department that's trying to earn it's budget. It's not like there's much to gain from an open-source project that has zero profit (OOo doesn't have a for-profit section, does it?)

StarOffice?
but i'm not sure if there is a code sharing between the two project...
if it allows to have some decent linux office suite that doesn't rely on java, i'll be happy.

OOo isn't reliant on Java , although it can be used to write extensions.

And really, on a modern computer, Java isn't so bad anymore. Even on a crappy computer, it's just the startup time that's slow (so long as you have more than 512MB of RAM).

And I've had very flaky experiences w/ abiword, gnumeric, etc.

EDIT: Yeah, OOo runs fairly decently on a PIV2.0GHz w/ 512MB RAM, excepting first startup time.

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

Oh this is great, I needed a laugh. "Microsoft to sue massive decentralised open source projects, next up; aliens land in moscow! All this on 60 minutes!"

Remember the SCO attempt to shut down linux?

Microsoft will suck donkey balls as usual. Attempts to sue open source are full of shit.

Saw this coming. It was the next logical step after the Novell deal. They don't necessarily need to win or even be correct if they can bury the leading distros under mounting legal fees.

That being said, this could go the other way. One big advantage Microsoft has is that Joe Consumer has no idea what Linux is. If this gets a spotlight in the mainstream media everyone's going to find out exactly what it is and why Microsoft is attacking it. Might not be a good look.

Also, as pointed out in the CNN money article, Linux/OSS supporters such as IBM, HP, Sun, etc also have particularly large patent portfolios of their own, and really don't have any love for Microsoft either.

Indeed, I suspect that if an all out patent war erupted between the open source world and Microsoft, open source would win hands down. You have the growing list of OSI patents, the IBM patents, other patents secured by various Linux vendors (such as RedHat's recent patent on operating system DRM that will make Microsoft's alleged plans for Vienna rather challenging to implement), and also the patents of other major participants in the open source community such as HP, Sun, Trolltech, and so forth, as well as (potentially) patents held by proprietary software vendors with a stake in open source, such as Oracle.

IMO what's actually warranted is a proactive offensive lawsuit from the open source community against Microsoft, on the grounds of libel, slander of title, and other torts (IANAL, but I believe that aggravated interference with a business in terms of trying to scare people away from using that business, can constitute a tort). Additionally, considering Microsoft is a convicted monopolist, this behavior is astonishing, and perhaps there might be a way to attack them via that route.

Pu-239 wrote:Also, as pointed out in the CNN money article, Linux/OSS supporters such as IBM, HP, Sun, etc also have particularly large patent portfolios of their own, and really don't have any love for Microsoft either.

And this is why I'll belive Microsoft is suing someone when I read the press release that they have sued someone. Not some PR lacky shaking a saber.

Okay. Who do they give the papers to?

The strategy of MS is generally anticipated to be one of the "sue the user" variety, similiar to what was employed by SCO.

However, I would also not be suprised if they sued IBM, RedHat, Canonical, and other large Linux vendors. Possibly even Novell, if Novell attempts to do anything about it, for breach of contract.

Wouldn't the Free Source Foundation also be a potential target?

One article I saw suggested that if things turned particularly sour, it could potentially turn into "patent Armageddon" between Microsoft and IBM and others... which I have to admit might actually be best, even if only to shake up the trees and force a reconsideration of the fucking broken patent system.

brianeyci wrote:Well well, here's a hypothetical. Suppose Microsoft is right and OpenOffice and Linux are infringing on patents. Many patents. Should I give a fuck about Microsoft's screeching. I don't think so, because Microsoft already has so much fucking money.

Now where are the tards who are going to say, "how much is too much money," strawmanning my argument from the gap between rich and poor to no rich people at all. I bet they won't defend Microsoft with the same logic as they use to defend the average, hardworking middleclass aka average gas guzzling suburban assweed. I don't mind wealth redistribution one bit.

It's pretty blatantly obvious that Microsoft does not have a truly legitimate case, but rather that this is a tactic designed to discredit and marginalize open-source software (a known tactic of Microsoft), so I don't think that barging into this thread with your grudges and your ideology and baiting others into an unrelated discussion is really called for.

RThurmont wrote:Additionally, considering Microsoft is a convicted monopolist, this behavior is astonishing, and perhaps there might be a way to attack them via that route.

Not likely while Bush and Gonzales are in power.

So Microsoft is once again attempting to create a monopoly?


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.


Something I just thought of... Google claims to be of the philosophy that you don't need to be evil to succeed in business. They seem to be in favor of freeware. Would they possibly provide any monetary support to these companies, should the need arise? Or am I having a fleeting moment of optimism?

Well, google does sponsor summer of code. And a lot of their infrastructure runs on Linux. So....

But of course, as Xon suggested, this is most likely FUD and nothing more.

And anyone who thinks google isn't an evil corporation BECAUSE THEY SAY SO is a fucking retard.

three words and slap microsith with thier own precident.

"Look and Feel" if Microsoft can dodge macintosh with the widoze then others can use it.

All the big successful OSS projects have an established management structure and big corporate backers pumping in money and support (including servers, bandwidth, etc). Cut off those corporate backers, and the project at best, stagnates, but will also likely fail.

OSS projects can have multiple corporate, private and even personal backers behind them. After all, anyone can service the code. In Microsoft's world, only Microsoft as a vendor can service the code.

brianeyci wrote:Well well, here's a hypothetical. Suppose Microsoft is right and OpenOffice and Linux are infringing on patents. Many patents. Should I give a fuck about Microsoft's screeching. I don't think so, because Microsoft already has so much fucking money.

Oh, Linux and openoffice almost certainly infringe on several software patents. The question is if those patents will stand up to the legal challenge they will receive as soon as microsoft actually says which patents are involved. Of the software patents I've heard about they all fall into two groups:

- The ones with clear prior art, making them invalid.
- The ones no-one has gotten around to looking closely at yet.

So until Microsoft actually says which specific patents are being infringed, I'm calling fud.

brianeyci wrote:Well well, here's a hypothetical. Suppose Microsoft is right and OpenOffice and Linux are infringing on patents. Many patents. Should I give a fuck about Microsoft's screeching. I don't think so, because Microsoft already has so much fucking money.

Now where are the tards who are going to say, "how much is too much money," strawmanning my argument from the gap between rich and poor to no rich people at all. I bet they won't defend Microsoft with the same logic as they use to defend the average, hardworking middleclass aka average gas guzzling suburban assweed. I don't mind wealth redistribution one bit.

Intellectual property to make money has always been a gray area to me. The most intellectual people -- academics -- work and love libraries and publish their works to try and reach the largest audience. They don't watch over their intellectual property like greedy corporate dogs. When I decide who's in the right and wrong about intellectual property, I find I always have to go back to the bottom line: who is making more money. If you make one tiny change and copy the rest, then it's technically not the original and I couldn't give a fuck.

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.

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.

As far as the article, this is freaking retarded. If Microsoft goes after them, they're doing stupid shit that's just going to get them smacked down in one way or another (legally, public image, and so on). I hope they wake up to that soon, because I don't see a trial going well for them.