Were you directing your slur at ME? It seems we agree the patents are not valid so I'm not sure why you would be unless you misunderstood the post you quoted.

By the way - if you don't like a thread you can always unsubscribe from it. There's been more than one I've done that for when they became interminable like this one. Its not clear how posting to a thread indicates you are "boycotting" it.

That's what I thought at first, but it didn't make any sense. Then I realized "monkeyboy" was a hyperlink. Go back and check it out; it's actually quite hilarious. We're all still on the same page...

Just had a look at that monkeyboy link. Wow! That a**e-hole belongs in a bloody straight-jacket. If he takes Linux to court the Linux lawyers should just play the judge that video. Case dismissed!!

Definitely agree there. How a clown like that can talk about "intellectual property" is beyond me. Ballmer by name, barmy by nature.

Monkeyboy is a hyperlink (duh) wich leads to Steve Ballmer so NO I was NOT talking to YOU.

Edit:I misspelt Monkeyboy, I accidently typed Moneyboy

And i was wondering when Microsoft will release a list of all these patents?
Or, is there even one!!!

After using Vista for about 5 minutes (yes it is as terrible as they say).
And 3 of those minutes was booting up and the rest was when I was saying what
the hell is this #$%^

I will never use another Microsoft product again.

Don't waste your money on Windows. Use Linux ...its Free!!!

With 91% of the population "convinced" that Microsoft is doing something "right", look at all the "clean up" work Balmer and the boys are creating for those of us "in the know".

Let's face, for as long as the average person on the street keeps buying into Microsoft B.S., it's more work for I.T. people in the end. Especially those of us that just can't stand sloppy workmanship.

You shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth!

Vista is just another opportunity for us Linux people to fix problems for people that don't want to run Linux on their systems (yet). That is, until you come along and show them how easy it is to switch to Linux.

Don't look now, but the ball is in your court.

- Perry

I for one learned much from this thread and appreciate all the discussion and links to other articles. As a recent Linux converter I cant say Im on "the good side" but people are learning and as long as Linux continues to work on making a user friendly desktop and more applications then I believe it will continue to receive more and more support from the community. Hopefully the government will someday soon get a clue and stop holding back progress in technology with patents. Another good place to read up on this sort of stuff is this sites founder, Jeremy's blog.
http://jeremy.linuxquestions.org/

I'm not a laywer or something and don't know which patents exactly are meant (it's not said in the articles), but I think at least the package 'msttcorefonts' and several codecs are ... well, let's say controversial, even from a neutral pov.

These 'deals' with microsoft might be good thing for those companies who can't afford a juristic war with microsoft and friends.

Maybe but they're a sellout to the rest of the industry because their very existence at gives M$ to point at to say "see THESE folks agreed with us and we were reasonable to THEM" if they ever decide to sue someone else.

What would have happened if any of these entities had gotten sued over OSS patent infringements is the same thing that has happened when SCO tried to sue IBM - other organizations with a vested stake in OSS would join the fight if only to provide "friend of the court briefs" explaining why M$ was full of crap.

Maybe instead of sitting around like England and France waiting for invasion of France after they declared war on Germany for invading Poland the big OSS houses like RedHat should go on the offensive and start a complaint of libel against M$. It seems the intent of saying OSS violates patents is to make businesses wary of using OSS solutions over M$'. That certainly sounds actionable as it would have a business impact if successful. The libel lawsuit could only be successfully defended by M$ if they could prove the patents existed.

I agree, jlightner. However, IP patents are tricky. If they create or maintain a monopoly, they'll hold no weight in court; They'll simply be dismissed in most cases. IOW, M$'s patents might exist, but there's a reason why they're not revealing which ones are being infringed upon, never mind suing anybody.

Cheers
Bill

Originally posted by jlightner:
I agree with you in principle but you could equally have said; 'instead of sitting around like the USA while the U-boats sank their East Coast shipping by the thousands of tonnes, waiting for a shift in political opinion before joining the war'. Your point works either way but the latter is less likely to upset we Europeans.

OK - wasn't trying to upset Europeans - just seemed a rather apt analogy to me. I don't think I said anything that wasn't true.

Your analogy isn't apt for the very reason you included "political will". In my analogy the governments had already declared war on the foe but weren't engaging him. In yours the government had NOT and had a lot of resistance to doing the things it was (such as lend/lease) doing to aid the allies. Even to this day there are those who say Roosevelt engineered Pearl Harbor to get around that (though I find that unlikely myself). That is life in a Democracy (so long as you aren't Dubya and think the Constitution is just a suggestion).

We could talk all day about what was done wrong by people before during and after World War II but that would be a completely different thread.

In business, it's easy to see what a client/competitor/vendor will do, just by scrutinizing his past actions.

Most recently, MS's Vista hype has fallen on deaf ears, rightly so. What do they do? They lower the price of Vista, and RAISE the price of XP so its now more expensive for the old OS than the new. (factoring in long term support). They then threaten to stop supporting XP, to scare people into using the new OS. WHAT? "you may go to Linux?" "We'll see about that!"

What else? Well, they LOVE having a monoploly. Every business does. And what does a business DO when their monopoly is threatened?

Fight like a scorned woman on crack, is what they will do. It wouldn't suprise me to see scores of lawsuits brought just to intimidate the "opposition." The lawyers have already factored in the chances of winning and of tying up companies in court, too! They already have a win/win against any known competition.

Don't be fooled by "the case has no merit" argument. It doesn't NEED any merit. It only has to further their goal of owning the OS world to work.

I don't think that's quite right. People continued to use Blackberry's despite the RIM lawsuit (even when it was won by the suer) and accommodation was reached. People continue to buy IBM gear and Linux despite SCO's lawsuit. Granted M$ has much deeper pockets than SCO but I think in the background people will continue to look at Linux just for the cost savings. I'm in the middle of a project right now to install the next generation of a pretty high end Linux based solution and no one in the project is saying "let's rethink this due to M$".