Don't forget prior art!

My thoughts, exactly.

If I recall correctly, the same happened to IBM back in the 80's. And not only were the patents dismissed, the court also forced IBM to open their ROM architecture so competitors could finally build true compatible PC's.

When will Bill gates leave his tricks to destroy FOSS

I wonder if I changed my signature to "Praise Satan" how long the moderators would let me have it.

Why do you persist in slamming another religion and another continent?

its not Bill Gates who is the problem
he really isnt that bad a guy.

ist Steve Bullmer who is the meglomaniac CEO of microsoft who is the real problem

"The human souls are easily corrupt" -J.R.R. Tolkien, Lord of the Rings
_Money_ is the real problem. Open source is respect and social, money is selfishness and corruption.

If they were developing it all for free as a hobby no one would sue or even care about copyrights and patents.

Its only that way because no one has found a good way to make money off of open source. Companies Red Hat, Novell, and now Sun to some extent are all doing okay at best. FOSS, unlike its closed source counterpart, just doesn't turn a profit... yet.

That have a Manifesto? Cool

Personally I think software should be made as a Hobby and for Donations.

You forget that:

1)Managing software can make money
2)Putting together FOSS packages for a particular situation can make money
3)Giving away support can make money
4)Writing FOSS for a company to manage whatever can make you money (as a service)
5)Skilled FOSS coders get hired for prior art
6)Websites are open source, so why is that making a lot of money?

It's just that those 'Microsoft gold certified' noobs will get fired, and believe me, that's for the better.

i use linux everyday of the week but i am also MCSE 2003 Certified. Does that make me a bad person?

I work for a company that is 99.99% windows and that is not going to change anytime soon. Microsoft has done some things that people don't like but it comes down to what can pay the bills. If microsoft can make money off of there software and stay closed source more power to them. But they should not try to go after the open source community for anything. If they don't want to loose there customers to open source OS's then they are just going to have to make a better product not try to stop open source OS's.

Sheep among wolves? Wait, no...Linux is penguin, Windoze is butterfly....I'm confused

Windows "can make money" only because of bullying and monopolistic tactics in the opinion (including legal ones in courts in the EU) of many people. If W hadn't quashed the anti-trust action agains M$ when he became President it would likely include legal opinions in the US as well IMO.

Being an MCSE doesn't make you a bad person - you work in the world the way it is. Attempting to imply that M$ deserves the position it has or that the world is as it should be, however, is a bad thing.

Good point...not everybodys perfect and uses Linux

I dont believe that windows does the right thing by any means or deserves there position. But i do think that M$ has the right to try and make money. I just think that they are going the wrong way about it. before linux was popular M$ did not have any thing to worry about and now they do and they are scared.

Actually Linux isn't the first thing M$ has tried to run aground.

There was a time that Lotus 123 was king of the spreadsheets, WordPerfect was king of the Word Processors, and DBase/Paradox was king of Database softwares on PCs.

M$ overtook all of these NOT by making a superior product but rather by giving away their software and forcing PC makers to bundle it in if they wanted to sell M$ Windows. Now that they are dominant they don't give you Office any more - you pay a pretty penny for it.

Similarly there was a time when NetScape was the browser many people preferred. IE was forced upon users to the point that Netscape had to give itself away. I recall the court case where M$ stated the browser could NOT be separated from the OS and the Judge hearing the case did it himself thereby showing how honest M$ is.

Later M$ found RealPlayer making inroads against MediaPlayer and their antics in regards to that product (along with past misdeeds) led to the U.S. and E.U. anti-trust cases.

And of course none of that mentions the cases wherein M$ is said to have done strategic agreements with smaller companies until they sucked in the knowledge from those companies then suddenly found they no longer had a "strategic" need for those companies.

And finally of course M$ made its original name using MS-DOS which was something they bought that was reputed to be a knock off of CP/M (later DR-DOS).