Humm its time? why did they not act right when it happened? M$ is just a bag of hot air.

Just another front on the FUD campaign.

Bigrig, you should report your post and ask them to move it to general (where there's already a nearly identical one LOL)

Looks like the ball has finally been dropped:


http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortu.../28/100033867/

Right from the mouth of Steve Ballmer - Microsoft contemplates suing individual end users of Linux.

Thoughtful commentary by Debian Developer, Matthew Palmer.

Actually they are in fact making the claim that the Linux kernel itself contains numerous patent violations.

It's all a big FUD campaign and they know it wouldn't actually hold up in court, which is why they refuse to publicly list the actual violations. They're worried about the growing competition from Linux and are doing whatever they can to scare companies away from using it.

I don't normally do this, but I just wrote a blog entry about why this is all a big nothing. I'm interested to hear what others have to say about it: http://matir.wordpress.com/2007/05/1...tware-patents/

I think it's just more saber rattling, though part of me hopes we could get all software patents invalidated this way. Not likely, given the current administration, but it's a hope.

Just typical M$. They were never able to win in a competitive marketing so instead focus on lawsuits, patent infringement of their own and monopolistic practices to stomp down all competition IMO.

Thanks for the link. Very reasonable and informative, indeed.



Here's another good article on this.

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2129586,00.asp

This link and it's commentaries have been posted several times already. The first one is here. I do think it's an good story and worth commenting on, but I'd like to see it kept in one thread.

Merged the one flagged by rickh into the one in News. If you see any more, please report them for merging here.

Although Microsoft is starting from a greater height, I see SCO's fate being passed on to them before long. I suspect that Gates foresaw this as well (he's no dummy) and it was probably one of the factors that led to his retirement, where he can enjoy his money and philanthropic activities, while disassociating himself with Microsoft's decline.

Let's hope this is really two sides of the same coin. UNIX wanted to sue Linux because Linux was too UNIX-like. Microslag is claiming that Linux stole Windows code or IP or whatever. Using the transitive property that means Unix is too Windows-like (not a good case here fellas since UNIX was around whilst Billy Bob was still soiling his nappies) and Windows is too UNIX-like.

If we could only get SCO and Microslag to sue each other out of existence we might really be onto something

It's also funny that Microslag originally came out saying that Linux was an untrustworthy pile of bugs and now they're touting the high-quality. When you start lying habitually you end up making an arse of your corporate selves. Whatever happened to competing on technology and features (and even price if you must)? When it gets to the point that you start suing people and companies as a marketing strategy and your R&D program is floating ridiculous FUD in the press and seeing how much you can get away with, you know the end is near.

Someone please put Microslag out of our misery

One thing on which I am glad GNU/Linux did not infringe is the Blue Screen of Death!

read this first
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortu...n=money_latest
now when SCO was about to go under it sued IBM
now M$ wants to extort ( and has done so ) money from linux users
Is this the kind of thing a healthly company dose ?
look at what is going on in the IT world
dell has to keep selling XP because no one want's vis-stool
linux is displacing windbloz on government computers all around the world
they have run out of ways to upgrade there top selling software productes
they have no place to grow no new markets
so as a last ditch effort to keep up there income they are extorting money from free software users