Can someone possibly explain in simple terms what patents would be violated by using Linux? Is that the talk of people suing over things like scrollbars and progress bars like I've heard rumors about?

Okay, my comment on this.
According to rules from WTO software patents are excluded. The only place were you have software patents accepted is currently the US. In the EU they want to start to allow this haveing strong resistent. But all the claims are even in the US not so easy to sue.
Though in my opinion the lawmakers should change the law, that the software sellers are responsible for the bug free functioning of their software as any other producer do. That would really help the world.

Cheers Lars

I agree with the view that "software patents" are absurd. If you ask me, patents should only apply to tangible things, not ideas and concepts. From my point of view it is absolutely absurd that patents are granted for "one click shopping" and the like. The current situation would be similar to Ford getting a patent for "a method of controlling the direction of a gasoline powered automobile" (ie, a steering wheel) and then suing any other car maker for violating their patents and infringing on their intellectual property. Weren't patents supposed to have the requirement that an invention be "non-obvious" in order to be granted? Just my 2 cents, as always. -- J.W.

Patents are awarded mainly to maintain a competitive edge in one's field of work.But in reality people acquire them to ward off insecurities.Now certainly if big corporations stand to lose a lot in financial terms-both monetary and market capitalization,they wouldn't want someone else making money off what they spent billions of dollars in making.But that's an old world industry perspective,restricted to hardware and machinery and anything that is material.It certainly doesn't hold true with software and knowledge.How daft is that?Why ould you ever restrict knowledge?

Just for kicks, here are some examples of patents that in my opinion should never have been even submitted to the US PTO, let alone awarded a patent.

Is a patent for the IsNot operator or a method for processing input from a command line interface really something that we need?

This article has 2 excellent examples of seriously questionable patents, one being a system to allow airline passengers to make a reservation for the toilet in mid-flight and my all time favorite, a patent for hanging a swing on a tree branch. Apparently the swing passed the "non-obvious" test because instead of swinging front to back, you would instead swing from side to side. Sheesh!! -- J.W.

LOL! wow... what a glorious day to live in the US... I think I'm moving to Europe... heh..

SCO stocks almost went belly-up on tuesday after a inside coup started and many upper-management revolted against SCO's stand on the open source community.

Do you have a link to this?

Just search yahoo news for it -- thats where i read it.

I looked it up and it was NOT FOUND!

attacking is best defence
 

Even if you are the agressor it self,
said the bussiness man after having explained that
"to call it bussiness is a permit to screw private persons"


What about the money pulation off egonomics (speak out loud&quick)

How exactly will software patents work? We do not have them yet in Europe and I am doing everything I can to help the movement to stop it.

But if we would turn the tables and say that WE would sue M$. How could we do it? We are not allowed to see their source code, right? AFAIK the patents would apply to algorithms and such, not abstract things like "being able to do... bla bla". But if patents would be fair then both sides must be able to see each other's source code. We must be able to sue M$ if they can sue Linux. Fair play, right?

It seems to me that M$ is losing more and more. For example they really failed with Xbox in Asia. I mean, trying to sell a console in the big home of Nintendo? It was ment to go straight to h*ll. They lose money for each sold Xbox over there. I'm glad.

And why is Ballmer saying that "not knowing the author" would be a problem? We have the code, and oftens we have comments and docs on it. We do not need the author to make it better. Many Open Source projects include alot of people that weren't even there from the beginning. Also, Ballmer claims that "we made the code, we fix it". I can't see that they have fixed IE yet. Microsoft does not fix everything, especially not bugs. At least if you would believe FOCUS Magazine: Interview with Bill Gates.

But if they DO fix something, they just send out patch after patch. Not many people even have the knowledge on how to upgrade an existing program with a patch. At the same time the patches will eventually do more harm then good. I like Torvalds' way of dealing with insecure or buggy code. It's better to do it all over again from scratch then to apply a lot of patches that will mess things up. The code will then be cleaner and much faster.

Yesterday I saw the documentary "The Code" for like the 100th time and I got the thought that the Open Source and Linux movement is much like the Internet movement several years ago. There are so many companies and goverments involved in this wave and no one can actually own the code. You may be able to say "Hey, Torvalds owns Linux" but that's not really true. First the economic aspects. If he would change his mind and charge for it someone could take a copy and continue working with that one instead. It's like when RedHat decided to charge for their Enterprise Linux and let the fork Fedore continue being free. Now they got some problems. CentOS came along and they are now offering the same system, but for free (check out CentOS: Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Minus Red Hat).

Even if he does not charge for it I can't see that he really owns it the same way as Ballmer owns Windows. Torvalds have to listen to the users on some level. At the same time Ballmer can do whatever he wants with Windows, and so he does. I find it hard to believe that M$ actually listen to what the users wants. In the Open Source community it is even better then listening, it is the users that MAKE the code. We just have to learn to program and have a good idea of something and then we may even get our code into the project. Good luck doing stuff like that with Microsoft's "Shared Source". What a joke!

As the Linux wave goes, if there are so many parts involved, then how would M$ defeat it? They would have to defeat so many companies and they would have to face so many countries. It is not practical possible for them to defeat Linux with the help from lawsuits or FUD. At least I don't think so. I mean it is SCO and M$ against the rest of the world soon. I believe it's a matter of time before they will fall and become a smaller company that we can read about in history.

One funny thing, just to mention. I was really surprised and happy when I heard that the Swedish guy who invented IKEA went richer then Gates. Especially when IKEA started as a garage sale, but that's a different story. :)

We have universal health care. And waiting lists for surgeries. However, it is better than paying large doctor bills. Bu there is a cost.

My 70th is also in January. I doubt I'll see anyone closing the gates before I'm 6ft under lol

http://www.euronet.nl/users/frankvw/...t/IhateMS.html

Mighty fine read.

Even though this article is old, I just wanted to ask how can Microsoft sue a country. Isn’t it up to the country to use whatever OS they want. Or is it because they are on a contract and these countries are violating the contract.

Thanks

Good question. I don't know though.

yay... that makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside... lol..

acually on some of there dlls and exe 's there athere is there mirosoft mostly "steels" or buys ideas for people that try no top tell you so the remove most for there atheres name somethimes it is too HARD

Re: America is run by terribles
 

i disagree that linux is hard to learn i have been using it for about a month it was notr hard nor easy I just had to get used to it (also less fiddling needed

interesting - test

People need to realize that Linux is an entirely different type of OS than Windows. With enough knowledge you can practically do anything you want to with it. I use it every day for work, doing things that were meant to only be done with Windows. When I first started using it I didn't understand what people meant when they said that Linux is a "more powerful OS than Windows", now I do. It does require more knowledge, but how much you decide to learn about it is entirely up to you. When a person has a hard time using Linux, it is usually a lack of patience that impedes them, not necessarily a lack of knowledge, probably because they don't have enough patience to sit down and google for an answer to the problem they are having. As for M$ spreading FUD about Linux, the reason for this is that they can see that Linux has the capability to challenge their domination of the software market, and it concerns them to the point that they go on the defensive. There is a downside to Linux though, and that is that it will make M$ improve Windows. M$ will have to improve Windows, or more and more people will start switching to Linux as it becomes more mature and user friendly. Competition in any market is always a good thing for consumers, as it breeds innovation and lower prices, and it tends to keep the players in that market honest.

zajelo3, you are right that Linux is totally different then Windows. There are a lot of things that makes it hard to even compare the two systems. The first should be that Linux is just a kernel and not an OS as Windows is. Because of that Linux comes in many flavours (they do have more common then flavor of UNIX has, though) and also one can customize his/her system as much as one wants. This is harder to do in Windows, you are more locked up there.

Actually it does not require more knowledge (depends on what you want to do). If you did not grow up with Windows I guess you remember when you had to learn Windows. This is not a very hard thing to do and learning Linux is can be justs as easy as learning Windows. There are some very easy distros out there (Mandrake, RedHat, Xandros (almost too easy?)) and they do not require much knowledge about computers more then knowing how to read, surf the web and operate a mouse and a keyboard :)

Next year maby we will see how Longhorn survives in the wild. I don't bet on it doing too good. It's already very delayed and it lacks a lot of things M$ planned to put in it in the first place. Longhorn will probably not be much better then XP is right now, so M$ will have to do something more after Longhorn (and that is soon after the release, not waiting another 5 years). IMO M$ is starting to look scared and a little insecure now when they are trying (and failing) different methods to compete with Linux and it's supporting companies.

SCO who tried to help M$ failed big times. They are losing money and they got sued by RedHat.

Look at the other side, those supporting Linux: Novell, Oracle, IBM, Intel, etc. I see big things going on for Linux. Just hoping to get to see when Gates leaves the chair. :)

I think that Microsoft is doing Linux a favor. They are starting to sound scared and people who have never heard of Linux are starting to pay attention.

This is free publicity courtesy of Gates and company.

<*,})+<
"Only dead fish go with the flow"

Typical M$$.

In the long run, competition will benefit both Microsoft users and Linux users. For too long, Microsoft has been overwhelmingly dominant, which can lead to complacency (witness the continuous security announcements they make week after week) but as viable alternatives such as Firefox and Linux make gradual inroads into the marketplace, both sides will be pressured to do more for the customer in terms of both price, functionality, service, etc. Personally I think it would be great if in a few year's time, the marketplace is pretty evenly divided between Linux, OS X, and Windows. We shall see -- J.W.

Nobody can bully us..not even Bill..In our country - Philippines, we only use windows for gaming platform but serious stuff..we stick to Linux..

Certainly a good competition will ensure quality software from either side. One thing ,though, that really worries me is that although more desktop users are taking to GNU/Linux, not many coders are switching over from the .Net stable. Sure, we have dedicated people in our fold who are tirelessly making up for this disparity, but still, we need more people developing good software.
This is evident from the lame attempt by Ahead software to bring out a Linux version of their popular cd burning app. But if we need to breach the MS fortress, we'll need more firepower in our arsenal, and that's gonna come from our army of coders. Just an observation.

why are they doing that!?! are they forcing and manipulating the users what software to use!!!!! that's sucks!!!!!!!!!!! just leave all the opensource supporter cause we're not doing anything wrong we're just doing what we like and love...... it's loved for the FOSS... and it's not a crime!!!!!!!

looks like Asia is standing up ;)

Besides games and word processing, I use linux for everything else for a year now... that's just because I haven't tried Wine or the newer OpenOffice yet :D

Way to go OpenSource!

More BS from rich people who are afraid of losing money. I hate this, it's incredibly distastful and stupid. China switched to Linux. Okay lets see. China's government does't give a rat's behind if products coming out of their country are direct copies of patented designs from other countries. Now. What makes Microsoft think that they are going to scare china into moving back to windows by calling opensource copywrite infringment? I think that windows has improved greatly since Win98, but it still take alot more computing power to run it smoothly, even if it isn't using all of the fancy graphical things.

I just hope Linux gets enough market share to get more games, it runs alot faster than windows on the same hardware, so it should in theory be better for gaming. The only thing holding it back is the absence of games, only a few games are ported to Linux, and the average windows convert doesn't want to have to mess with winex etc.

Umm, well there is one problem there: driver support. While companies like ATI don't provide fully-functional drivers or release the necessary info to allow others to produce the drivers, linux does still have a problem. But I guess this will start to change as linux becomes more popular (I mean manufacturers producing better drivers).

I agree with Cyborg16. I am not using Windoze on any computer anymore and what I have been missing is first of all good drivers aviliable. I bought a laptop a couple of months ago and I still can't get the drivers for the video card working.

First of all we need drivers for video card, nVidia have good support AFAIK but ATi still needs to work on theirs. If we get more drivers in this area I believe that we will see more game companies porting their software to Linux.

Because hardware is not the only story, we also need more software vendors to open their eyes and interest towards Linux. I have heard rumours about Adobe porting Photoshop but I have not gotten this confirmed yet. Nero is also aviliable to Linux but that story is "messy" since they do not offer the burner "pure", you have to buy Nero 5 for WIndows if you want it for Linux (not sure here, correct me if I am wrong).

I do not demand that they release the code and make it open source, I just want more people to at least port their code, because we cannot rely on reverse engineering for ever. And stuff like wine won't do it either, we need it native.

Regards.

How could MS sue a whole country? Technically, when you sue someone in this situation it's because they have violated legal copyrights, but a country makes it's own laws and generally does not have to answer to anyone else. It's their country and surely they decide if their use of linux is legal, after all they make the laws there, not MS.

However, it's an interesting and telling sign of where the major global corporations like MS are going. For a single company to become so large, wealthy and opinionated that it would challenge a whole country is both fascinating and somewhat disturbing. I was only reading the other day that the big oil cartel companies like Shell and Exxon each make more revenue in a year than a large number of countries. I think Hungary and many of the former USSR were on the list, but I forget exactly who they all were now. Either way, it raises the question, could the giant corporations start to take over in the future? I can't say I like the average government, but the idea of living a world run by giant companies is even worse...

No actually he can't. He can damn well try, that's for sure(and i have no doubt he will). But the countries can jsut ignore them. The only thing that could possibly force them into compliance would be military action. Given that MS lacks its own army, for now, i don't see the US government launching wars in asia for MS (not that MS wouldn't try to get them too, its just that no one in washington is willing to risk pissing China off.).


It really jsut shows their arrogance that these people believe they have the right to threaten other Nations. We're not talking about customers, or partners, but Nations. Talk about some balls, treating Nations as if they are inferior to you.

Companies, corporations and money taking control, isn't that what makes USA so american? :P (no offense)

Copyright laws are the subject of international treaties, IIRC. Governments are technically as responsible to them as individuals. Not all governments and countries, but any signatories and their citizens. However, the only definitive enforcement would be military action, and luckily for us MS still lacks the power to instigate wars. For now.

i wanted to ask. It might be a dumb question but it has definetly made me interested in knowing. Could I install a Mac OS on my current computer running windows. Say for example a AMD 3500+ Athlon with 1gb ram....Is it possible to dual boot windows and mac. This would be a dream come true for a designer.

Mac does not run on PC hardware. Although you can use some virtual computer (like VMware).

Maybe this dream can come true now when Apple is working with Intel instead of AMD, but according to Jobs this will not happen, though.

Regards.

This recent story has a little more info on the Apple / Intel partnership. As it stands today though Mac hardware and Mac software are designed to work together, you can't mix and match them like you can with other operating systems. Consequently, trying to dual boot Windows and Mac (at least from a practical prespective) isn't really an option today. In terms of the future, according to the following quote from the above linked story,
so unfortunately I would not be too optimistic about being able to put OS X on your Linux box. Who knows though, there are some seriously smart people out there and someone may come up with a workaround -- J.W.

http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/38971/index.html

addresses the issue of Microsoft's involvement in the US political process. How does that apply in Asia? Have they bought off the government?

Posted in wrong topic and carn't delete this.

Now ask essentially the same question of various governments (including your own), and some of the world's problems might start to make a bit more sense all of a sudden.......

But anyway - on topic - it's for the same reason, as it so happens. Money. Of course.

These "Asian nations" are no-doubt laughing their asses off. (Or rather, laughing at the "asses...") :)

"Who knows who builds open-source software?" Well... IBM, just for starters.

I sincerely wish that Microsoft would have a change of management, because they sorely need one. No one is really arguing that the Windows operating-systems aren't good ... even "very" good or "very, very" good ... it's just that they're not "good for everything, everyone, everywhere, every time." And instead of accepting this undeniable aspect of the marketplace, and working with the literally thousands of developers who are using "other" systems, they (or at least, their lawyers) endlessly fight and quarrel.

The community of Microsoft's customers does not benefit from this; nor do the shareholders and stakeholders. (They're just pouring money into lawyer pockets.) What customers want is for the synergy that exists within the open-source market to spill over into Microsoft's own products. Money is always available to buy "better products." Trying to "build a legal fence around a slight-innovation and to defend it against all comers" does not make a product better; it only makes a lawyer richer. (And the lawyers retained by Microsoft are positively fleecing that company, knowing that it considers itself "too rich to care.")

When IBM Corporation, a vastly older, richer and larger company, not only accepts the open-source community but actively promotes it, then maybe .. just maybe .. they know something that Microsoft doesn't. Maybe Microsoft should rein-in those lawyers, pay closer attention to what they're telling other people in Microsoft's name, and start listening...

There was, after all, a time when Wang Corporation had "80% market share!" (Does anybody out there even remember Wang? Hmmm....)