Microsoft Patents Again… [sigh]
Posted by lucidfox.org
at 03:42, 17 July 2009 (UTC)
So, Microsoft forces yet another company to pay for its Linux patent indulgence.
What’s interesting here? “…has agreed to pay an undisclosed sum… Microsoft disclosed Wednesday.” Microsoft once again refuses to state which patents Linux supposedly violates (no surprise here), but when someone actually agrees to pay them, they immediately blow the trumpets and make sure the media discuss the story ad infinitum. Obviously they don’t cover cases when their patent trolling is met with the middle finger.
What’s particularly frustrating here is that the more companies prefer to pay Microsoft just to get rid of their legal bullying, the more people will view Linux as a dangerous thing that “rightfully belongs” to an unethical competitor.
Will they do this with Mono? Promise not to sue the people creating the tech, but sue the people implementing it into devices?
When will they ever get their come-uppance?
It’s a protection racket which is as evil as it is ingenious:
1) Produce large list of complicated patents which may or may not be infringed – but would take months of expensive lawyering (at a cost of umpteen millions) to verify
2) Threaten to sue for one hundred quadrillion dollars – or offer to settle out of court for 0.1% of that, saving both possible court losses, plus court costs, plus other lawyerin’ costs
3) Include as part of the settlement a big legal threat that the details of the attack must remain secret – but that the result must be public
Ingenious. Evil too, obviously. And the best part of it is they can attack anyone for anything with the same tactic, and as long as settlement < costs, they win by default.
no, they will not do this with mono since the parts that linux developers use are under the community promise.
do note that the company is dealing with network hardware, NAS and such. the patent (s) in question are therefor most likely dealing with the Linux kernel which isn’t under any patent promise.
IMO the best way to castrate MS would be that companies which use Linux in their products, join the OIN network and have leverage when dealing with MS.
@zekopeko – they promised not to sue us for including it… What about the businesses that use it as a platform and sell a whole solution? (Think TomTom, Buffalo as of today)
@mrguitarmann
as long as they are using parts of mono that are part of the ECMA standards they are safe. for the rest of .net that isn’t under ECMA the companies are exposed as much as with any other software. <- this is concerning mono
TomTom and Buffalo probably violated patents that are either a part of the Linux kernel (Linux isn’t protected under the CP) or something completely not related with FLOSS/Linux.
Remember they (MS) aren’t only making software but also hardware so their patents are probably encompassing numerous areas of IT.