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Torvalds Says Microsoft is Bluffing on Patents
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Mon Feb 04, 2008 10:12 AM
from the summon-the-patent-attorneys-from-their-crypts dept.
from the summon-the-patent-attorneys-from-their-crypts dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft's aggressive defense of its intellectual property, which includes claims that Linux violates a number of its patents, is nothing more than "a marketing thing," according to Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux kernel. "They have been sued for patents by other people, but I don't think they've — not that I've gone through any huge amount of law cases — but I don't think they've generally used patents as a weapon," Torvalds said. "But they're perfectly happy to use anything at all as fear, uncertainty and doubt in the marketplace, and patents is just one thing where they say, 'Hey, isn't this convenient? We can use this as a PR force.'""
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Submission: Torvalds: Microsoft is bluffing on patents by Anonymous Coward
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Technology: Is Linus Torvalds Speaking for Linux Anymore? 417 comments
An anonymous reader writes to tell us CNET is currently running a story asking 'Is Linus Torvalds even speaking for Linux anymore?' It examines both Torvalds' recent public statements on other operating systems and his current approach towards Linux. The author wonders if his utopian view of how an operating system should be viewed and used is just too alien from what the majority of users are really looking for. "if it were up to Torvalds, beauty and intuition would take a backseat to functionality. But when you look at distributions like Ubuntu or OpenSuse, it looks like no one is paying attention. 'An OS should never have been something that people (in general) really care about: it should be completely invisible and nobody should give a flying [expletive] about it except the technical people.' Sure, that statement makes some sense, but in the grand scheme of things, it's the design and usability factor that makes the operating system much easier to use. And while both Mac OS X and Windows have their issues, for the average person, it makes more sense to use those than Linux."
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FUD used for marketing (Score:5, Insightful)
News at 11
Re:FUD used for marketing (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:FUD used for marketing (Score:5, Insightful)
Currently they believe that an increasing Linux market share will hurt their bottom line. It will. A lot. Not only does that mean customers are not buying windows, those same customers will not buy Office, Exchange server licenses, Sharepoint server licenses and so forth.
Once the world calls microsoft out on the patent front, if they believe they have a case they will come after corporations. This is much more expensive than a FUD campaign and won't get them as much money per license. Courts may eventually decide to force companies to buy licenses for ms software for which an amount of code violating ms patents is present in Linux. They could decide to force companies to pay a license fee for as much as Windows Vista Ultimate, but this would not cover the additional software that these companies may have bought from microsoft. The courts will probably also decide that if there is any source code in Linux that violates MS patents, it's probably from windows XP which costs less than half as much as vista.
All in all, FUD is currently far more valuable to ms than court decisions on patents. FUD is cheaper and more effective. Court cases may work once the FUD stops working.
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Re:FUD used for marketing (Score:5, Interesting)
As posters below rightfully point out, IBM wouldn't be neck deep in Linux if it was that encumbered.
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not now perhaps ... (Score:5, Insightful)
If/when Linux becomes a significant threat to growth, you can be sure Microsoft will use all tools at its disposal, including parents, aggressively.
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Re:not now perhaps ... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:not now perhaps ... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:not now perhaps ... (Score:5, Funny)
Yep, they'll get the parents to kick the linux kids out of the basements, forcing them to get real jobs. Once that is done, linux goes away and the rest of us can get back to real unix
Now, get out of my yard, you young whippersnappers.
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Re:not now perhaps ... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:not now perhaps ... (Score:4, Insightful)
In fact, a complete abolition of patents would benefit large companies and penalize small R&D outfits (and patent trolls, but nobody feels sympathy towards them).
Patents do protect the small inventor who comes up with something from being ripped off by a bigger outfit that learns what he is doing and is capable of bringing the product to a larger market than the original inventor. As ineffective they are - try suing a Chinese manufacturer - they are the only protection small inventors have.
The real problem is not the patent system. It's good and it works properly. What is desperately needed is a way to prevent the issue or, if needed, invalidate bad patents. The process of invalidating a patent should be very simple if someone can produce prior art or demonstrate the patent is obvious to anyone skilled in the art.
The problem with _software_patents_, which is what we are really discussing here, is that neither a computer program nor a business process is a machine - both are ideas and ideas should not be patentable. A software patent is the very textbook example of a bad patent.
These days, people find clever ways to phrase an idea and receive a patent for it.
This, and only this, has to stop. The patent offices should be held liable for any bad patents they issue.
Actually, I can't imagine why they wouldn't.
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back to the kernel, Linus. (Score:2, Interesting)
Wait, scratch that. Mine is better- I am not an engineer.
The patents involve Xenix. Look it up sometime, it may seem oddly familiar.
However, I believe he's right in saying linux is not in any danger. It isn't- the only companies that might get pricked by these patents are commercial enterprises who are profiteering off o
Re:back to the kernel, Linus. (Score:5, Insightful)
It is far better to let them hang out in the dark and be an unknown threat than to be show as a paper tiger in court.
Of course if they get pushed into a corner then all bets are off.
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Re:back to the kernel, Linus. (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:back to the kernel, Linus. (Score:5, Informative)
That's funny-- the patent lifetime is 20 years in the US. Since Microsoft sold it's derivative of AT&T's Unix to SCO[1] in 1987, it seems unlikely that the patents involve Xenix in any way.
Microsoft didn't really do any real research on Xenix. It was a pretty straight-forward 16-bit port of the AT&T source code, with lots of BSD code thrown in for flavor. This was a big deal mostly because they were getting Unix code to run on standard microprocessors. Once that was done, they licensed Xenix to SCO and a bunch of other companies, who ported it to their own platforms. Most of this was done in the early 80s. Back then, Microsoft wasn't applying for too many patents. And, since this was a port of existing code, there was little opportunity for "worthy" patents. If there were, they would've been granted over twenty years ago, and so would have expired by now.
Anyway, not to put too fine a point on it: it's extremely unlikely these patent threats involve Microsoft's port of AT&T's UNIX.
[1] SCO as in, "Santa Cruz Operation," not as in "We used to be Caldera, but wanted to confuse people into thinking we're Santa Cruz Operation."
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Re:back to the kernel, Linus. (Score:5, Informative)
Linus actually *reads* the kernel code, and is aware of how the code arrived in the Linux kernel. And while Linus is not an author of law texts, he's certainly had to review and deal with copyright and patent law previously in the Linux kernel.
And oh, yes, if you're referring to the SCO lawsuits, go over to www.groklaw.net. The lawsuits were funded by Microsoft "partnership" deals with SCO and other Microsoft partners, and have fallen through because Novell actually owns the UNIX code in question. SCO is now in bankruptcy and delisted (or being delisted) from the NASDAQ after wasting years on a frivolous lawsuit instead of actually doing work.
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He does not write text books, news articles, or legal documents. His guess is as good as yours or mine as to what Microsoft's intentions are.
Yah.. he's only the single guy most familiar with the thing Microsoft says it has patents on. So he sure doesn't know anything more than you or I about it.
The patents involve Xenix. Look it up sometime, it may seem oddly familiar.
I'm unaware of Microsoft giving out any information about WHAT these patents are. The stories I've read are all about Balmer blowing a lot
It may be unpopular to say so... (Score:5, Insightful)
He may be sort of right about this (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:It may be unpopular to say so... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:It may be unpopular to say so... (Score:5, Insightful)
Pretty much every big company probably has some servers running Linux. Big financial companies together probably have hundreds/thousands of Linux servers. Those companies are Microsoft customers, and will not be happy if Microsoft starts taking legal action. Microsoft's threats are just part of their annual "be very afraid" tour. [youtube.com]
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Then there's the legal ambiguity about whether Microsoft can even use their patents to attack Free Software now, since they may be party to GPLv3.
And then there was the Doctrine of Laches and US Patent Law. Microsoft may not be able to file suit because they've announced that they know about the infringement but haven't revealed what it is. IIRC, patent law requires the party that knows about the infringement to disclose it in good faith so the infringing party can attempt to work around it.
Another Flamewar? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Another Flamewar? (Score:5, Funny)
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(takes window seat)
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Gnome & Vim
vs
Aero & Visual Studio!!! Fight!
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Whoa I agree with Torvalds (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft is in trouble, and it has nothing to do with "anti-monopoly" legislation, or corporate badgering, or any of the sort. Microsoft is in trouble. This is defensive posturing in hopes of the market taking note and taking action by putting Microsoft ahead of the pack that has overtaken it.
For years we had geeks here call for Microsoft's abolishment, but lonely me with a few other market economy believers have said that Microsoft will fall from grace as IBM, Compaq, and GM had -- because they lost their competitive edge. The future is not in desktop software, that Microsoft heralded in with great accomplishment. Microsoft tore us out of the client-server picture, and now we're heading back there. They don't understand the situation, and their "Desktop first" mentality makes it near impossible to turn around.
Why they care about Linux is beyond me, though. The backend platform is slowly becoming useless as the protocols for integrating features-on-the-screen are quickly becoming irrelevant as the idea of hardware abstraction is truly coming to be. I remember when Microsoft's NT was released, with their first attempt at a hardware abstraction layer. I held out high hopes for it, but it was a failure, pure and simple. Today, though, we ARE hardware abstract in the processes most important to many of us: HTML, PHP, SQL, and the rest have become their own important entities, regardless of what is behind them.
Lately I am finding myself moving away from the desktop, more and more. Other than graphics design and CAD, I am almost entirely performing my computing duties in client-server mode. I've moved to Google Docs (buggy, but SO convenient since I have no need for a hard drive or memory stick), Google Mail for Domains, my blogs for newsletter dispersal (Wordpress) and phpBB for group comms. The underlying software and hardware is irrelevant to me as all my servers run different OS and hardware combos.
Microsoft is screwed, plain and simple, but I don't think any Linux providers are in better shape. The more I delve into relatively open source code (Wiki, WP, PHPBB, etc), the more I am amazed at what the masses can do to create better code for the reasons important to me. As I produce these low or no cost apps to my clients (not Linux, mind you), I am able to charge more for saving them the downtime and bugs and glitches and software costs. I can't wait for more server farms to become available as those costs will come down more, so my customers won't even need much of their own hardware.
In 1984, when I first connected my Hayes 300 baud modem, I would never have believed we'd return to the client-server days. I remember the reason for logging onto a BBS was to get stuff to my desktop; the idea of using it as a form of communication AND laboring was foreign to me, even when I ran my own BBS. Now, I can't imagine downloading anything when I can conveniently edit it, print it ("to PDF"), and distribute it almost entirely online.
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Effectively it is the 1980s all over again.
I wonder (Score:3, Insightful)
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Why else do you suppose Novell paid their indemnification money so quickly?
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Toro
Legal injunction (Score:4, Interesting)
This whole MS-patent crap is going to keep lingering over Linux' head, and MS is happy to leave it at that. If Linux community wants to get rid of it, they are the ones that have to take action.
Re:Legal injunction (Score:4, Insightful)
Wasn't that why MS are being much quieter about patents in places like germany, where you can get into trouble for making legal threats and not being able to follow them up?
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That's right, Linus... (Score:2)
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So no it won't be a problem ?
Scared animal (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not saying Microsoft is on it's way out or anything, but I think in the past couple of years they have finally realized "hey...if we aren't careful, we WILL become a moot point in this industry." Scared animals always make uncalculated and rash decisions.
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Microsoft will not go quietly if they have cause to remain in this defensive posture. Bank on it.
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Toro
Open Source Patent Commons? (Score:3, Interesting)
I wonder if open-source should look into the same thing.
Even lacking a cross-licensing agreement, the fact that EFF would have a portfolio of moronic patents to smack people back with might give companies trying to sue open source pause, because they would know a big counter-suit was coming.
It would take the teeth out of MS's patent claims. The only companies this doesn't work against are patent trolls.
Obviously, the licensing on the patents should be such that they are freely available for use unless a company sues an open source product. Perhaps patents are not licensable in this way, but a far as I can tell, you can license stuff in any crazy way you want, just about.
Yes, patents are evil, but until they go away, open source would do well to be able to wield the same weapon as everybody else. Obviously, open source would need somebody with deep pockets to file the patents, but I think it's worth pursuing.
The MS FUD Announcement That Will Stun Us All (Score:5, Funny)
Skyvalds: Noooooooooooooooo!
Microsoft actions and policy speak otherwise (Score:5, Interesting)
So, after a few losses, they took to using their capital reserves to purchase such companies outright while they were small, as their success and huge capital reserves made them a lawsuit target. This was a necessary change in policy that came with the success of having all that captial to poach. It's why their getting rid of some of that capital: It exposes them to larger judgments.
Those days are over. Linus would be right in the 90's, but no longer.
Now Microsoft is in a bunker mentality, using patents to defend a near monopoly in market share. They have completely changed their tune, because what they now need to do is slow down inevitable attrition of that market share. In much of their market, there is no where else to go, and no way to grow revenue except by raising prices. Witness the pricing on Windows Vista.
Don't think for a second that they won't sue. They've already got expert patent firms on retainer from defending themselves. Certainly, they started the ball rolling with SCO, but that was just testing the waters. They will pursue this to their greatest possible advantage, regardless of whether the claims are reasonable, because they're already paying the lawyers.
If you consider a multi-million dollar lawsuit for marketing purposes "just marketing," then you've never defended yourself in a court of law.
Linus is wrong. He's thinking about the "hungry" Microsoft of the 90's. We're in the chair chucking, f-ing burying, Ballmer days now, and Microsoft is no longer an upstart. They run the desktop software industry, like the mafia ran Chicago. There's no reason, save the massive loss of judicial mind-share in various anti-trust cases, that they can't pursue legal options regarding their rapidly growing patent portfolio. Microsoft is, among other things, becoming a patent troll, and there's no reason to believe that they can't buy something actionable, if they don't already have it.
SCO was just an unsuccessful test case. Look out.
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Toro
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Unfortunately, this only works when there are hard assets at hand, and therefore plants to close and equipment that must lie dormant while a suit is pending.
That disincentive is much smaller when all you are producing is ideas, because the manufacturing hit is much lower.
Not aggressive (Score:2)
IMHO Microsoft's "defense" of it's patents (if any) has been anything but aggressive. Yes, they've made a lot of hot air in the media about how Linux might infringe some unknown patents they claim to hold. But if they were being aggressive, they wouldn't be making such a nebulous claim. They'd be sending letters demanding royalties and quoting patent numbers, and filing infringement cases when violators refused to pay. They haven't. They haven't even mentioned a single patent number they claim Linux infring
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IMHO Microsoft's "defense" of it's patents (if any) has been anything but aggressive.
I disagree. Aggressiveness is not a black or white situation, it is a continuous line with many shades of gray. The completely non-aggressive stance would be to just keep patents as a defensive weapon in case you are sued, and otherwise be silent about it. The completely aggressive stance would be to launch all-out patent wars against anyone remotely suspected of infringing even one of those patents. Microsoft is somewhere in between, making loud claims about infringement, but not taking any legal action.
Ballmer and the patently obvious (Score:3, Interesting)
There are patents Microsoft has which Linux may infringe on, but if tested many of these will be written off as prior art and if Microsoft has extracted money from others over these patents then the would have to return the money.
I don't think it's possible to write an OS without infringing on patents. There's a difference between coincidences and blatant copying.