Torvalds Says Microsoft is Bluffing on Patents 157
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.'""
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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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It may be unpopular to say so... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
I wonder (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
He may be sort of right about this (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:back to the kernel, Linus. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:not now perhaps ... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Not aggressive (Score:2, Insightful)
They'd be sending letters demanding royalties and quoting patent numbers, and filing infringement cases when violators refused to pay. They haven't.
They're doing something much smarter. They're approaching Linux distros and companies that use Linux in their products and making slimy threats behind closed doors. SCO taught them that a loud public strategy like the one you mention arouses both the community and targets better able to defend themselves. And what do you know, that defense reaction turned out to be formidable. SCO certainly didn't succeed in trying the case in the tech press. So they are sizing up and approaching softer targets one by one and we don't hear about it until the press release from yet another company that made a "patent covenant" with MS.
Re:It may be unpopular to say so... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:FUD used for marketing (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Microsoft actions and policy speak otherwise (Score:2, Insightful)
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]
does anyone else... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Microsoft actions and policy speak otherwise (Score:3, Insightful)
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. It is a compelling reason why software patents are a bad idea.
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Toro
Re:back to the kernel, Linus. (Score:3, Insightful)
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?
Re:Not aggressive (Score:3, Insightful)
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. But claiming that they are anything but aggressive is quite a bit off the mark.
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.
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.
Re:not now perhaps ... (Score:1, Insightful)