Patent trouble

Patent trouble

Posted Mar 29, 2006 1:09 UTC (Wed) by felixfix (subscriber, #242)
In reply to: Patent trouble by lakeland
Parent article: Conference Report: FOSS Means Business, Belfast (Linux Journal)

Microsoft's patent portfolio is pretty small. If Linux is infringing any of their patents, I am sure Microsoft itself is infringing many more of IBM's patents. I expect IBM already has a list of hundreds or even thousands of such violations, and perhaps has even let Micorosoft know this.

Microsoft is a classic schoolyard bully. They can only pick on the weak, and as soon as they get out of the easy pickings from a schoolyard, they turn into whimpering cowards. Linux has too many friends and is too entrenched for Microsoft to pick on it.

The next generation codecs could be a problem. But there are a lot of small companies producing linux-based devices, and if Microsoft were to try anything anticompetitive, I think even the Bush antitrust regulators would be hard pressed to ignore events. The Europeans look pretty fed up with Micorsoft shenanigans, so do the Koreans, and I doubt the Chinese would like such strongarm tactics when they have come up with their own version of Linux, Red Flag. China is a huge market, and Microsoft needs new markets since it has no room to expand in the current markets. I don't think Microsoft wants to take the chance of being shut out of China.

SCO has not damaged Linux. When they first brought suit, there was a lot of excitement, but I remember thinking it ws just noise and would backfire as it has. I remember surveys taken once it became clear in the general press that the emperor may have had suits, but it had no clothes, and it looked like the publicity had actually legitimized Linux. And now that SCO has finally run out of discovery in their trial, IBM is using their turn to go after the ties between SCO and Microsoft. It looks to me like Microsoft is now on the defensive and has little opportunity for any further proactive trouble. They will never recover the initiative. Everyone knows about Microsoft's tactics of FUD now, not just a few geeks.

Look at how backfooted they have become over ODF. They have resorted to getting on a standards committee in the hopes of slowing it down. That's desperation, the kind of action that smacks of weakness, like a mob protection thug threatening to toilet paper your business. If they had any kind of patents, you'd think Office would be prime territory. Yet they resort to this! If they can't do any better than plant goofy stories in a Boston newspaper and make a martyr of Peter Quinn, we have nothing to fear. Either they have no clothes either, or they are terrified of wearing them.

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