OSBC: The Microsoft/Novell panel

OSBC: The Microsoft/Novell panel

Posted May 31, 2007 12:27 UTC (Thu) by rknop (guest, #66)
Parent article: OSBC: The Microsoft/Novell panel

Let me echo that your statement was perfect. Thank you for making that.

Re: Microsoft's response, it sounds like the usual industry blah blah blah. Your statement is direct, honest, and reasonable. Microsoft is talking about future, interoperability, etc., and stuff that is far enough down the road that it doesn't necessarily say anything about what's going on right now.

When they come to right now, the statement: "we would rather license than litigate" is utterly disingenuous. Microsoft is well aware that the open source community will not pay licenses on what, as you eloquently say, they and not Microsoft wrote, *unless* they are under threat of litigation. Plus, as you point out, it's just as inappropriate for Microsoft to think that they are owed licensing money as it is for them to think they can litigate. Bastards.

I think Microsoft realizes that even though they spend a lot of money defending stupid patent suits, that amount of money is something that they *can* afford. They have bigger lawyers than everybody else, and they probably have judged that the patent threat is something that can be an effective last-ditch tool for them if necessary... and they want to remind us of it just as the AI negotiators in the original Civilization game would remind you that they had "NUCLEAR WEAPONS" when offering a treaty with you.

-Rob

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