Another day another Microsoft patent deal [LWN.net]

Another day another Microsoft patent deal

Posted Jun 9, 2007 17:12 UTC (Sat) by mikov (subscriber, #33179)
In reply to: Another day another Microsoft patent deal by marduk
Parent article: Another day another Microsoft patent deal

I started using Linux long before it became cool/popular and will continue to use it long after so long as the developers/community are there.

Sadly, using Linux is not a personal choice. Personal loyalty is unimportant except for a hobby. It doesn't matter if you or I continue using Linux on our home computers. It must be accepted and used by businesses and if most businesses start to consider it too risky or expensive, it is as good as dead.

Of course that hasn't happened yet but I can see how it could happen gradually.

I work for a small company. If one of our customers seeing the patent deals being inked with Microsoft asks us about the risks of running Linux, what should I tell them ? "Don't worry, if there is trouble IBM or RedHat will hopefully intervene and save us". That is an absurd position.

If the customers perceive a risk, then the risk exists. The question is do they or will they ?

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Another day another Microsoft patent deal

Posted Jun 9, 2007 17:48 UTC (Sat) by marduk (subscriber, #3831) [Link]

Yeah I know this has to do with businesses, and this might affect Linux adoption in business, but whether it succeeds or fails in the business sector does not determine, IMO, whether it is "as good as dead". If that were the case Linux would have been DOA 16 years ago.

15 years ago there was a law suit against BSD. Some people consider this to be a major factor why *BSD has enjoyed relatively small commercial success (others argue that Linux simply has better technology/better license). Regardless, I don't think the *BSD people then or now consider BSD to be "as good as dead". Rather some would say that BSD is going ahead strong because the developers and community stood behind it.

But again, people were saying the same thing when companies started buying SCO licenses. And again even earlier than that when some idiot decided to trademark "Linux" and demand royalties from Linux companies (yes, there *were* people saying that would be the end of Linux in the commercial world). But in spite of both situations Linux has continue to survive and even thrive in industry. Even in that sense it's way too early at this point to start playing Chicken Little.

Another day another Microsoft patent deal

Posted Jun 9, 2007 18:19 UTC (Sat) by mikov (subscriber, #33179) [Link]

Yeah I know this has to do with businesses, and this might affect Linux adoption in business, but whether it succeeds or fails in the business sector does not determine, IMO, whether it is "as good as dead". If that were the case Linux would have been DOA 16 years ago.

I agree that "as good as dead" is much too strong - but you know what I mean.

15 years ago there was a law suit against BSD. Some people consider this to be a major factor why *BSD has enjoyed relatively small commercial success (others argue that Linux simply has better technology/better license). Regardless, I don't think the *BSD people then or now consider BSD to be "as good as dead". Rather some would say that BSD is going ahead strong because the developers and community stood behind it.

I don't think that we can draw parallels - positive or otherwise - with the BSD lawsuits 15 years ago. The OS and computing landscape was very different then. That said, objectively speaking *BSD currently is close to being "as good as dead". It also enjoys the benefit of flying under the legal radar so to speak, but any serious legal thread would kill it because there would be no Red Hat or IBM or Novell to come to the rescue. (Perhaps Yahoo could - I think they are the only major user of FreeBSD ?) Don't get me wrong though - I have nothing against *BSD - I just don't see how any of its variants currently have a chance of going anywhere.

But again, people were saying the same thing when companies started buying SCO licenses. And again even earlier than that when some idiot decided to trademark "Linux" and demand royalties from Linux companies (yes, there *were* people saying that would be the end of Linux in the commercial world). But in spite of both situations Linux has continue to survive and even thrive in industry. Even in that sense it's way too early at this point to start playing Chicken Little.

I remember that big Linux companies indemnified their customers at that time. Obviously their customers needed that assurance. A smaller business however could never afford to do that. So, what is its choice - lose customers or avoid the risk and not use Linux ?

Bottom line, if it ever turns out that in order to use Linux you must buy it from a big company which can afford to either offer indemnification or sign deals with patent holders, then at that exact moment Linux is effectively dead. At least in the US. Hopefully the rest of the world will keep their IP laws a bit saner.

Are you convinced that such a scenario is completely unlikely ?

Another day another Microsoft patent deal

Posted Jun 9, 2007 18:57 UTC (Sat) by marduk (subscriber, #3831) [Link]

You know there is a big difference between the current situation and the BSD, trademark, and SCO incidents. In those situations there were actually lawsuits. Here, at least right now, we have no law suits. In 16 years I don't know of any Linux user/company that has been sued for patent infringement.

Fact: A lot of companies are giving away their patents to OSS for *free*. Yet stuff like this somehow doesn't get as much press as "Oh you violate 235 of our patents but I'm not going to tell you what they are, but that doesn't necessarily mean I'm going to sue you either."

Fact: Microsoft made a quick-motion PR move and (so far) 3 companies flinched. That's all I see right now. The very few companies that signed deals with SCO were victims of the same circumstance. And any threaten-to-sue based revenue model is certain to get you a little business with very little investment. Unfortunately companies in the U.S. (tech or otherwise) do it all the time. IBM did it to Sun (using patents), got some cash, and moved on to the next victim. But it didn't kill Sun and it didn't kill Unix (Linux & Windows are to blame for that ;-)

Fact: Companies like Microsoft, Sony, Research in Motion, et. al. get sued all the time regarding patent infringement, yet no one is crying over them. Compare the number of lawsuits WRT closed-source software vs. OSS: DivisionByZero.

But seriously, are we letting the cart get ahead of the horse? Right now a vast majority of Linux users & distributors are feeling nothing but a little warm air (I wouldn't even go so far as to call it hot air). It's PR, FUD, what have you. Right now all you can do is some reverse PR. You can't counter sue because there's no lawsuit. Some people are just letting a few spoken words get out of hand. I'm not saying any situation is completely unlikely. I'm saying look at things at face value. So far we have no disclosed patent infringements, no lawsuits, a *tiny* percentage of companies that use Linux signing deals with Microsoft, and a sh*t load of PR/press and a lot of dog wagging. So who is the *real* victim here?

Another day another Microsoft patent deal

Posted Jun 9, 2007 21:17 UTC (Sat) by mikov (subscriber, #33179) [Link]

What can I say ... Although I am not fully convinced yet, there is no denying that what you are saying makes sense. I really really hope that you are right :-)

Another day another Microsoft patent deal

Posted Jun 14, 2007 22:26 UTC (Thu) by mikov (subscriber, #33179) [Link]

BTW, a 4th company has apparently joined on the MSFT deal:
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20070614085735536

Lets hope it is the last one, although I somehow doubt it.

Another day another Microsoft patent deal

Posted Jun 14, 2007 8:16 UTC (Thu) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link]

For your customers there's no option. If they buy software they stand to be sued for patent infringement.

For example, you might buy Windows XP for a large company, and then a few months later you receive a letter explaining that you owe five million dollars to a company which holds a patent on some spurious audio processing technique. Your options are to hire expensive lawyers to defend you, or call Microsoft and ask them to defend you. Microsoft loses and spends a few billion dollars on patent licenses for all its past and future customers, and that puts up the price of your next copy of Windows. Not a hypothetical, that's more or less what /already happens/

If you buy from one of the major commercial Linux distributors, you can expect the same experience. There is a small chance of being sued, and if you are sued because of their software, not something your sysadmins installed from a dodgy third party repository, then they'll come to your aid in court on more or less the same basis as Microsoft.

Microsoft has already predicted that this eventually means the end of the software industry. They're just planning to be the last man standing. The patent system is hopelessly corrupt, it strongly resists attempts to reform it, and those with their snouts in the trough will do everything possible to keep it that way.