On Thu, 5 Aug 2010 12:55:20 am Jonas Maebe wrote:
Therefore I stand by my original points that a) Microsoft paying a Mono developer $5,000 in no way demonstrates their alleged acceptance of open source or free software. That action fits perfectly into their patent FUD game (open source software whose usage you can license from Microsoft is good, and they'll even support its development)
There's a slight contradiction there. First you say it doesn't demonstrate their acceptance of FOSS, then you say it demonstrates their promotion of FOSS. In the second case, *Microsoft* FOSS, but still FOSS.
I think we're in violent agreement about this. In the context where this discussion started, namely motivations for contributing to FOSS software, it was claimed that idealism and religious fervour are the only reasons. I pointed out that many non-idealist and non-religious companies contribute to FOSS software. You've pointed out that Microsoft's support of FOSS is *extremely* nuanced and, dare I say it, Machiavellian:
"Microsoft FOSS Good, our competitors' FOSS Bad"
one might almost say. That's hardly support for FOSS on idealistic grounds, but a hard-nosed business tactic to defend their revenue stream from a threat. It displays an attitude that FOSS is not "a cancer" that need be destroyed, or a fringe movement from some hairy unwashed ex-UNIX dinosaurs and idealists that can be ignored, but something that will be around in the long term, and a real competitor to Microsoft that needs to be managed.
*That* was my point all along. I never suggested that Microsoft was a willing contributor to, say, the Linux kernel.
Oh wait...
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2009/jul09/07-20linuxqa.mspx http://www.linux-mag.com/id/7439
As I said, there are all sorts of reasons people contribute to FOSS projects, starting with "I have an itch that needs scratching", to "it will help prevent paying customers from dropping Windows Hyper-V virtualisation servers in favour of something else".
b) most software probably infringes on at least a couple of software patents out there (ones that will be held valid by at least one judge/ jury somewhere if they would be tried; besides, as long as a regular patent is not explicitly invalidated, it is assumed to be valid by virtue of having passed the examination process)
The second thing any competent patent defence would do (after trying to prove that your device is nothing like the patented device) is to try to invalidate the patent. Demonstrating that your device is based on prior art is not just a defence of the infringement claim, but could very well demonstrate that the patent isn't even valid because it does nothing new or different from the prior art.
As for the examination process... even the United States Patent Office is aware that the process isn't working and they grant patents too readily. They recently ran a trial "Peer-to-Patent" process, which invited people to research prior art for them. According to them, the average time each examiner has to research a patent is 18-20 hours:
http://www.peertopatent.org/getting_started
I suspect that's a self-serving over-estimate from the patent office. I remember reading that the more accurate figure is 5-6 hours per patent application, but I can't find the reference to it now so you'll just have to take that with a rather large grain of salt.