On 03 Aug 2010, at 17:18, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
On Tue, 3 Aug 2010 07:07:10 pm Jonas Maebe wrote:
It's not really supporting in this case. Microsoft is of the opinion that a lot of open source software infringes on their software patents (which is definitely true
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Unless you can point out the infringing software, and demonstrate what patents it infringes, that's just an supposition. It is not "definitely true" except by doing violence to the idea of "definitely".
(to view the patents, enter the patent numbers at http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/PTO/srchnum.htm and click on "Search"; to see the most basic stuff covered by a patent, read claims that do not refer to other claims)
* Microsoft's patent on page up/page down (including a formula on how to calculate how much you have to scroll a text document to show the next page): 7,415,666 * Microsoft sues TomTom over (V)FAT patents infringed by the Linux kernel: http://laforge.gnumonks.org/weblog/2009/02/27/ * Microsoft reaches patent deal with HTC over patents infringed by Android: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2363175,00.asp * SUSE disables sub-pixel anti-aliasing because it infringes on Microsoft patents: http://techrights.org/2007/04/08/patent-font/
In what way does Microsoft writing out a cheque for thousands of dollars to give to developers who develop open sourced .Net software "trying to get everyone who works on open source to pay them for infringing on their patents"?
As I explained in the part you cut away: they are trying to get the open source version of .NET (Mono) gain wide acceptance. And they also reached a patent license deal with Novell that covered Mono (and OpenOffice): see the last FAQ at http://www.novell.com/linux/microsoft/faq.html, implying that everyone who wants to distribute/use those products should also get a patent license from Microsoft (otherwise, why would Novell need one?)
I mean, yes, I think Microsoft is devious too, but thinking that them funding developers to write OSS is a ploy to force them to pay patent fees is pure tinfoil helmet territory.
Tinfoil hats need not apply. Steve Balmer publicly announced that sooner or later someone will have to pay for the Microsoft patents that FOSS projects infringe. See http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS6670466370.html about the Linux kernel in particular, and http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS3513440381.html about the Novell deal and veiled threats to users of Red Hat Linux.
Yes, they're threatening to wield the patent sword (and yet they haven't done so ...
They have done plenty of times, see above. And those are only a number of published cases (there are more, involving at least Amazon, Samsung and IO Data). As you may or may not know, most patent cases however never reach the daylight and are settled behind the scenes (it's generally not good business to publish that you are being accused of patent infringement, and patent court cases cost insane amounts of money -- in fact, if the license fee is less than $1 million, in the US the costs of the court case itself will always outweigh the license fee; see slide 9 of http://people.ffii.org/~jmaebe/conf0411/tue/Brian%20Kahin.pdf ).
you have to wonder if their patents were so sound, why they haven't sued Red Hat out of existence yet?).
* Red Hat doesn't have that much money. It's more profitable to sue Linux users (Amazon, Samsung, TomTom, ...) * It could attract unwanted attention from anti-trust authorities (again)
They can do both at the same time. MS is a huge company, with many different departments with their own budgets to spend and their own managers making their own decisions.
Sure, see for example http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10290686-16.html
.NET is however not a good example.
Jonas