flyingcheesehead
Touchdown! Greaser!
Brad Smith, Microsoft’s general counsel, and Horacio Gutierrez, the company’s vice president of intellectual property and licensing, said open-souce software, including Linux, violates 235 Microsoft patents. And Microsoft wants distributors and users of open-souce software to start paying royalties for these alleged violations.
Smith broke down the alleged patent violations during the Fortune interview, saying the Linux kernel violates 42 patents and the operating system’s user interface violates a further 65. He went on to claim that the Open Office application suite violates 45 patents and open-source e-mail applications infringe on 15 more. Other open-source software applications infringe on 68 patents, Smith said.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/macworld/20...n20070514_0;_ylt=ApLDln.ARKlCrk_h1sHHtA4E1vAI
The worst part: Microsoft is NOT going after Novell for distributing Linux because Novell has a deal with MS that indemnifies them from any claims over Linux. Dell just joined the deal this week.
THIS is the kind of crap "we" are talking about. You'd-better-be-our-friend-or-else tactics. Or, if-you-can't-beat-them-just-sue-the-crap-out-of-them. Apple, on the other hand, embraces the open-source community, and Mac OS X's Darwin kernel is... wait for it... Open source. I wonder if MS is gonna go after Apple with this too.