Le mercredi 16 mai 2007 00:MM, Charles-H. Schulz a écrit : Charles, > What you wrote is precious to us, Alex. But let me just hint a couple of > things: > - MS has been talking about this intermittently. If they had patents, > they could just show them. But the fact is that they didn't, even though > I'm sure that they have some twisted ones in store. But they just won't > disclose them.
I won't go into the ins and outs of patent strategy, everyone knows that games are played constantly in this arena. Suffice it to say that sometimes it pays to bide ones time and choose one's opponents carefully. > - OOo's IP (or whatever that means) is hold jointly by its contributors > and Sun. This could be more serious than that. But wait, there is more. > OOo is covered by the Open Invention Network. Hence the OIN acronym - ok, thanks for that info. > It's an IP trust founded > by Sun, IBM, Red Hat, Novell, Philipps, Oracle and other behemoths of > that kind. This organization protects directly a pool of IP and OOo is > in there. If there were to be a trial, it would be a MAD for MS > (Mutually Assured Destruction), because they would open the Pandora's > box, and I don'think they can do this like that. Otherwise, it's going > to be bloody but not so much for us actually. It will be bloody for MS > at first, because the OIN members will fall on Redmond just like a > Spring tornado over a Texas church. And I don't mean that they will do > this because they love us, as we're a piece in the whole equation. They > will do it because that will be their cause for "declaring war" to MS. > And they will counterattack with things such as IP on directories, XML, > networking technologies, etc, etc, etc. > > Just my two cents of Euro, And I agree that a full frontal attack on a big structure would probably be an unwise decision. I'm more concerned about MS's previous tactics, like those used by the BSA with copyright enforcement, to push small firms into capitulating. Small firms don't have these means of redress, and perhaps then it is a job for marketing to reflect on how to communicate to such businesses in order to reassure them. Personally, I have trouble believing something I haven't seen myself (call me a cynic, or Thomas or paranoid or whatever) ;-), so I prefer to err on the side of caution. Take care, Alex --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]