On Thu, 30 Apr 1998, Michael Jinks wrote:
> Naturally, I thumped my chest and said "Let 'em try," but I do wonder,
> if M$ did decide to go after the Linux community in force, what might
> they be able to do to us? Anything? They couldn't come to my office
Unless they hire a couple of 300 pound guys named Guido to stop by Linus'
house, probably not much.
Microsoft's license agreement for all their applications stipulates that
these may only be used in conjunction with Microsoft OS's. This would
only affect the emulators, obviously, and no court in the world would
uphold this. There is a chance they could attempt to sue the developers
of WINE, DOSEMU, or other MS-product emulators. However, these products
do not use any MS code and have been very careful to do everything 100% MS
free. That combined with the lack of a single target to sue would
probably prevent this; and the emulators aren't really the source of the
threat to MS anyway.
> and start taking down my servers, obviously, but what about making the
> market a difficult place for Linux to expand?
They have already done this as much as they can. I expect that MS will
find the Linux community a bit difficult to grapple with. Linux is
obviously 100% free of anything ever done by MS. Unless MS pulls a Wang
and claims a patent on the concept of "operating system" (Wang, a MS
satellite if not subsidiary at this point, recently sued Netscape for
patent infringement claiming that they have a patent on the concept of a
data terminal). That goes over well in court, I'm sure. My personal
theory is that MS is attempting to cost Netscape as much money as possible
in frivolous lawsuits. :)
They might attempt to purchase Red Hat, Caldera, or other Linux "pillars
of the community." There is no legal action whatsoever that they could
take against any of these companies. Red Hat has never even talked to
Microsoft on the phone as far as I know. Caldera, of course, is always
tangled up in legal battles with MS, but always as the plaintiff.
There is no way they could leverage their resellers, because to my
knowledge there are no companies that sell both MS and Linux preinstalled
on their systems.
They might attempt to bully the bookstores and computer shops into not
selling Linux CD's. This, I'm sure, would be a big hit with the Justice
Department. Alternatively, they could stipulate in their licensing that
sites may not use MS products concurrently with non-MS operating systems
within the same organization (network, building, computer, whatever).
This would probably be almost as much fun for the DoJ.
The nice thing about developing an OS in an environment where MS has taken
all possible steps to prevent other OS's from gaining a foothold, is that
when your OS does develop it grows up more or less immune to the steps
that they are taking. What's that they say in Jurassic Park, "Linux will
find a way"? :)
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