On 6/1/07, Eric Nicholson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I'm also not a lawyer, but... I previously would have agreed about the protections in the license, but until the whole claim of 135 Patent violations in Linux clears up, I'm not sure. MS Legal needs to prove that they can be trusted.
You mean like 30+ litigation free years** worth of trust? ** via http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/2006/12/patent_lunacy_d.html#comment-26885657 "Microsoft has lots of patents covering just about every aspect of software.
How many times in the past 30 years has Microsoft sued any company for patent infringement? I can't think of any. Microsoft, IBM, and all the big guys use their patents as a defense, much more than as an offensive revenue generator."
a bit further down @ http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/2006/12/patent_lunacy_d.html#comment-26918802
A quick search reveals that in November, Alcatel filed lawsuits against Microsoft for several alleged patent infringements related to IPTV. The IPTV patents stem from the work of Oracle engineers who had developed fast-forward and rewind features for its video server technology. The patents were sold to a company Alcatel later acquired. So, in defense, Microsoft sued Alcatel for infringing on 10 of its patents in the same area. See, this is a current example of how patent defenses work. Patents are often overlapping. That is fine, and most of the time companies find ways to do business without lawsuits.
DISCLAIMER: I am not a lawyer, just a hacker who would rather worry about writing code than about whether or not MSFT is going to sue me if I write code against ANY thing they might produce. It's kind of how they got to be the size they are e.g. develop an API > get people to write code against that API > Sue them for all they're worth for building code against patented technologies and then laugh at them while they suffer... err wait, sorry, scratch that last part, and instead append, "Become a behemoth profit making machine by tapping into the ISV, VAR, etc... channels who write code against their API's and as a result they sell more software for their software to run on (recursion at it's finest hour) " just after "... that API >". Thanks! :D -- /M:D M. David Peterson http://mdavid.name | http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/au/2354 | http://dev.aol.com/blog/3155
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