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- schestowitz, on 10/12/2007, -10/+65To be clear on this:
1. This proves that Novell "swallowed a bug" for money, so to speak.
2. Steve Ballmer is out of his mind if he think he can put a price tag on Free software.
3. Microsoft has just upset most of its customers, who happen to use Linux at some capacity.
4. Microsoft engages in illegal acts, which is customer extortion. See:
http://www.itworldcanada.com/Pages/Docbase/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=idgml-c11627ed-d99b-49d2-983d-d22856181888&Portal=252cc78a-a947-4072-84be-f50cac8ec48e&ParaStart=0&ParaEnd=14&direction=next&News=Daily+ITwire&Next=Next - chrono13, on 10/12/2007, -10/+63"Why not, Red Hat did it?"
Free software can be sold. The free stands for freedom, not freebie.
But Red Hat did not put a price on OSS or even on Linux. Red Hat put a price on Red Hat Linux™.
But because of the Freedom of OSS, we have Fedora. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fedora_Core#History
Yes, you can put a price on your offering, even if it is entirely OSS. The one thing you can't do however, is take away our four freedoms. You can charge for your offering, but you can't stop your neighbor from using your offering and making it better.
They will try, but now major corporations make money of OSS and will defend it. IBM vs. SCO
If Microsoft's source code were ever leaked (and I know about the very small 2k one), I wonder how much code would be "borrowed". They have refused to buy an idea - then used that very idea illegally.
They ignore patents: http://www.digg.com/linux_unix/Examples_of_Microsoft_stealing_source_code
They pirate software to make their OS: http://slashdot.org/articles/04/11/13/0036243.shtml?tid=133&tid=201&tid=109&tid=1
And just as some MS employee found s/he was too good to pay for Soundforge, I'm sure that somewhere, sometime, some MS employee has used OSS code. We'll never know.
And of course, there is the remote possibility, however improbable, that the NSA has some backdoor access to all Windows computers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSAKEY#Relation_to_Other_Backdoors
Note that the above link also describes other well known and very real back doors in commercial programs including Lotus Notes, anonymizing software, and possibly Window's WMF.
Alexa has a good recommendation on avoiding spyware:
http://www.alexa.com/site/help?index=130
Of course they recommend Microsoft's Defender.
Most other Spyware scanners will detect clean install of XP having minor Alexa spyware.
Not Defender.
My point? Microsoft will sell you for a nickel. To any government. To the MAFIAA. To spyware companies.
They, and especially Balmer, are wrong. They are wrong for all the reasons we already know. But the humor is in looking at the moral's and ethics of the company screaming "RESPECT US". - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -4/+34I think we all agree that Ballmer is beyond help. He needs to be led away gently by the men in white coats, to a padded cell. Videos of Ballmer being interviewed show that man really has some deep rooted issues and insecurity and if he wasn't running Microsoft he'd likely be committed to an instituition.
But then that describes Microsoft as a corporation too. - scabbers, on 10/12/2007, -5/+26Can anyone give me an example of these alleged MS patent infringements in open source?
- meshman, on 10/12/2007, -2/+18I really wish they'd stop referring to intellectual property as IP in technology articles. It's confusing as hell sometimes.
- baalzebub, on 10/12/2007, -2/+18here is ballmer for ya, looks like an untrustworthy used car salesman, who in their right mind would trust this guy...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqUcTvfWgoM - hard666drive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+18Novell deal proves if you make a deal with microsoft, they will ass rape you and laugh in your stupid ***** face.
- chrono13, on 10/12/2007, -2/+17"But does this prove that open source developers need a commensurate battalion of open source lawyers? Given the idiotic state of US patent law, what's to keep MS from spreading a wide net of flanking patents in order to anticipate obvious developmental trends in software in order to prevent the natural course of OS development? Will it ultimately be he who has the most patents wins?"
I don't know why you are being moded down : (
I'm no expert, so I won't claim this with an air of absolute certainty, however...
If Microsoft were open it's patent chest to sue any major OSS project, you would see the end of software patents in the US.
IBM, Sun, and several other major companies (especially the company that was sued) would fire back with their patents. This doesn't even take into account the EFF, FSF and other groups that would throw fuel on the fire in any way they could. It would be messy, and it would be terrible for software (short term anyway). It would likely end software patents in the US.
It is my opinion that Microsoft has not opened fire for one reason and one reason only: Mutually Assured Destruction. The best case scenario ends with them fighting dozens of legal battles all ending in an expensive draw.
If IBM, Sun and other major OSS supporters did not have their own nukes, Microsoft would have already fired theirs. There is no other reason a company like Microsoft would hold back otherwise.
That is my opinion. - Stonekeeper, on 10/12/2007, -2/+17Ask SCO. LOL!
- yhan, on 10/12/2007, -3/+17Logic can not be patented. I personally think that Novell should have responded to those alleged patent infringements with a simple "***** you".
- yenster, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13World developer community to Ballmer:
You're a STINKIN' THIEF. You GOT CAUGHT RED-HANDED stealing source code from Syn'X Relief and were convicted of SOFTWARE PIRACY by a French court in 2001:
http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=02/05/07/2234251&mode=thread&tid=3
By all accounts, you did the same damned thing to Stac Electronics back in '93.
STFU about "respect for intellectual property rights!" - baalzebub, on 10/12/2007, -1/+14DDoSAttack: Redhat is free, CEntOS got theirs free, same with WhiteBox Linux, you can get Redhat free too if you know where to look, what Redhat does sale is service & support for their free distribution...
- 4DFX, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13The next time Ballmer comes to my country, I'll make a pie for him...
- dwhitbeck, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12Ballmer would do well in the Mafia.
- gdgi, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11there is none - microsot paid NOVELL, not the other way around. Typical microsoft ***** trying to make one thing into something that it isn't...
- BlackAdderIII, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11The whole concept and wording of the GPL is one of the most potent expressions of IP rights and international copyright law the world has ever seen.
Who the **HELL** are Microsoft to start telling the open source world we need to respect IP rights?
I'm sorry, does he think we all forgot that Internet Explorer was originally a rebadged product of somebody else's and that Microsoft swindled those authors out of their royalties? Or any number of other times MS has been to court over their unscrupulous behaviour?
Does he forget how many Vista features were already in other products before they were even announced as concept features by Microsoft? Or how that applies to things the whole Windows range?
Does he forget that he's publicly, knowingly lied about "Microsoft IP in Linux" just to push a few wobbly business clients into buying his products?
He's not just a hypocrite, the man's insane. - knute5, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11But does this prove that open source developers need a commensurate battalion of open source lawyers? Given the idiotic state of US patent law, what's to keep MS from spreading a wide net of flanking patents in order to anticipate obvious developmental trends in software in order to prevent the natural course of OS development? Will it ultimately be he who has the most patents wins?
Ballmer is obviously trying to find an angle to slow if not kill OS as it threatens MS. Funding SCO hasn't had the desired impact, so this appears to be his opening salvo for a legal attack taken on directly from Redmond. - neko, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9Gently?
I'd sentence him to work in a chair factory the rest of his life. - GMorgan, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9Novell should respond by forcing the issue. MS cannot legally go around claiming we are stealing from them. I've responded moderately to Novell but feel it should be them who leads an action to force MS to be specific about patent claims rather than randomly making illegal claims. This would be an act of good faith on their part and would turn the very same money they gained against MS.
Note there is nothing in the deal that precludes legal action between Novell and MS. The protection is solely for their customers. - SniperGX1, on 10/12/2007, -4/+12governments should keep their noses out of everything. OSS developers get lots of payment for the work they do. Not all payment has to be in the form of money.
- mrsteveman1, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8I'm tired of hearing the phrase Intellectual property, it makes the speaker look like a moron (more).
If you need to say intellectual property it means your trying to protect something from the rest of the world which already makes you look like an *****, in most cases its something you can barely prove you created in the first place.
Microsoft probably violates more copyright laws than anyone when people aren't looking or can't look. Microsoft loves open source when they can just pull code out of something and use it, see how willing they were to just yank the BSD tcp/ip stack and put it in windows XP? Thats the best example i think, and under the GPL that wouldn't have happened, so thank the BSD license for supporting Microsoft, It's the only reason they had a good tcp/ip stack, now that they've rewritten one for vista you can see how bad their own code is.
Let that be a lesson, if anything in windows works well it was probably written by someone else :D - bmartin, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9When Novell overtakes Red Hat as the enterprise Linux of choice, I'll buy Ballmer's story. They've picked up... what, 1 large customer with this deal? They've done more damage to their image than they've made off that customer and they had to pay the champions of proprietary closed software for it. Idiots.
- nx01, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7I'm highly skeptical that Microsoft could enforce any of it's patents against a competitor anyway. They are a bona fide monopoly and, much to the same extent as IBM, they can only actually enforce their patents when they themselves are sued over them (which IBM did against SCO). Case in point, IBM was forced to sit on their patent arsenal (which dwarfs Microsoft's by the way) because enforcing them can be seen as anti-competitive (in the UNIX market) due to their court battle with the government 20 years ago.
If Microsoft did the same thing now, the US DOJ (and most certainly the EU) could tear Microsoft up over this. This is trouble they cannot afford. However, they decided to see how far it could get them, and they got Novell to bite (fools!). Red Hat is smart to avoid this, and let Microsoft take them to court and lose. - Override, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Not that I'm defending Novell's decision per se; they caused a lot of bad blood throughout the entire Free Software / Open Source / Linux community when they decided to get into bed with Microsoft, and it'll certainly be a while before they regain whatever degree of trust and respect they had in the community. I can't help but wonder though, if this (this announcement in particular, I mean; obviously in general it is) is a Microsoft FUD campaign to cause waves in their competitor's camp, which it is certainly doing. Every time things start to quieten down a bit over Novell's decision, Ballmer just turns up in the press and says it's all about exerting IP pressure, and suddenly everyone is up in arms again, as Novell try to defend themselves from the suggestion that they've set a bad precedent and ***** over the community and everybody else screams about Microsoft's lies. It just seems like Microsoft have now got an ace in the hole as regards stirring up anger; all they have to do is cite completely the wrong reasons for the agreement and everyone is whipped up into righteous indignation. It's a pretty complicated issue...
- ISIfunded911, on 10/12/2007, -8/+14Who cares what this fat paranoid bitch thinks?
- geronimo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Name _one_ patent Ballmer is referring to. Name _one_ patent you think open source infringes on.
Exactly, this is nothing but fear, uncertainty and doubt. - GMorgan, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6In a word 'No'. The last thing we want is to be accused of protectionism on top of the claims of communism. If governments want to support they should help OSS devs take charity status and buy support contracts.
- ClayDragon, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5@chrono13
The "Cold War of Software" or the "Software Patent Balance of Terror", eh? Seems like the old saying is becoming true: the future wars will not be fought on battlefields, but on and with computers instead. ;-) - hermes369, on 10/12/2007, -4/+8"I've just made a deal that will keep the empire out of here forever..."
I've long argued to my Windows friends that Microsoft has long been about creating an economy and not about creating software. Software is the means by which Microsoft creates this economy. - Leo55, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7wtf is wrong with this world.
People work on open source for the FUN of it and here comes Microsoft claiming people steal their ideas. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Hmm paying royalties for IP that either doesn't exist or Microsoft refuses to disclose (ie what patents they think Linux infringes). Yep, sounds like another Microsoft scam. They know if they said what patents the Linux community would start working on non-infringing replacements.
- Zuggy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5What ole' Stupid Steve has yet to realize is that he can't stop Linux and cannot force everyone to pay him royalties. If he were to sue every Linux distro team, others would just take the source code and redistribute it. Even if he sues Linus Torvalds himself and were successful, someone else would just take up the reigns.
"There's only the truth of the signal. You can't stop the signal" -Mr. Universe - drag, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4The problem is that lots of people don't understand this. They don't know about computers or software or copyright and patent law. They are just businessmen who have to make a choice about what software they are using.
The solution is to openly mock Microsoft and use ridicule and sarcasm to make sure that every time this sort of BS comes up it's obvious that the majority of people think that Microsoft is full of ***** and are trying to play 'licensees' for fools. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I don't give Steve my time or respect.
developers, developers, developers... - cyberswat, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Dugg because the world needs to be aware of what Microsoft is doing and avoid both Novell and Microsoft like the plague.
- bofu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3in no way will the following comment be beneficial to anyone:
***** MICROSOFT - BullTaco, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3@yhan
>Logic cannot be patented
Stay tuned for continuing developments .......
"
The Board held in Lundgren that the 'technical arts' test is not a separate and distinct test for statutory subject matter. Although commentators have read this as eliminating a 'technology' requirement for patents, this is not what was stated or intended. As APJ Barrett explained, "[tlhe 'technology' requirement implied by technological arts' is contained within the definitions of the statutory classes . . . All machines, manufactures, or [man-made] compositions of matter" are things made by man and involve technology. Methods which define a transformation of physical subject matter from one state or thing to another involve technology and qualify as a statutory 'process' under § 101.
"
"
[T]he holding in State Street is "clearly limited to "transformation of data . . . by a machine." AT&T involved a machine-implemented process. Machines are physical things that nominally fall within the class of a "machine" in § 101, and machine-implemented methods inherently act on and transform physical subject matter, such as objects or electrical signals, and nominally fall within the definition of a "process under § 101. No machine is required by the present claims. Until instructed otherwise, we interpret State Street and AT&T to address the "special case" of subject matter that nominally falls within § 101, a general purpose machine or machine-implemented process, but which is nonetheless unpatentable because the machine performs an "abstract idea."
"
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/dcom/bpai/its/fd022257.pdf - GMorgan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3You have to agree though that the plan to '***** kill Google' is going so well. If at first you don't succeed throw around more chairs.
- mrsteveman1, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4I don't have a problem with people using the idea of intellectual property as long as they actually created what they're trying to protect, I do have a problem with Microsoft's ***** use of the term just to try and destroy competitors who threaten their software business model. Thats what this is about. You cant copyright or patent software concepts just to attack the competition.
And, don't confuse all this stuff by lumping it into one big "open source" category. There are 2 different license types in common use, the BSD style license and the GPL style license. There's a huge difference, and my problem is with the BSD license. Open source does not mean free. If that TCP stack had been GPL licensed, Microsoft wouldn't have been able to just take it and change it without making those changes publicly available. Thats all the GPL asks for and thats exactly what most people want. That was my point but you missed that somehow.
Its interesting, the only people who complain about stolen code, wont let anyone see that code, if its already been stolen the world has already seen it so what trade secret are you protecting? Suing the offender and proving it should be worth much more to Microsoft than any small piece of code, and yet we see no proof, even in court.
Which one is more likely, Linux programmers reverse engineering binaries to make open source programs, or Microsoft using freely available code to write programs no one is allowed to look over. Which one is easier to commit and then deny? - superpixel, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4None of this will make any impact in the market whatsoever. FWIW, the average business person cares as much for these politics as I care about the average life span of a tsetse fly. I tried to pitch F/OSS solutions to a guy once (who was running an office full of bootleg MS apps, btw) and his logic for saying no? "Bill Gates is the richest guy in the world, so he must know what he's doing." Thus, he "reasoned" MS is perfect, ergo if we use their crap we will be perfect too.
- linuxpenguin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3@bleutuna:
"Many in the OpenSource movement are selling their wares, and just like MS, will most likely want to protect what interesting, new ways they come up with to accomplish tasks. But if they do such, it will be protecting IP, which for many seems to be a no-no in the community.
But Ballmer thinks that it has to happen, that's the way things will go. I tend to agree with him. If Novell or OpenOffice or whatever OpenSource software company creates an ingenious way of handing a task - then, due to the nature of OpenSource today, it can easily be implemented into Microsoft Office or Apple iSuck or whatever. Now, if OpenSource doesn't like it, then they need to patent these concepts. That's what Ballmer's getting at."
Please find another argument, and educate yourself on the argument before participating.
This goes against the very ideas and ideals of open-source. We don't care if other companies use our ideas or code - we just don't want them to hide the fact that they did it. They can use all our ideas, and copy our code all they want - if they're willing to obey the GPL. - baalzebub, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4RE:["see how willing they were to just yank the BSD tcp/ip stack and put it in windows XP?"]
that BSD tcp/ip stack has been used by windows since Win95 was released... - linuxpenguin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@bleutuna:
"And of COURSE MS pulls concepts from OpenSource - IT IS FREAKIN' OPENSOURCE! That's the whole point of the quote, man! You can't bitch at MS for using something OPENSOURCE when its OPEN and free to use. If people have a problem with it, they need to implement IP."
a) Maybe you don't understand the concept of Open Source. The whole thing about open source software is that it's open. If MS is pulling stuff from open source software. . . please, just lead me on over to where you can download the source code. If they have been pulling things from open source projects without releasing the source code, then what they're doing is illegal.
b) What if Xerox had turned the concept of using a graphical window on a computer display were considered "intellectual property" way back when? Would computers be as easy-to-use and inexpensive as they are today? How about if 3DFX had considered its concept of a graphics processing unit to be "intellectual property"? These aren't physical mechanisms - they're software (in the case of the GPU, it's software on a chip, but software nonetheless). However, they have changed our world in their own way, and it's likely that these concepts may have never taken off had they been considered "intellectual property" and their respective companies had sued others for utilizing similar concepts. - drag, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4What you say sounds clever, but doesn't make much sense to me.
Microsoft goal is to sell you software. That's all.
Specificly they want to sell licenses to corporations and other businesses that use their software.
Very specificly they want to sell licenses for Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office, which the vast majority of their income comes from. (probably well over 80%)
They divide up between different 'business groups' to hide this fact, but the truth is that is were the majority of their income comes from.
Everything they do is geared specificly to protecting these two franchises. Everything they do in the server arena, with development tools, extra software, administration tools, etc etc is geared to attracting people to Windows/Office and locked into Windows/Office.
They make little profit from peopel buying software to use at home. They make a lot of money, to be sure, but I expect that the majority of it is going to be eaten by support costs. Be also aware that the majority of home owners only spend around 30 bucks for their copies of windows and maybe 50-75 dollars for their copy of Office since that is what OEMs like Dell pay for it. The 'Microsoft tax' on every single PC sold by any mainstream supplier.
From patents and other intellectual property law they make no money off of. For example with this deal Novell got 250 or so million dollars from Microsoft for it. So they lost money.
But remember the goal for Microsoft is to keep people using and buying Windows and Office for their businesses. Businesses have to respect IP and stuff a lot more then the average person because Microsoft, on a whim, can send the BSA into any person's business and have every single device they use and every single peice of software they use inspected for correct licensing.
It's part of the EULA that you submit your business to this. If you agree to use MS software your also agreeing to open your business up to licensing audits.
On top of that most people buy their licenses with that Software Assurance licensing sceme. This way they get their software much much cheaper then purchasing it other ways but if they let the contract lapse (due to not renewing it or violating the EULA) they automaticly loose ALL their licenses.
Needless to say many people are very scared of Microsoft because they can't run their businesses without it and if they piss off MS then things can become quite expensive for them.
(imagine going from a Software Assurance license, loosing that, and then having to buy everybody a copy of Windows and Office at full retail pricing!)
That is why they paid Novell the 250 million dollars. This 'IP' fud is purely a way to keep people scared of Linux and increase the cost of it.
Most businesses people don't understand that Microsoft is bluffing. They can't afford to start going after patent violations any more then Linux developers can. - jellygraph, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2steve who? oh, yes... the jackass at microsoft, with verbal diahrea... no one takes him serious... but he should shut up none the less and focus on technology and his own company
- drag, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3If Microsoft went through with patent lawsuites they'd be nailed to the wall.
Seriously. It would cause a revolution in the computer industry. Sure they may be able to take out Redhat, but Microsoft has a hell of a lot more to loose then then open source people do. The open source people will just code around it.
Remember Microsoft is the only major software company that I know of that has been sued multiple times for patent lawsuites.
Plus then people will have a REAL reason to hate Microsoft. No Linux developer would ever sue Microsoft over patents, this would be overt aggression. It wouldn't be just competing, it would be destroying people's livings, their lives. (not talking about linux nerds, but people who seriously have invested most of their professional lives in developing and supporting OSS) Europe would drop any patent laws they plan on adopting and would actively pursue widescale open source adoption.
Microsoft couldn't win. Even if they win the lawsuits, they still loose. - schestowitz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@ cantormath:
Au contraire.
Novell execs fend off uncertainty over Microsoft pact
,----[ Quote ]
| "We did not sign a patent cross licensing agreement, what we agreed
| to was not to sue any customers over patents," Hovsepian said, adding
| there has been confusion and rhetoric over the intellectual property
| aspect of the contract.
|
| The deal protects customers, but either company could still sue each
| other tomorrow, he said.
`----
http://www.linuxworld.com.au/index.php/id;1069002953;fp;2;fpid;1 - tech42er, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Bleutuna, you're going to be buried into oblivion. You obivously have no knowledge of Open Source. Open Source is not public domian. You can't just use it; it's licensed (usually under the GPL) and there are restrictions. MS breaks these restrictions. THey then have the audactiy to go after opensource developers claiming that they are infringing on MS's "intellectual property" without revealing what that is. It's just FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) designed to scare people into using MS's proprietary software, as opposed to open source alternatives.
- tech42er, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Bleutuna, MS wasn't the first OS, just so you know. They took ideas from UNIX and its derivatives and clones. At any rate, ideas are not copyrighted. Code is.
- Ratteler, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I like the sentiment, but not the application.
The Government SHOULD be regulated, but "We The People" to use only open source software. If it needs a specific application, it should hire programmers to create it, and that software should be Open Source as well.
But funding Open Source developers as a kind of grant or something would just be pissing away tax payer money worse than usually.
I am all for forbidding the government from buying software however. -
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