Comments on: Microsoft Claims Free Software Violates 235 Patents

By: Microsoft: Free Software Violates Patents! « Firefox Extension Guru’s Blog

Thu, 17 May 2007 22:57:19 +0000

[...] News Source: CyberNet NewsÂ [...]

By: Ryan

Ryan — Thu, 17 May 2007 14:55:27 +0000

I’m sure that Microsoft violates patents as well, because there is not doubt that some of their employees go searching the Web to try and figure out how to accomplish some of their coding tasks. Then they probably use ideas from both Linux and other operating systems to accomplish what they set out to do. That’s why this whole thing is ridiculous.

By: kiltboy

kiltboy — Wed, 16 May 2007 15:28:03 +0000

Obviously Micro$oft is not like Area 51 where if you work there, you can never leave. M$ employees have gone to work for other companies, and no doubt have developed similar applications for those competitors. I know if I wrote an application and then had to write a similar application, I would probably use similar (but not exact) code, because of what I remembered from the previous application, but more, because my brain would work in a similar way to how it did when I wrote the previous code. I'm really curious to see the similarities between M$ code and the other code to know what their definition of patent violation is. I would also be curious to know how they can prove that their code was written first. Linus Torvalds, I think, sums it up quite well in this article where he says:

"It's certainly a lot more likely that Microsoft violates patents than Linux does," said Torvalds, holder of the Linux trademark. If the source code for Windows could be subjected to the same critical review that Linux has been, Microsoft would find itself in violation of patents held by other companies.

I wonder when M$ is going to change their Mission Statement to "Thou shalt have no other idols but me."

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 15 May 2007 23:34:34 +0000

I have to ask if Microsoft should get one cent I think that is should goto the Commodore amiga workbench
[en.wikipedia.org]

By: Ryan

Ryan — Tue, 15 May 2007 19:40:12 +0000

Pieter wrote:

“Oh well, we can’t prove we’re right because we’re too scared to show the source code of our software to the world.” Jeez…

I couldn’t help but laugh.

By: Pieter

Pieter — Tue, 15 May 2007 14:36:00 +0000

Microsoft’s probably just trying to get rid of their open source competitors. I have heard about the Linux kernel supposedly infringing with patent laws, but where’s the proof? “Oh well, we can’t prove we’re right because we’re too scared to show the source code of our software to the world.” Jeez…

By: Ryan

Ryan — Mon, 14 May 2007 18:50:40 +0000

I do think a lot of the bigger companies will join in, such as Google. They’ve never been one to support Microsoft (since they are pretty much competing with them) so I think they would see this as an opportunity to show how much they love the open source community.

By: Mohan

Mohan — Mon, 14 May 2007 18:44:37 +0000

Sad…but I wonder if they do try anything will IBM jump in, or how about Google as they both use a lot of FOSS with they services and support open source softwares.

Now they are they just being paranoid.