MS claims Linux violates 235 patents Options

[impala454]

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/for...33867/index.htm?

could be a huge cluster for either side. will be interesting to see what happens.

[Seeker]

Microsoft has been saying for years that Linux and other open source software violates their patents, but they have yet to announce which patents exactly that they're violating. Until an announcement is made they can't sue anyone. The open source community is sitting around going "Microsoft keeps going on and on about patent infringements, but they haven't told us what we need to change."

First Microsoft has to announce which patents are being violated, and give developers a reasonable amount of time to fix them. Until this is done Microsoft will be laughed out of every court.

Second, Microsoft would never attack Linux as it is backed by huge corporations such as IBM, NEC, HP, Redhat, Novell etc. of which Microsoft is violating some of above-mentioned companies patents. If Microsoft sues one of the above then you can bet that one of those companies will counter-sue Microsoft for the patents Microsoft is violating. In the end it wouldn't be worth the trouble for Microsoft.

Third, SCO (backed and funded by Microsoft) tried and failed to sue IBM over patent infringement and Linux code snippets. It was a long drawn-out multi-year ordeal and SCO ended up being very embarrassed. It was a huge win for the open source community. Apparently Microsoft didn't learn much from that fiasco.