Red Hat Chairman and CEO Matthew Szulik said Microsoft’s legal efforts to challenge open source by employing patent infringement law represent a big threat. “It’s a credible threat, no doubt about it,” said Szulik. “We see the threat of costs of litigation could be harmful, cause a disenfranchisement of the global collaborative [development] community and disrupt the speed of innovation. Yes, I think it’s quite credible.” Read the report at CRN.
Red Hat CEO ‘Scared’ About Microsoft’s Possible Legal Tactics
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The article does does not offer any specifics. Maybe to not fuel Microsofts fire if any. What patents is it referring to? MS has been very successful in marketing their products. But products largely invented by others. In fact it is hard to think of a product originally invented by MS. NT was derived from VMS. Windows from Xerox. Word from WordPerfect. Explorer from Netscape. TCP/IP from Unix. Com from Corba. HTTP from WWW. C from Bell Labs. C# from Java. Etc. MS has been very successful in packing and marketing a product – much like Redhat – with gravity on business as opposed to technology as the Windows security mess shows. But which parts of their product did MS invent to the extent that it has qualified for a patent?
“Explorer from Netscape.”
Dead wrong. Explorer was based on the Mosaic browser. You can still read a Mosaic copyright in IE’s about dialog. Microsofts IE team is still forbidden (it’s a reason to get fired) to look at Mozilla code because MS fears license infringements from the AOL guys.
“But which parts of their product did MS invent to the extent that it has qualified for a patent?”
Inventing to some extent isn’t enough to get a patent. On the other side you can even get patents even without intenting at all.
Just make a search in a patent database. MS holds thousands of patents. Also that for example C# is similar to Java doesn’t say anything about patents. I don’t get your point. So A is similar to B? This is nothing MS specific but can be sayed to nearly all products from IBM, Oracle, Open Source software and all the others too (this holds true even beyond Software or IT).
But MS don’t even need any valid patents at all to make damage to open source software. Filing 10.000 cases and interim measures can do a lot of damage because most projects don’t have the money to defend themselves. But MS would never do this because the damage to their image would be too high. But focusing on a single target (say Ximian if they ever piss MS) is a reasonable course. They don’t pay their people with economic warefare degrees for nothing.
Cheers!
As I wrote so many times on OSNews and was ridiculed, now the CEO of RedHat finally gets his head out of the sand and realizes how foolish he and others in the Linux / open source / free software crowd have been.
I call special attention to Miguel de Icaza. His shameless cloning of Microsoft programs and technology has opened the Linux world to huge potential liabilities.
Well, better late than never. I am happy to see that the CEO of the #1 Linux vendor realizes that they are potentially very vulnerable to Microsoft legal attacks.
It is time for the Linux and open source world to stop copying and start innovating. This equation can work the other direction. Out innovate Microsoft instead of copying their software and technology. Make a better mousetrap.
. . . g h o s t
>> “It is time for the Linux and open source world to stop copying and start innovating. This equation can work the other direction. Out innovate Microsoft instead of copying their software and technology. Make a better mousetrap.”
Uhm, are you a MS employee or something?
Microsoft is copying lots of stuff from the UNIX/Linux world and you’re saying that the UNIX/Linux people should stop copying from Microsoft?
Neh..
> Uhm, are you a MS employee or something?
> Microsoft is copying lots of stuff from the
> UNIX/Linux world and you’re saying that the
> UNIX/Linux people should stop copying from
> Microsoft?
Yes but the Linux world hasn’t got the money (has anyone got the money?) to fight MS. Also are there any patents on open source innovations? Possibly, I don’t know.
What’s your point? That just because MS copy rather than innovate the OSS community should too? I thought ghost’s comment was excellent and would be delighted if there are any MS employees with his mindset.
If RedHat and others are liable, then so is MS. If they start playing bad company again then perhaps we can convince other companies to play bad company too.
Everyone in the Linux commununity laughed and rubbed their hands together during the Microsoft anti-trust case, never realizing that the courts are open to ALL, and what goes around comes around. Sauce for the goose and all that…
Mr. Murcek, you are absoulutely 100% correct. The companies that sued MS should have known that MS can afford more lawyers than they could and the only thing they would accomplish is that they would awaken a sleeping giant.
Now MS has revved up their legal and lobbying teams. Those that sued MS will never compete in that arena.
“C# from Java”. Cut the bullshit. Tell me one C# language feature that exists ONLY in Java. You can onestly say that every OOP language is a Smalltalk clone
….because often enough, you don’t know your own history.
Why did Bill Gates and Co. start collecting patents in the first place?
Was Windows originally an idea hatched by Bill Gates? Or just the *name*? What about Word? Who cloned whom…Word, or Word Perfect?
What about the Internet? Anyone remember the infamous “Who Needs the Internet?” article in MS Jorunal?
Please, tell me, exactly what did Microsoft “innovate?” And, really, can anyone show me that Microsoft’s supposed new tack with software patents isn’t more of an “about face?” Since when did Microsoft become so jealously posessive of their “Intellectual Property?”
One more point: This is a big planet, with lots of people on it. Exactly who is this rampant patent litigation going to impact, especially in the long run?
Let’s see…try this morphing….
innovate….
in***ate….
in****ate….
inte**ate…
integrate
“Now MS has revved up their legal and lobbying teams. Those that sued MS will never compete in that arena.”
MS doesn’t own all the courts. They should be particularly concerned regarding activities in california. California has its own laws regarding antitrust and california (home of sun and others) won’t be partial to MS. Europe is also not under the thumb, or dollar, of MS.
Moreover, suits means potential liability and that will have an impact on MS’s financial evaluation. AND!!! MS is being sued by many and that number is growing.
Lastly, don’t forget that the invincible tobacco companies lost in court. MS has also already lost some suits and will probably lose others.
What patents is it referring to?
There’s the portfolio they bought from SGI which OpenGL supposedly infringes, for starters. Microsoft has talked about RAND licensing, which is anathema for open source and would set a bad precedent. Microsoft has also been spending tons of money in speech and handwriting recognition research. That wouldn’t affect the Linux kernel but is something the distros may run into down the road.
We may need IBM to step up to the plate and help out… they have the money, clout, interest, and patents of their own.
It is about lawsuits – the cost of which could kill a company like Redhat. Microsoft has its own lawfirm.
Due to the flaws on USA’s current patent office, it is possible to create a lot of patents.
NT was derived from VMS.
NT was heavily influence by VMS, but right now, it can stand up on its own. It have some NT-only features that are patented.
Windows from Xerox.
Err, technically, only the GUI was invented by Xerox. That was the basics. Windows in general in the early days copied Mac OS. Besides, there are practically no Windows 9x-specific patents (if there is, I’m not aware of it).
Word from WordPerfect.
Now, this is where you are quite wrong. The idea itself was copied from WordPerfect in the similar manner as WP did to WordStar, and so on. Design wise, it is apples and oranges.
Explorer from Netscape.
Actually, UI, design and concept, they are pretty different. However, both being based on Mosaic back then, there tend to be similarities. But IE is a totally different beast from Netscape. (There is only a few ideas, the biggest is the bookmarks, that Microsoft copied).
TCP/IP from Unix.
So you want them to build something completely incompatible? They didn’t do this because of lack of innovation, but rather compatiblity with UNIX servers.
Com from Corba.
Early COM and early CORBA are worlds apart. Very different. The gap may be closer now, but back then, people would laugh at this.
HTTP from WWW.
IIS was made to be compatible with HTTP because it is the standard. Not because of their lack of innovation.
C from Bell Labs.
They pick it the same way as they pick x86. It was there, there wasn’t any reason to make a new programming language.
C# from Java.
Finally, something I can somewhat agree. However, C# itself, from what I have read (don’t have URLs now) was started before Sun made Java public. My guess is that Microsoft dump C# (or whatever it was called then) for Java because Java is there and it (somewhat) works.
But from what I see, in a decade, both languages would be very different. Trust me.
Besides, you comparisons isn’t with technical ideas, but rather pure concepts. But generally, the US government should redo their Patents Office.
“You can onestly say that every OOP language is a Smalltalk clone”
Actuall the first OO language was Simula 67, first released 1967!
The above, long post about these different issues is interesting, but I guess I have to elaborate.
Early versions of word processors were an awful lot alike, in terms of their limitations, their difficult-to-remember keystroke combinations, and so on. Microsoft and WordPerfect were competitors, but WordPerfect won because their strategy was to make sure everyone got trained in it, and trained well. Beyond that, they were just all word processors, with some gimmicks and features that differentiated themselves slightly.
Anyone want to comment on the “Who needs the Internet?” editorial from MSJ, back when they were pushing their proprietary MSN network?
Yeah, Mosaic was the grandfather. But remember, IE and Netscape weren’t all that majorly different in the early days of IE. Microsoft probably won that because they made a very, very slippery slope. I swear, I never saw the phrase “free stuff” used more often than I did when they were first pushing IE. Where is that phrase now?
If you look around, you’ll find out that Gates & Co were *opposed* to software patents back then. Maybe they still are. And frankly, if they start using them to hose Linux, I will take that as hyprocracy. Because that’s just the kind of thing that made them oppose them in the first place.
And as far as innovation goes, I still haven’t seen anyone address the question of how Microsoft is so innovative. Market-savvy might be a better term to describe them. They’re also not so bad at polishing rough spots for users.
In sum, I would like to propose that there’s no good reason for Microsoft to use patents against competitors. As time goes on, their business practices are decreasing and decreasing my willingness to recommend them to anyone. IBM seems to have reversed that trend (they had it really bad in the 1980’s and 1970’s, to the point where I wanted to see them out of my shop as quickly as possible.) I can only hope that Redmond will reverse themselves as well.
Pretty much a worthless article beyond “RedHat is afraid of litigation”.
Basically, the current fear is that MS will start going through the system with a fine tooth comb to look for patents that it might own and wish to prosecute.
These patents can cover anything from how a VM is implemented to a rendering technique. These can be “legitimate” patents that the community has no idea about.
RedHats fear is that it will have to pull something in order to NOT be prosecute by MS. Not for actually violating a patent, but for distributing something that violates a patent.
This will be most important if MS find anything within the kernel, as its one thing to have to yank out, say GIMP from a RH distribution, but quite another to have to yank some core piece of a TCP/IP stack within the kernel.
In the long term, however, I don’t think it matters. Many patents can be worked around. And if they’re really broad stupid patents, then coalitions can form to fight them properly. If anything, its a sign of desperation when they have to reel back on innovation and turn to litigation to try an compete.
Remember, IBM has deep pockets too and a lot invested in Linux and any attack on RedHat will likely be an attack on IBM as well.
“Remember, IBM has deep pockets too and a lot invested in Linux and any attack on RedHat will likely be an attack on IBM as well.”
Such a scenario might well show us what IBM is made of these days. Back on his PBS show, Gringley said that Microsoft has never *really* had to fight IBM in any serious way; they just got tangled with them on a little corner of their business, the microcomputer (PC) division.
OTOH, IBM is selling stuff off lately. If IBM stopped being a hardware company (and that was always their primary focus,) and can’t cut it in the services market without acting like a 700-pound gorilla, then what will we see? Couple of outdated (old codger) corp’s finghting over worthless pieces of paper handed out by a money-hungry government that can’t afford to *question* a patent before giving it out?
I hope not. I’d be much happier if I saw that “MS-Linux” coming ’round the bend….
…or, at the very least heavy backing of FreeBSD, so we’ll continue to have a community of OS lovers to come up with new ideas…
I’m not proposing that FreeBSD is a “second-rate” OS that MS should take up instead of Linux as a first-rate OS. MS has their reasons, but they like the licensing terms better. I’d rather that they would instead see that the GPL isn’t as evil as they make it out to be. If they did that, I guess I wouldn’t care which one they backed. BSD licensing has its good points and bad points, but so does the GPL. They ought to just choose which one to back, and stop beating up on the other.
>>>”Remember, IBM has deep pockets too and a lot invested in Linux and any attack on RedHat will likely be an attack on IBM as well.”
Grow up. The whole issue with GPL license and possible infringement is the MAIN reason why IBM will NEVER make their own Linux distribution.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/28183.html
That’s the whole IBM business strategy. RedHat/SuSE takes the legal risks. IBM takes the real cash. When you buy an IBM server with RedHat enterpise linux edition, RedHat doesn’t pocket the $1000+ price tag (RedHat gets maybe a couple of hundred dollars if they are lucky).
IBM will sell you embedded PowerPC router/set-top chipsets. So what if you get into legal trouble with embedding GPL stuff — IBM already sold you their PowerPC chips and dev. kits. You can use embedded linux if you want to, but IBM’s own embedded OS partner is QNX. But as soon as IBM is doing their own embedded projects with real cash flow, it’s QNX that on chrsylers telematics systems.
some yahoo posted “live by the sword…”
trying to imply that people happy about microsofts woes in the court system, should not ignore the fact that opensource could be vulnerable in the courts as well.
this ignores the fact that in this “open source is sued by MS” scenario…that microsoft’s chief argument is “wahhhhh…those evil doers are reverse engineering our software, and making interfaces look similar”
THAT’S WHEN THE REAL SWORD COMES DOWN ON MICROSOFT.
someone go ahead and finish this off with a huge list of all the protocols microsoft reverse engineered, all the embrace and extend ploys they have executed, all the programs interfaces THEY have copied…
that list has to be unimaginably long.
>>>THAT’S WHEN THE REAL SWORD COMES DOWN ON MICROSOFT.
>>>someone go ahead and finish this off with a huge list of all the protocols microsoft reverse engineered, all the embrace and extend ploys they have executed, all the programs interfaces THEY have copied…
Except that Reverse Engineering is not illegal.
Maybe it is Mono as opensource implementation of .Net that is reason for Redhats worry. But suing Redhat would be like suing the music file swapping services such Napster, Morpheus and KaaZaa. Bodies that are really not the guilty party. Just convenient targets. Or maybe is it in Apache/Tomcat vs. IIS that MS can find ammo. By the way, another entry on the list is MSSQLServer. MS ‘got’ that from Sybase. The good is that MS sofar has donated $26 bill.