Linux, Balmer and flying pigs
p2pnet.net News:- “What if it’s true and Linux does indeed infringe on one or more of Microsoft’s patents?” – asks Adrian Kingsley-Hughes in ZDNet.
He’s referring to Microsoft ceo Steve Ballmer’s claims that it does.
“You have to admit that there’s at least a chance that Linux does indeed infringe on Microsoft’s patents,” says Kingsley-Hughes, going on:
Come on, no matter how much of a Linux fan you are, you have to admit that there’s at least a chance that Linux does indeed infringe on Microsoft’s patents. After all, Microsoft does hold a lot of patents and while Linux is open source and we can all take a look at the source code, only Microsoft has access to most of its source code so it isn’t all that difficult for it to prove to itself at any rate that there are IP infringements contained in Linux.
After all, before IBM handed over some 500 patents to the open source community, it’s pretty clear that Linux was infringing some of them. Given that, why is it so hard to believe that the same isn’t going on with Microsoft?
And if that’s the case, “The best thing that Microsoft could do would be to sit on this information and use it to cut deals – or use it to generate goodwill and donate the patents to the open source community,” says Kingsley-Hughes, adding
” did I just see a pig flying past my office window?”
Also See:
ZDNet – What if Linux does infringe on Microsoft intellectual property?, November 24, 2006
Ballmer’s claims – Microsoft, Novell deal unravels, November 22, 2006
p2pnet newsfeeds for your site.
rss feed: http://p2pnet.net/p2p.rss
Mobile – http://p2pnet.net/index-wml.php
November 25th, 2006 at 3:22 pm
“only Microsoft has access to most of its source code so it isn’t all that difficult for it to prove â to itself at any rate â that there are IP infringements contained in Linux.”
I strongly doubt that there can be software copyright infringement if the source code was never seen by alleged infringer, because only Microsoft had access to its source code.
Just imagine. Songwriter A writes a song on a piece of paper and then stores the paper where no one can see it. Never copyright registers the song. It is then possible for Songwriter B to write a very similar song, by chance. Since B never saw A’s song, he is not an infringer.
BTW, for Microsoft to sue for copyright infringement of a software source code, the source code must be copyright registered first. A law requirement. That means making the code public. I understand that Microsoft registers the appearance of Windows and not the source code.
Surely if Microsoft copyright registers their code, the code will be scrutinized for infringement of someone else’s code, by many programmers. After all, Microsoft has a lot of money and nakes a very good target.
What does this all mean? Microsoft may not want to sue and anyway maynot have any case.
Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com
November 26th, 2006 at 5:04 am
“I strongly doubt that there can be software copyright infringement”
The article is talking about patents, not copyright. And patents can be infringed without the access to the source code. This is why there is a movement against software patents – http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/
AFAIK.
December 1st, 2006 at 2:00 am
Hold on, if only MS has access to its sources, is it really fair to say that some one is “infringing” on their intellectual property when they infringe on their copyrights/patents. I mean, if they aren’t available to the public, then any one who comes up with an idea that happens to infringe upon these copyrights/patents did it unintentionally, since they obviously didn’t have access to the sources, and since they came upon their ideas on their own, aren’t they entitled to their own claim to acopyright/patent?