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I agree. When one looks at the facts its hard to avoid the link:

1) Large vendors such as HP, Toshiba, Acer, Lenovo and Dell all announce that they're either planning, testing or offering Linux beyond the server arena.

2) Microsoft can no longer do the old 'strong arm' tactics as they did years ago to OEM vendors. If you can't threaten OEM's - whats to stop Microsoft from at least sowing the seeds of doubt in the marketplace over the so-called 'legality'?

3) Suddenly an unknown patent harvesting firm, chocked to the brim with ex-Microsoft employee's appears threatening *only* *NIX vendors. If these patents were so broad, then come how they haven't attacked Microsoft, Apple or any other vendor?

4) Now don't get me wrong, I don't believe the connection with SCO and Microsoft given that Microsoft needed to licence technology for their Services for UNIX product to improve SYSV compatibility. Even with that being said, it still raises questions as to why they just simply didn't use OpenSolaris code, given it is opensource and available for them to use if they wish. stupidity on Microsofts part on a conspiracy?

Edited 2007-10-14 17:27

They /DID/ sue Apple and Microsoft.
Apple's case was settled out-of-court.

Probably Microsoft's too. And you can also add that they seem to be suing Novell now, who is supposed to be playing nice with Microsoft. So how can one still suspect Microsoft is behind this, you'll ask?

Easy. It is THE perfect way of getting friendlies covered and going after the real target: Red Hat. Novell will settle out of court, like Microsoft did, whereas Red Hat will not and can not, as a matter of principle. But they (Microsoft + Novell) will get to claim having been targets, to place themselves above suspicion. Hey, if the killer shot at me too I can't possibly be in on it, right?

Red Hat is the perfect target. All other proeminent Linux-related businesses either made a deal (Novell, Linspire), or are too small to be worth the trouble (should they either pay up or be taken down), or too big to be touched (IBM).

*If* Novell settle out-of-court for a derisory sum in compensation, plus an equally piddling (or nonexistent) ongoing licensing fee*, I'll have some time for this point of view.

In the meantime, it's nothing but speculation; we can cut it away with Ockham's razor and we're left with the perfectly reasonable assumption that a greedy IP troll -- with no sinister master lurking in the shadows -- is rattling a few cages.

(* although if it's really a fix, why not go to court, have Novell "throw the fight" and demand an agreed (not too severe) sum in damages? A judgement would be a lot more useful in going after the other Linux players, irrespective of size)

Kaiwai, did you actually read the article? This EXACT SAME COMPANY sued Apple in April 2007 over the EXACT SAME PATENT, as the article explains. In addition, they have sued Microsoft too over another patent - also mentioned in the article.

My conclusion is that you didn't read the article very well, or not at all. Please do so if you comment, it's even in our rules.

1) It is 6:32am in the morning - there is no need to be rude. Politely correct what I have said and move on. The reaction you have displayed as if I had just punched your mother in the face.

2) Now that you have corrected me, I understand where you come from in regards to it not being some grand unified conspiracy theory given I have read the article again.

3) The question remains, who is this group; and on what grounds did they acquire these so-called 'patents'?

Let's play the conspiracy card a little more.

It's convenient for them to sue Microsoft. Doing so allows Microsoft to give this "IP Innvation" company a ton of money while providing a perfect alibi.

I am sure they were in fact were given a good amount of money, enough to line up the pockets of the former Microsoft executives while making sure they don't run out of cash in their suits against Novell and Red Hat.

Remember, it's only paranoia if they are not really after you.

I did, and it made one thing clear. If there was any doubt left whether you're a Microsoft fan and biased in their favor, it's pretty much gone now. I have no other way of explaining why, in the light of everything Microsoft is famous for, you can bury your head in the sand and ask people to just look at the obvious facts, no further, so as to give them the benefit of the doubt.

How can we do that? Microsoft has the means, the history, the strong motive. Red Hat is an obvious target. If Microsoft are half smart we'll never find their prints on the murder weapon, but asking us to not suspect them is too bloody much, to the point of questioning our intelligence.

Occam's razor, hah. It's a reasoning tool. If you apply it to a select narrow set of facts, yeah, I guess it will even point at Microsoft being innocent.

And to go to the trouble to make an "article" of it, too. Using OSNews to promote your bias is pretty low, but trying to impress it upon others is a whole new level of low.

Edited 2007-10-14 21:35

I couldn't care less what people like you think of me. I have principles, and one of them is to look at the facts. And if the facts happen to be in favour of Microsoft (at this point in time, in this specific case), then so be it.



I ask them that because that is what I, raised in an empirical society, have learnt to do. I refuse to give up hundreds of years of empirical thinking just because people like you have such a deep hatred of Microsoft. To me, it's just a compny, like Apple, like Red Hat, like Google. They are here to make money, and I'm here to annoy the crap out of them as a customer and yell at them for being assholes.

That's how it works. Microsoft has no special place for me.



That's an editorial for you. If you don't like to hear views that oppose your own, then don't live in a free society.

1) While that makes RH competition, that doesn't really serve as a link.

2) Here you have a point, and they have been doing that consistantly ever since the old "Get the Facts" campaign started. Again though, that doesn't prove a link. MS does anything they can nowadays to avoid anti-trust lawsuits.

3) First off, they are hardly unknown, and have been one of the leading companies that engage in this nonsense for quite awhile. Secondly, two former employees is not "Chock full", and thirdly, this company has sued both microsoft and apple before (apple over this very patent), and does not just go after *nix companies.

4) AFAIK, OpenSolaris wasn't ready back then.

Probably because OpenSolaris wasn't available until 2005, and MS bought a licensed from SCO in 2003.

I'm sure you're right about MS needing a license to actual System V stuff. They could have used something else like *BSD code, but they have the money so why not get the real deal.

I would hardly call 3 employees "chocked to the brim". In reality they have less than a hand full of ex-Microsoft employees.

His point was that there is no real evidence of a microsoft connection, even though it seems to almost be taken as fact by alot of people on the net, and that groklaws findings are really quite flimsy.

The way I see it is that there is a chance that MS caught wind of what the company was doing, and paid them to go after RH next. That chance isnt really based on proof, but more on the fact that MS can't really sue (as Thom pointed out), and that they do really want to (as Ballmer seems to indicate every time he opens his mouth nowadays). This would put MS in more of an opertunistic role, rather then a conspiratorial mastermind role that groklaw seems to be set on. But even that is completely based on conjecture and not on facts, and could be completely wrong. To go further then that is really going outside the realm of reason. A litigation company litigating after one of the many times in the last few years that MS has rattled the old patent sabre could very well just be coincidence.

"""

"""

I wish people would stop saying this. It just makes us all look silly. I dislike MS as much as anyone, and more than most. But one is not *convicted* of being a monopoly. One is declared to be a monopoly in an area and then has to be careful not to stray outside the legal bounds that their monopoly status confines them to. With riches come restrictions... with great power comes great responsibility and all that sort of thing.

Once declared a monopoly, a company may be found to have abused that monopoly status. And legal action may be taken. But we are still talking civil law. "Convicted" is just not a word that applies here.

Are they as powerful now as they were when they were declared to be a monopoly all those years ago? Yeah, probably.

The silver lining is that monopolies which are not natural monopolies... a category which fits MS like a glove... have a natural life-cycle. The problem that they have is that they have reached the limits of the revenue they can expect out of their existing customers. And yet they can't really expand their customer base... because they already have everybody. But they need to grow, and so... they have to squeeze their existing customers for more money.

This can work. But it opens up a serious vulnerability for them. Their customers, the ones being squeezed, will be increasingly prepared to jump ship.

Their dilemma doesn't get any less serious with time. It gets worse. As it gets worse, they have to get cleverer and cleverer finding ways to squeeze more without causing a stampede... and one day, they squeeze too hard and the right competitor shows up, and *bam!*, they're IBM! Not a bad place to be. But a far cry from the evil monopoly they once were.

That was the good news. The bad news is that in the absence of government intervention, the monopoly can artificially extend its own life-cycle for a disturbingly long duration. But not forever.

sbergman27, this merely means that the monopolist Microsoft has been convicted of naughtiness that it could perform by *using* that very monopoly.
It does *not* mean that a judge has said to defendant, 'Thou art a monopolist! Shame be on thee!'
That would be rather silly.

See, this is why the DoJ should have forced MS to split up into different companies like they were talking about back in the day. Assuming MS was an OS company, then the revenue source would have stopped being enough years ago. But its not its also an office productivity company. And a gaming console company. And an mp3 player company. And a wierd table computer thingie company. The list goes on. If they keep diversifying into every tech market imaginable, even if the market where they have monopoly status is not enough to sustain the behemoth, the others can.

Which is a good thing, since in all your eloquence, you're setting up a strawman argument. You pick on one certain bit in the final paragraph, something not at all important to the article itself, and take the article apart on that specific bit - completely disregarding my actual arguments.

Tom, I didn't have the feeling he was taking the article apart at all - he was just pointing your use of the OR, which is kind of him to do.

I also see OR being abused everywhere. I mean, Herbert has enough behind himself to be able to use it once in all his works, but why does everybody and their mom think using it makes their prose beautiful or relevant?

Usually, the first second you see OR in a book nowadays, you just know you have to drop it because the author's just gonna waste your time (I'm not talking about your article, Tom - fortunately, the OR cliché appeared only after I had the benefit to read your article and see that it wasn't half bad )

Actually, I've not noticed that much abuse of OR. At least not anywhere *near* as much as the term "straw man argument" gets abused these days.

Maybe you don't read enough SF

Considering that the whole article pretty much hinges on your usage of Ockham's Razor, I'm afraid that h3rman hit the nail on the head.

Patronizing the hell out of h3rman's post does nothing to change that, it just smells of an arrogant inability to take valid criticism.

I say major fail!

?

I'm sorry, but that's just nonsense. I'm just giving alternative, more logical (in my eyes) explanations for the things Groklaw found. That's all.

I added Ockham's Razor at the end because the Razor happens to fit my story fairly well.

I'm basically with you here.
One thing I've learned discussing 'conspiracy theories' is not to bother bringing them up unless you have very sound evidence.
Well. even if I have, many do not listen.
Which I'm learning to live with, makes me feel I'm getting older though.

Ceterum censeo...
Sorry Thom, you should have used an accusative.

Nonsense? Pull the other one, it's got bells on it ;-)

Your whole article is based on the premises that the simplest explanation, i.e. yours, is naturally the most logical, ergo O.R.

Sure, you point out, and rightly so, that in most western legal systems one is innocent until proven guilty but the main gist of your article can easily be discerned as hinging on the above mentioned razor.

Besides that, it seems that I misinterpreted h3rman's comment as taking a swipe at your article. My bad!

Frankly, I was not trying or even aspiring to take apart the article as a whole, I was merely reacting to your fondness of O.R. and the way you seem to apply that here and elsewhere in your writings.

Any impression of me taking something out of context was unintentional, and I don't think I did that.

Maybe I did have to go on a bit.

By the way, there is no such thing as a software patent. Code is never patented, only ideas are. There are only dumb patents (the great majority) and reasonable ones. If I'd ever had a (software) firm, I'd sure establish it outside of Patentistan.

My sincere apologies then, I may have overreacted a bit. Excusez-moi!

Me, my mother, my uncle Josip, couple of my coworkers here at McDonnalds and five of my girlfriends would like to score you down, but it doesn't work. Why not? Will this feature be available in the next version of OSNEWS?

Thanks, it is very funny to read your posts!

It would be so awesome if osnews permitted one to mod down an osn staff memebr like Thom Holwerda, I think his posts would be lik -30 everytime, since he always has such a bad, and biased view on the matters that are happening.

I second you...

I don't really think this is quite as apocolyptic as you seem to think, if RH loses all it means is that they are succeptible like every other technology company on the face of the planet.

There's very little chance of Red Hat losing, IMHO. Because if they do it means screwing up a lot of things that are genuinely valuable to a lot of people. This includes genuine innovation and yes, even business interests. I think there's enough combined power that doesn't want that to stop even Microsoft.

Assuming for a second RH does lose, the biggest real loser is the US and every business and software user abiding by its laws. Because at the core, this case is about software patents against FOSS. This is the catalyst that will finally prompt the US to choose.

This isnt about MS vs RH, this is about a really stupid system being put into practice. And sometimes they lose (remember Eolas v. Microsoft?) It isnt about screwing end users over, it doesnt have anything to do with open source or closed source, it is about the law being dumb. Apple already got sued by this, and settled out of court. If RH is smart, they will do the same. HOPEFULLY this will provoke real patent reform (which Microsoft has called for a few times now), but I doubt it.

It will definitely not bring about any change if Red Hat settles out of court.

Ballmer already indicated how he (and Microsoft) think software patents should be handled. That is, to pay up every time someone comes in with a claim for one at your door.

Hmm....what's their address again?

Microsoft did try to acquire Yahoo for quite a while, so your suppositions might be true after all

"Linux doesn't connect thousands of gamers worldwide"

I'd guess that billions of gamers or more are "connected" by linux being that it's a very popular server OS and most multiplayer games now have a *nix based multiplayer server available. Has the state government made some sort of comment on game playing computer owners?

:)

I couldn't resist. I realize you meant that thousands of gamers are not running Linux for gaming on. How many have a dualboot is anyone's guess though.

If their grip is slipping it's because people stood up to them. You have to do that, stand up, not sit aside and say "it seems to be going well after all" or "it's only software".

Yeah, Thom is a master of using logical fallacies.

Just because MS has 80,000 employees doesn't mean that Microsoft has 80,000 execs with special knowledge about patent and patent ligitation. The number of employees in general is irrelevant and using that number as an argument is void. And Thom knows that (or ought to).

It is also a logical fallacy to treat parts of a larger argument as if they were separate. They can only be treated as one large argument. Ripping them out of context makes any analysis void. Thom also knows that.

When several "coincidences" fit together very well, they are no longer "coincidences".

The part about Acacia having sued Microsoft is irrelevant. This happened prior to Microsoft moving employees to Acacia. Approx. four months earlier btw.

The amount of very fitting "coincidences" is so high that believing it is "coincidences" is like claiming water doesn't boil just because you are heating it.

EDIT: Ockham's Razor does not support Thom's conclusion. Rather the opposite.

Edited 2007-10-14 20:14 UTC

They will only cease to be coincidences as soon as definitive, conclusive proof has been given that they are, in fact, not coincidences - before that, they are just coincidences, and people using them as conclusive proof are making up a conspiracy.

As I clearly stated in the article, Groklaw might really turn out to be right. I really, really, really do not know. I just tend to look at the world from a more scientific point of view, and if somebody makes claims or statements, presenting them as fact, THEY BETTER HAVE THE PROOF TO BACK IT UP. [excuse me for the caps, but that really needed emphasis] I am simply doing proper peer review - offering much more logical possible alternative explanations for the string of coincidences listed by Groklaw - it is up to you to, as a reader, to make up your own mind.

That is how peer review works. It's now your turn to make your case, as a supporter of the original premise. Sadly, you seem unable to, and only had to resort to personal attacks.

Which really does not help your case.

They will only cease to be coincidences as soon as definitive, conclusive proof has been given that they are, in fact, not coincidences - before that, they are just coincidences, and people using them as conclusive proof are making up a conspiracy.

Thom, strong circumstantial evidence is still strong circumstantial evidence, regardless of whatever way you want to cut that. Coming along and saying "Oh, it's all a coincidence!" is simply not a counter argument, and quite frankly, the article was utterly pointless. There was no logical reasoning at all to counter what Groklaw had come up with, and you seem to have got a bee in your bonnet about conspiracy theories at Groklaw.

If I work at Microsoft and then leave, yes, the odds are pretty good that I'm going to then work for another technology related company. No surprise there. If I work at Apple, IBM, HP or another tech company and leave, then yes, I might end up working for other tech companies. No surprise there. That's not a counter argument here.

However, if several former Microsoft employees join an IP troll company at the same time that Microsoft's CEO says that Linux companies will have to cough up effectively, and then said IP troll company with former Microsoft employees then sues said Linux companies, then the chances of that being a coincidence, and a black helicopter conspiracy as you amusingly call it, are practically zero.

Oh, and these are specialists in IP litigation as well. They're not just random tech people who've left Microsoft to actually create the IP Innovation they claim they own!

Those events at different times may mean nothing and might be coincidences. Those events happening at the same time mean quite a bit.

I just tend to look at the world from a more scientific point of view...

OK. Your argument boils down to the fact that you're arguing that tech employees move around all the time, and that there is nothing unusual about a handful of Microsoft employees leaving and going to IP Innovation. Can you go and find out how many former employees of IBM, HP, Apple and others have joined IP Innovation? I doubt you'll find many, and I doubt you'll find many whose former employers are currently threatening IP litigation.

You see, going out and finding that kind of evidence would have provided a counter argument for what you're trying to say. Squealing for a smoking gun is simply not an effective response. It never has been and it never will be because it's not an effective counter argument to what has actually been observed.

That is how peer review works.

No it isn't. Peer review depends on someone having something effective you can respond to.

It's now your turn to make your case, as a supporter of the original premise.

When I see your actual response, I'll be all ears.

Sadly, you seem unable to, and only had to resort to personal attacks.

Ahhh, the old personal attacks ploy. Sadly Thom, there were absolutely no personal attacks at all in the post you replied to.

Like the original poster in this thread says, it's like claiming that water doesn't boil just because you've heated it, or protons, neutrons and electrons don't exist because you haven't seen them with your own eyes. The evidence that they exist is just a coincidence.

Except for the fact that the evidence in question isn't strong.



Of course there was. They claim MS is behind it all, and had come up with a few pieces of evidence, evidence that, according to me, is extremely weak. Enough to counter, if you ask me.



You are leaving out a few facts here. You are making it seem as if the recent threats by MS were the first threats Microsoft has ever stated. Nonsense of course - they have been saying the same thing for years. In other words, Microsoft threatening open source companies this way is not new, it has been doing it for ages, and hence can be left out of the story.

Then we move on the suing part. You are forgetting that this company used the exact same patent against Apple in April this year, settling it out of court, so it only makes sense they are going after other operating system vendors too. Red Hat and Novell are the big two desktop Linux vendors - the only two where money is to be found. So, it makes sense that after a succesfull attempt against Apple, they bare now gunning for more vendors.

So, that's two of your "conincidences" easily refuted as being *logical*, following events of the past.

That makes the employee bit stand on its own, refuted in the article. Coincidence? Could be, like I said, I really don't know. All I'm saying is that the "evidence" presented by Groklaw is so easily explained in simpler ways that it is hard to take it as evidence at all.



"Yeah, Thom is a master of using logical fallacies."
"Thom also knows that."

"Can you go and find out how many former employees of IBM, HP, Apple and others have joined IP Innovation?"

Well, there are 2 from IBM and one that used to work for both IBM and Intel. No former Apple Employees. There are 4 from Microsoft, and the rest scattered from different companies, the biggest proportion being law firms that handled these types of things prior to them joining IP Innovations. This is not a new industry, just one where we hear more about it these days.

As for the time frame, Ballmer has been making these claims about IP and patents for years, since about 2003 or so, maybe even before, not just recently. This is well before the first person left MS to join this company, which was in 2005 if I read the history correctly. Ballmer's comments are not new, nor are they at the same time when "...several former Microsoft employees join an IP troll company...".

Yeah... And the evidence Groklaw has collected (so far!) to prove their accusations are extremely weak, as I have explained in the article.



Completely and utterly irrelevant. Just because they were right on the SCO issue does not mean they are necessarily right on this issue as well. I'm sorry, logic doesn't work that way.



PJ is an advocate of open source software, which is noble, and I really appreciate her work. However, she is NOT an impartial source, and hence, her words are ALWAYS to be questioned.



Five pieces of weak circumstantial evidence put together still isn't a strong piece of evidence.



Really mate, you don't want to get into a statistical discussion with me. Seriously, you don't. And no, you cannot apply flipping a coin a few times to 5 pieces of circumstantial evidence. That has to be the silliest thing I have ever heard - and actually, a classical example of a strawman argument, that thing you (wrongfully, I might add) accused me of doing.