Linked by Thom Holwerda on Wed 15th Nov 2006 23:05 UTC
While Microsoft is hoping to enter into a patent deal with Red Hat similar to the one it has with Novell, the software giant has not ruled out going it alone and providing some sort of indemnification for its customers who use Red Hat Linux. Bill Hilf, Microsoft's general manager of platform strategy, acknowledged that it is an awkward situation having Microsoft's customers who use Novell's SUSE Linux covered by the covenant not to sue, while those Windows users running Red Hat Linux are not.
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Member since:
2006-01-06
I think what they're trying to do is use legal threats against companies while trying to continue to fly under the radar. If they just started trying to enforce patents on people it would end up being "big guy vs little guy" media circus which would end up in government involvement (no matter how incompetent).
Like SCO, if they get enough companies to sign up, then they can use that as "precedence".
Companies "using" software shouldn't really be held legally liable, perhaps just the ones selling the software. Of course with the current utterly corrupted US legal and patent system this whole system isn't working anyways.
Any company that signs up with MS is stupid. T