Linked by Thom Holwerda on Sun 13th May 2007 22:24 UTC, submitted by Havin_it
"Free software is great, and corporate America loves it. It's often high-quality stuff that can be downloaded free off the Internet and then copied at will. It's versatile - it can be customized to perform almost any large-scale computing task - and it's blessedly crash-resistant. A broad community of developers, from individuals to large companies like IBM, is constantly working to improve it and introduce new features. No wonder the business world has embraced it so enthusiastically: More than half the companies in the Fortune 500 are thought to be using the free operating system Linux in their data centers. But now there's a shadow hanging over Linux and other free software, and it's being cast by Microsoft. The Redmond behemoth asserts that one reason free software is of such high quality is that it violates more than 200 of Microsoft's patents."
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Member since:
2006-10-25
"If Microsoft own any patents that OSS violates and would stand up in court, why don't they sue?"
Because if Microsoft sued any Linux user or vendor it would potentially trigger the software patent war.
Microsoft violates all sorts of patents held by Sun, IBM, and many others. Some of those companies earn money on or through Linux. They would potentially fight back by launching a salvo of infringement suites of their own.
This would again raise the question of software patents in general, and this time, Microsoft would be trying to rip the rug out from under some very large corporations and government agencies. This might be a bigger fight than they anticipate.