Linked by Thom Holwerda on Fri 17th Nov 2006 13:23 UTC, submitted by Tanked
In comments confirming the open-source community's suspicions, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer Thursday declared his belief that the Linux operating system infringes on Microsoft's intellectual property. In a question-and-answer session after his keynote speech at the Professional Association for SQL Server conference in Seattle, Ballmer said Microsoft was motivated to sign a deal with SUSE Linux distributor Novell earlier this month because Linux "uses our intellectual property" and Microsoft wanted to "get the appropriate economic return for our shareholders from our innovation."
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Member since:
2005-11-14
But wikipedia says that the MS FAT patents were finally accepted as valid this year. Accepted as novel and all !
And what you say about patents is strange.
Software is a representation of ideas, also called algorithms. This stupid state only affects software (in the USA) unfortunately. It would be unacceptable on other things like books for example : book writers would soon disappear. Same for films. But there are forces at play for it to stay on software (and expand to the EU).
I mean, threatening to sue others' customers does NOTHING to protect innovations, which the system was supposed to do. You know it doesn't work when the supposed "owner" of the idea doesn't want to tell you what it is, and even you have no idea : the innovation is so insignificant and useless, or is so obvious, that you can't even sort it from the rest.
For example, I don't see what so great idea the FAT32 is protecting. That's not like people want to steal from MS by using it in their device.
All this irrational behaviour is only spawned by money greed. I hope (and try to help for) we never get software patents in EU.