Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer has warned users of Red Hat Linux that they will have to pay Microsoft for its intellectual property. "People who use Red Hat, at least with respect to our intellectual property, in a sense have an obligation to compensate us," Ballmer said last week at a company event in London discussing online services in the UK.
To view parent comment, click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Member since:2005-11-05
Hate to break it to you, but IBM has a WHOLE LOT MORE patents than Microsoft. Also, do you not think that Linux distributors and companies around the world will not band together to fight a common enemy?
If Microsoft sues Redhat, what makes you think they won't sue the Gentoo foundation, or any other Linux "distributor"? Many very large companies make their bread based on Linux. Thinking they won't come together is naiive of Ballmer at best. Whos to say that Microsoft doesn't violate hundreds of patents owned by some of these companies like OIN or IBM? I bet they do.
Jeff Waugh put it best, "Say it with me: DON'T f--k WITH DIVERSITY. cf. The War of the Worlds, H. G.
Wells, 1898.":
http://lists.linux.org.au/archives/linux-aus/2003-August/msg00136.h...
Member since:2006-11-24
Because it hasn't gone after non-profit software organizations like Gentoo, Fedora, Debian or GNU/FSF. It is a corporation that competes against companies like Novell, Red Hat or (in the past) Netscape.
That Ballmer has specifically targeted Red Hat, a corporate vendor that depends upon a non-profit organization, in the press puts the company closer to a dangerous precedent: suing non-profit software organizations. And since GNU/Linux distributions are usually created and distributed by non-profit projects, it seems inevitable that Microsoft will target these projects as well.
However, that is the future potential of this war, once it ever reaches U.S. courts. The current situation, from the surface, seems more like a messy battle between companies for customers.
Where this could really hit the GNU/Linux fandom is in the pocketbook, as these companies - Red Hat, Novell, Mandriva, Canonical, Xandros - are often the prime corporate backers for these projects. Customers of these companies will be scared by an impending legal battle, will back out and place their bets with Microsoft. The pro-Linux companies will then have to wage their own PR campaigns to woo back the customers, which may or may not mean that the companies will publicly distance themselves from their pet non-profit projects.
So this could be interpreted in one or more of the following ways:
1) A dirty move to win customers from, and weaken, a corporate competitor.
2) A move to weaken the relationship between corporate companies and non-profit projects.
3) A protracted, indirect move to weaken the non-profit projects through hurting the marketshare of their financial backers.
Take your pick.
Member since:2005-07-26
Member since:2005-07-06
"So in summary... Google has pulled the plug on support on a protocol they've helped popularize, after years of promising interoperability, for reasons that are dubious at best, and in a way that leaves people who don't jump to the new Hangouts app unable to talk to their contacts without any feedback that their IMs aren't getting through... And they've done that with no warning to anyone. I imagine there's a bunch of people out there wondering where some of their buddies have gone, or why their messages aren't getting responses, because this isn't documented anywhere." Google really messed this up. Such a dick move.
The Tizen Greek Community has some screenshots of a very recent build of Tizen running on a Samsung GT-i8800. It looks wholly unremarkable.Joint statement to The Next Web from Microsoft and Google: "Microsoft and YouTube are working together to update the new YouTube for Windows Phone app to enable compliance with YouTube's API terms of service, including enabling ads, in the coming weeks. Microsoft will replace the existing YouTube app in Windows Phone Store with the previous version during this time." Good to know these children stopped acting like little pricks. Can we have full Google support in Windows 8 now, please?
Yahoo is acquiring Tumblr, the microblogging and social networking website, for $1.1 billion USD. Tumblr offers little revenue but lots of eyeballs if Yahoo can monetarize them. Now Yahoo is bidding for Hulu, the streaming video service. After years of ineffective responses while Google, Facebook, and others took large chunks of the online advertising market, Yahoo is fighting back. Can Yahoo reignite the momentum it had at the turn of the century? What do you think?
"Sources have described iOS 7 as 'black, white, and flat all over'. This refers to the dropping of heavy textures and the addition of several new black and white user interface elements." I couldn't be happier.
"Ilja van Sprundel, a security researcher with IOActive, has discovered a large number of issues in the way various X client libraries handle the responses they receive from servers, and has worked with X.Org's security team to analyze, confirm, and fix these issues."
"Google is facing a new antitrust probe by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission into whether the company is using its leadership in the online display-advertising market to illegally curb competition, people familiar with the matter said." Sucks to be Google today, apparently."In the midst of the major press blitz surrounding its annual I/O Conference, Google dropped some unfortunate news about its instant messaging plans. In several places around the web, the company is replacing the existing 'Talk' platform with a new one called 'Hangouts' that sharply diminishes support for the open messaging protocol known as XMPP (or sometimes informally Jabber), and also removes the option to disable the archiving of all chat communications. These changes represent a switch from open protocols to proprietary ones, and a clear step backward for many users." That's why I always say: only suckers trust companies."The wave of departures is a sign of internal struggle, but amidst all the bad news, there is a glimmer of hope. According to an anonymous HTC executive cited by WSJ, the crucial HTC One is selling 'pretty good so far'. The executive revealed that HTC sold about five million One units since launch, a performance that is deemed encouraging. However, sales have been limited by the persisting supply issues that still plague the production of the HTC One." Finally some good news for HTC. Five million units amidst supply constraints is very impressive.
"Sony gave the PS4 50% more raw shader performance, plain and simple (768 SPs @ 800MHz vs. 1152 SPs & 800MHz). Unlike last generation, you don't need to be some sort of Jedi to extract the PS4's potential here. The Xbox One and PS4 architectures are quite similar, Sony just has more hardware under the hood. Weâll have to wait and see how this hardware delta gets exposed in games over time, but the gap is definitely there. The funny thing about game consoles is that itâs usually the lowest common denominator that determines the bulk of the experience across all platforms. On the plus side, the Xbox One should enjoy better power/thermal characteristics compared to the PlayStation 4. Even compared to the Xbox 360 we should see improvement in many use cases thanks to modern power management techniques." AnandTech does its usual in-depth thing.
Member since:
2005-11-23
If you think that linux do not infring any patents, you should not be aware that Microsoft own a lot of patent about double click and crap like that.