Microsoft Going after linux

[Lagerlout666]

When i was on my travels i came acrross this

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/05/28/100033867/index.htm

(Fortune Magazine) -- 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.

 
The patent owner: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer;
 
The patent hater: Free Software Foundation president Richard Stallman.
 
"It's a tinderbox. Patent law's going to be the terrain on which a big piece of the war's going to be fought. Waterloo is here some where." --Eben Moglen, Executive director, Software Freedom Law Center

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But now there's a shadow hanging over Linux and other free software, and it's being cast by Microsoft (Charts, Fortune 500). 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. And as a mature company facing unfavorable market trends and fearsome competitors like Google (Charts, Fortune 500), Microsoft is pulling no punches: It wants royalties. If the company gets its way, free software won't be free anymore.

The conflict pits Microsoft and its dogged CEO, Steve Ballmer, against the "free world" - people who believe software is pure knowledge. The leader of that faction is Richard Matthew Stallman, a computer visionary with the look and the intransigence of an Old Testament prophet.

This freaks me out alot, I dont see how microsoft can even dare try go for something like that, I know at the moment their is alot of corperate underhanding knocking about but what are they going to say next? The internet is patented? your monitor is patented? This is bullying as M$ are realising that they are losing to a better software, An linux will always be better as its FREE and isnt loaded with DRM infested crap, If Vista wasnt a complete bloata ware and was priced correctly they wouldnt be facing all their customers making the switch.

[SamSeeSam]

I suppose everyone will let them take it over... lol
I don't suppose anyone has a list of those patents does he? lol

Cheers

[KM]

Microsoft has been making those claims for a while now, and have not actually been able to point to a single patent they claim linux infringes on - they claim they haven't finished figuring out which patents they just know it violates 295 (correct figure) of them... it's like me saying I know someone broke the law, i just don't know what they did... in which case i wouldn't be claiming to know they did something illegal if i didn't know it!

it's purely a M$ bullshit campaign in an attempt to extort cash from commercial linux vendors, several have already decided to pay up without even asking for evidence... and those are the only ones who will ever pay anything, making those companies less successful due to lowered profits from their decision to donate some of their profit to microsoft