[NBLUG/talk] Linus responds to M$

[Mark Janes]

Hello,

While M$ is simply too big to ignore, Gates and his minions are not the
omniscient beings they try to portray themselves as being. Way back
when, Bill Himself couldn't imagine why anyone would ever need a hard
drive bigger than 640 Mb; today's digital cameras typically have bigger
flash drives and you can't buy a new hard drive smaller than about 80
Gb. In addition, I believe that their penchant for secrecy will trump
their hatred of Open Source because to reveal which patents are
infringing and how would almost certainly mean divulging- at least
indirectly- some of their source code to someone who isn't a M$
employee. As we've all seen, once a piece of code gets posted online,
it's practically impossible to totally eliminate, as anyone who's gone
looking for code such as deCSS can readily attest. I believe the threat
of lawsuits is more about keeping big IT companies skittish about the
legality of Linux and other Open Source products in a bid to dry up
interest at the corporate level than it is about genuine infringement on
anything M$ has truly developed on its own. Come to think of it, what
HAS M$ ever truly invented, as opposed to co-opting? Also, the courts
are finally turning their attention to the lax standards under which the
Patent Office has operated over the past few years, and M$ might find
the patent rug pulled out from under them if it could be demonstrated
that their patents cover 'obvious' developments as opposed to true
innovation. It's entirely possible, though, that M$ might simply be too
preoccupied with stamping out all competition that they'll go ahead and
start filing lawsuits regardless of the consequences. Finally, they may
feel that this is their last chance to go after Linux and Open Source-
while the Bush regime is still in power- before a more robust Justice
Department puts their practices under closer scrutiny. We'll see in the
next few months.

Mark Janes

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