Microsoft/Novell Partnership

[Peter P.]

John Macdonald <john at ...> writes:

> But, if code covered by GPL can be claimed to carry out a
> process that is covered by a patent, copying the code is not
> an issue, and permission from the author is irrelevant (unless
> the author also is enforcing the patent).  The GPL can be used
> to force the owner of the patent to stop copying the GPL code,
> but if the patent owner doesn't care about distributing GPL
> code that threat is especially hollow.

This paragraph is slightly confusing ;-) Could you please rephrase it a little ?
 
> Microsoft has been getting over a thousand patents per year,
> (thats the ones they apply for and get themselves, they also buy
> lots of them).  It is absolutely certain that Linux contains
> code that accomplishes tasks that are covered by patents that
> MS owns.  In most cases, the patent is absurd - but it takes
> a lot of work and money to challenge each one.  There can be

No, it takes 5 minutes. It is the time required to answer the question 'was this
patent awarded by the uspto in the last 15 years in the software/algorythms
domain ?'. If the answer to that is yes, and the question is asked outside the
20-mile zone of the US and its territories then the case is settled.

And the Dutch judge's decision on Lindows resembling Windows (the words) needs a
lot of explaining, especially since the word Windows is almost surely impossible
to trademark in the EU. Lindows is a word that can be construed as a joining of
'Linux' and 'Windows' by anyone familiar with the 'art', as the gui widgets with
which the users interact in Lindows are in fact called windows everywhere
(including in source code).

> expensive court orders that do things like prevent sales -
> even if you eventually win the challenge, not being able to
> operate your business for the duration can be devastating.
> And, maybe, a few of those patents will fail to be challenged
> successfully.  That leads to trying to code around a concept,
> which is harder than just rewriting the code independently.

SINCE SOFTWARE PATENTS ARE NOT RECOGNIZED OUTSIDE THE US AND NEVER WILL BE WITH
G*DS GRACE NOBODY NEEDS TO CODE AROUND A CONCEPT. ALL THEY NEED TO DO IS CHARGE
MORE FOR THE US VERSION WHICH LINKS AGAINST THE LIBRARY WITH PATENTED CODE,
DISTRIBUTED AS THE 'US VERSION' EXACTLY LIKE THE US INSISTS THAT CERTAIN TYPES
OF CODE BE DISTRIBUTED AS CRIPPLEWARE 'NON US VERSIONS'. THIS IS A
CVS/RCS/VERSION CONTROL ISSUE AFTER ALL. </shouting>

> Or it leads to having a U.S. fork and a rest-of-the-world fork.
> That would be painful and hurt Linux badly.

Most software that is worth some money already has that fork built in. US
edition. NON-US edition, everything is there. Crypto code, patented algorythms
and other types of code forking nightmares have plagued Linux and BSD
distributions ORIGINATING in the US since their inception. BSD was on the COCOM
no-supply of the west list before the fall of the iron curtain, just as an
example. The US is the nexus of these code splits. No other country attempted to
control glorified hashes and caesar codes as 'weapons' or tried to put engineers
who were suspected of discussing it in jail. Additionally the US the the home of
the DMCA, which means that USERS ARE FORBIDDEN TO DISASSEMBLE THE CODE SUPPLIED
TO THEM, INCLUDING FOR THE PURPOSE OF DETERMINATION OF THE ALGORYTHM BEING USED,
INCLUDING IF IT IS SUSPECTED THAT THE ALGORYTHM IS A PATENTED ONE.
 
> MS would have to be careful about how they carry out such an
> attack.  The European anti-trust actions seem to have some
> teeth to them; and maybe someday the U.S. anti-trust process
> will kick in again and find a government willing to back it
> up instead of merely a slap on the wrist.
> 




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