The motor industry is far more populated than the software industry. The next biggest things in the software industry are apple, and the various linux distributions, and neither of these hold enough of the market share to stabalize the economy in the event of a company the size of microsoft going out, The government should have done with microsoft what they did with AT&T.

Thus the "slowly" and "painfully" part.

SigmaX

I say it's all FUD.

I doubt Microsoft will do anything. We didn't wake up one day to find Linux violating patents, you know :P

Extreme Coder

Microsoft claims Linux violates over 230 software patents

Well Microsoft can violate my ass

edit: actually, i'd rather they didn't. I seem to be on some sort of innuendo streak today.

Microsoft says.... Microsoft obviously realized that they are losing money on open-source software... that means that things like Linux are catching on... yay... but here's the thing, in my opinion, if the mighty gods of microsoft (all lower case for a reason) made a program that worked right off the bat on an install without having 3 days+ of updates and driver installs to do and have software that doesn't get hi-jacked and virus-infected CONSTANTLY, then maybe just maybe they would have a product that would keep their customers comming back.

Mr. Gates went from the garage to the corner office without looking back once.... what a let down...

By the way this is my first post and I'd like to say hi to everyone on the forums!

Who would they (M$) sue?

That was incredibly puerile.

Correct, but puerile.

RedHat, Novell, maybe Linspire again, car manufacturers, phone manufacturers, basically anyone who uses Linux and doesn't use Windows at all.

I think most have patents to use against Microsoft too. Even if Microsoft did have a point on a few patents, they wouldn't sue because of all the patents that they're breaking.

And now they have the right to sue corps that use Linux? :/ NEver heard they could do that.
Maybe next, they will sue French government?


Extreme Coder

Actually, I guess they can't sue Novell. I forgot MS made a deal with them for SUSE... =\

As for those that simply use Linux...
yes, it sucks. it sucks that they're threatening to sue. it sucks that they're making tons of FUD. it sucks that the FUD will cause some companies to go MS to avoid potential problems. even worse would be if they go for patent immunity. they've got plenty to lose should other companies begin to enforce their patents against MS...

I misunderstood when I first read about this allegation by Microsoot, I thought they were saying that Linux specifically violated 235 of their patents.

Either way, they should specify which open source products and which patents or shut up.

all just bs... FUD...

i personally dont care bout hot air (warm at the most...). The opensource community with ibm and other backing has more then enough patents to defned themselves, so its no problem...

i just dislike anyone making a deal with m$, so my suse is gone (too bad), at least ubuntu is not making one, and debian and gentoo wont for sure...

Ouch!! That gotta hurt!

Properly would be handicapped for life

ROFL

But how many open source patents (or innovations) does Microsoft violate, in their kernel, office package, or other related programs.

Ah the joy of closed minded proprietary software, they have every right to look at and copy from what others give freely, yet we can never expect or be given the same rights to do to theirs.

May be this is something that the Free Software Foundation should consider when they start drafting version 4 of the GNU General Public License, equal opportunity to look at each others private bits.

Wouldn't that make for some headlines, we can only dream.....

Has anybody here read the Halloween Documents?

Who wants to take odds that MS themselves are hiding 1000+ violations of the GPL?

yet unix/linux started before windows as far as i remember so how can they say it stole their patents ? it would be a case of they stole patents from linux but it's easy to attack open source software because they won't get sued back they are just little babbies crying because they like everyone else has to work for a living, if openoffice goes against their patents oh well just about any program does soon the license agreement will say you are only allowed to run microsoft programs on windows