Linus Responds To Microsoft Patent Claims 496
An anonymous reader writes "Linus Torvalds has a sharp retort to Microsoft executives' statements in a Fortune article that Linux violates 235 Microsoft patents. In an emailed response to InformationWeek's Charlie Babcock, Torvalds writes: 'It's certainly a lot more likely that Microsoft violates patents than Linux does.' He added: 'Basic operating system theory was pretty much done by the end of the 1960s. IBM probably owned thousand of really "fundamental" patents... The fundamental stuff... has long, long since lost any patent protection.'" Torvalds also commented on Microsoft's stated intention not to sue Linux users: "They'd have to name the patents then, and they're probably happier with the FUD than with any lawsuit."
constitutional lawyers? (Score:5, Insightful)
Wouldn't a patent law which does NOT promote science and arts be unconstitutional? Or am I misreading the constitution?
Re:Sad or Telling? (Score:5, Insightful)
The Community is doing MS's work for them (Score:5, Insightful)
Linux = Patent Violation = Unreliable
Instead the Linux community should turn the tables on Microsoft and find a patent that MS has broken and feed the media the story that Windows users are going to get sued, hence making getting sued for using any OS a null point.
Linus nails it. Again. (Score:5, Insightful)
If they had patents that could kill linux, what would Microsoft do? Would they hem and haw and bluster about unspecified patents, or would they drop everything and file suit so they could get restraining orders against all the distributors of this "cancer"?
Microsoft's duty to their shareholders is to maximize value and exploit their IP. Of course they must choose the latter.
Therefore, they ain't got diddly or the blabbing would be done and the lawsuits begun.
Re:constitutional lawyers? (Score:5, Insightful)
Software patents that were reviewed by qualified examiners and only granted if they were truly novel and non-obvious would promote science and the useful arts. I think far fewer people would have trouble with the concept if that were the reality -- in that case the intended bargain (the patent makes public the details of an idea that nobody else would have thought of on their own) would apply.
But the "grant first, ask questions later" approach of today's patent office, where one can patent an implementation that any programmer of above-average skill might come up with when presented with the same problem, means that we'd be better off with no software patents at all.
I'd be happy with either fixing the examination process or dumping software patents.
An example of a software patent that would reasonably be granted under a good examination regime, even though it did irk a bunch of people back before it expired, would be the RSA patent. That was not obvious to 99% of the skilled practitioners of the art until it was published. (And even now I expect most programmers have at most a high-level understanding of why it works, me included.)
Re:Heavens, the breaking news! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:constitutional lawyers? (Score:5, Insightful)
Software is obsolete in 5-10 years.
A patent last for 20 years.
Copyright lasts for 95 years.
When the incentive monopoly lasts well beyond the life of the invention, the effect is obviously not promoting innovation. The effect is innovation suppression and wheel reinvention.
Re:constitutional lawyers? (Score:2, Insightful)
eg. Someone researches a successful a cure for AIDS in their basement. w/o the protection provided by patent law the inventor of the cure has people come into his home, be charged a fee, take the cure and leave. He would make damn sure that the cure was not smuggled out of his home, in case of reverse engineering.... WITH protection provided by patent law, the inventor submits his patent and sells hundreds of cures to Pharmacies all over the world, he is no longer worried that someone will take his cure formula and use it for their own ends.
Re:Why not start debunking FUD now? (Score:2, Insightful)
Um... yeah. The burden of proof isn't on the Linux community here. Addressing even one patent before knowing the claims is a waste of resources.
Re:constitutional lawyers? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:constitutional lawyers? (Score:5, Insightful)
I work in a software company, and I can assure you that we would be writing just as much software if there were no software patents.
Also, we have NEVER wondered how to write a particular algorithm, then found the solution in some patent disclosure document. Do you realize how absurd that sounds?
Cause of monopoly: Government granted monopoly (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:constitutional lawyers? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Heavens, the breaking news! (Score:5, Insightful)
What distinguishes his comment from all of the ones here on
Let them show it (Score:5, Insightful)
Why not debunk it? Nothing to debunk until they play their cards. They are being told to show cards after a call, and they want more rounds of betting. That is normally a bluff.
hmmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:constitutional lawyers? (Score:2, Insightful)
The first one is nice, but what if the alternative is NO cure? Then which is better, no cure, or greedy bastard's cure?
Halloween memo rerun? (Score:2, Insightful)
Wouldn't it be just great if there was a rerun of the Halloween memo, involving a list of 235 patents that linux allegedly involves, which suddenly "dropped" into an appropriate inbox?
Wishful thinking, I know. But it's happened before....
Re:Sad or Telling? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, and the ironic thing is that, by making all these spurious accusations, M$ is only validating Linux as a viable competitor.
Re:Heavens, the breaking news! (Score:4, Insightful)
Class Action Lawsuit (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Sad or Telling? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sad or Telling? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Sad or Telling? (Score:3, Insightful)
For those companies who do get Open Source, this is latest round of Microsoft FUD is nothing more than, to joke about during lunch time.
If anyone should be pissed... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:constitutional lawyers? (Score:4, Insightful)
In much the same way "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state" is meaningless and the only important part of that section is: "the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."
Re:IMPORTANT NOTICE (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Sad or Telling? (Score:5, Insightful)
I bet most institutions would be dead in the water if this advice were taken quite literally, as Microsoft used BSD code in there TCP/IP stack for a long time. Goodbye 95/98/NT/2000. Even if your not totally literal, there are tons of open source stuff that every company makes use of everyday, even if it doesn't register in the minds of the layman.
I'm sure there are more, but I believe that if all the admins of the world who got this request complied, Microsoft would be lynched in a heartbeat.
In fact, there should be a "Open Source or Die!" day where all machines that run open source software turn off. The inability to do anything would boggle the corporate mind.
Re:Past infringement? (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, infringement wasn't willful and developers would address it quickly, so any compensation would be for damages. And it would be hard for Microsoft to claim significant damages since most Linux users also have Windows licenses (for now).
Surely Linux 2.6.x is more modern than 1960s technology, right?
Not by much. Neither is Windows for that matter. Sad but true.
Re:Sad or Telling? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Sad or Telling? (Score:5, Insightful)
Could you give me a hint of which financial company? I'm worried that I'm keeping my nest egg funds in a company who lets idiocy run its course without actually checking the facts. I suppose such a company would likely panic for any non-serious market trends which leads to me being poor because someone freaked out over something that was simply not true.
That's actually an awesome idea (Score:4, Insightful)
With enough eyes, all patent violations are visible. Chances are, many large companies that hold patents that MS infringes upon don't even know the infringement is happening. If users were to discover and publicly document a few thousand tidbits such as, "Windows Vista's user-account control database clearly violates IBM's patent 1,559,664 of June 29, 1997," why, companies like IBM would almost be obliged to sue MS for damages.
I like this idea a lot. It's elegant as hell, because it takes advantage of the fact that Microsoft has more to lose than anyone from software patents.
Re:Cause of monopoly: Government granted monopoly (Score:5, Insightful)
Bingo!
MOD parent up!
And government granted monopoly means that the Free Market cannot fix the problems. The government will have to do that.
all the best,
drew
Re:If it could it would (Score:3, Insightful)
you don't get it (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Sad or Telling? (Score:4, Insightful)
Microsoft is not a bit player, and it's FUD will have an effect. Legal advisors are going to be telling their clients and/or bosses to stay far away from open source, or at the very least look into paying MS's license extortion (which is almost worse than not using open source at all). It might even mean that some commercial contributors may even have second-thoughts.
At best, this is going to be a roadblock. At worst, it's going to mean very tough times. Microsoft is not SCO. It's a powerful and deep-pocketed corporation that has ran over almost every attempt to slow it down.
Re:Sad or Telling? (Score:5, Insightful)
He works for a large financial company - one large enough to have its own law department. While eliminating open source software from their infrastructure is certainly unreasonable, it's unlikely that they'll be "damaged" by it. There are plenty of good closed-source solutions out there.
As for having to change jobs, well, changing jobs on the basis of software morality (a dodgy proposition at best) might be reasonable in a very select few markets. Lots of people can't simply throw a tantrum and quit just because they don't get their way.
Re:Sad or Telling? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Sad or Telling? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why do their work for them? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, I think this idea has merit in a bigger sense. Think about it, post where I'm wrong if you see an error.
Ok, Microsoft threatens Linux/OSS with a patent fudbomb. Now the world is waiting for a response. But lets focus on the part of the world that matters here, large instituitional shareholders of Microsoft stock. If our response is to just start at the most recent patent on record and devalue it by documenting weaknesses (prior art, obviouslness, whatever) and showing every intention of moving backward until we hit the expired ones what sort of potential paper losses would that involve? Remember that they derive a non-trivial income by cross licensing that patent portfolio and the size of it reduces the cost they pay to license other companies patents. Directly attack that treasure chest and they would certainly feel pain. Even a credible threat of a concerted distributed attack on that valuable balance sheet line item would get the interest of the professional investors. Remember the one thing they dislike is uncertainty when assessing risk.
In summary it is one of the only ways we can demonstrate a counter attack that would do more than simply annoy them. Microsoft only understands force and the threat of it. They ruthlessly attack when they see weakness and deal when they encounter strength... and look for ways to undermine the foe and then attack.
Re:hmmmm (Score:3, Insightful)
Judging from the SCO case (where the unspecified claims were based on copyright instead of patents) this is probably not possible in the US.
But most other countries take it very serious when a company tries to distort the market with such claims. In Germany a settlement [infoworld.com] after a temporary restraining order on Germany meant that SCO could no longer spread their lies in Germany.
Because the law is more protective of the free market in the EU, and because the EU already has it's eye on Microsoft for anti-competitive behaviour, Microsoft risks big trouble in the EU because of their unspecified claims.
Re:Sad or Telling? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why do their work for them? (Score:3, Insightful)
It would take some work to get started, and you would want a lawyer or two involved to ensure that opinions are valid when it comes to the details, but its certainly doable and exactly the sort of thing that an army of geeks is quite capable of accomplishing.
If you truely hate software patents - or the current patent system - why not help set this up?
Re:Sad or Telling? (Score:3, Insightful)
As long as it's in the realm of the willing hacker, MS is quite safe.
Re:I know Bill pays for some low Quality Shit ... (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't know, but I doubt you're supposed to be posting on Slashdot using technical terms like "shit" and lots of dollar signs to spell the names of companies. But hey, I'm sure free software is all better off thanks to you.
Re:Heavens, the breaking news! (Score:3, Insightful)
Its not exactly random. The Popular Electronics issue that introduced the Altair microcomputer kit was the obvious beginning of a major opportunity. I recognized the moment as being a pivot point where someone with the right idea could leverage a fortune. I talked about it with friends at the time. We just didn't know what we could do to take advantage of the moment. Bill Gates and his Harvard poker buddies (Paul Allen and Steve Ballmer among them) recognized the moment as well, but distinguished themselves by understanding what they could do with the moment. Bill hacked together a workable Basic that would run on the machine, dropped out of school to make it happen, and, to his credit, did.
Everything from that point on was riding the ever larger waves of the PC revolution. Bill adapted the Basic (sometimes badly, and often burying the bad hacks used to make one machine work with more bad hacks) to a growing range of machines. It doesn't make Bill a great programmer, and they did they steal and/or buy (sometimes both, as with DOS) many of the pieces they needed along the way). But the growth of Microsoft inevitably put Bill in the position of making the key technical decisions. To make those decisions he had to have a more than passing knowledge of the code (even when he didn't write it).
That doesn't make him smarter than the rest of us (any more than Linus Torvalds or Tim Berners-Lee smarter than the rest of us. But all three were in the right place at the right time to make something important happen, all three have a broad reputation based on having done so, and those reputations have given all three credibility that most of the rest of us don't have when they talk about their products.
Which is why, going back to the beginning of this thread, it didn't matter that Linus' comments on Microsoft's FUD reiterated things that others had said before. His words had special weight.
Re:constitutional lawyers? (Score:2, Insightful)
The chances are you aren't checking patents to see if the algorithm you just implemented is already patented. It's unreasonable most of the time.
The way the system works, the author must write a clear explanation of the invention but then they can shroud it with rarely used terms, give it an awkward or vague title; finally a lawyer turns it into legally correct but very confusing terms in order to make sure you get maximum scope. Reading patents is asking for a headache.
But this is exactly what you do with patents with the current system. You file your invention and then hit someone on the head with it. This is exactly what Microsoft is doing. I agree with Linus and others that the probability is that 90% of them are trivial, but if you tell someone what patents they are infringing you are just giving them the opportunity to work around the patent and you can't beat them on the head with it. That's why Microsoft have taken this approach.
Re:constitutional lawyers? (Score:4, Insightful)
Patents are intended to promote progress by rewarding publishing of a method with a time-limited monopoly on using the method.
But, infact, literally *NOBODY* uses published patents as a source of learning new methods.
To the contrary -- if you learn there's a patent on a certain way of solving a problem, you do your best to stay the hell away from that method, and you actively try to *avoid* reading software-patents, since knowing them could make you liable for willfull infringement.