Mr. Ballmer, Show Us the Code

DigDuality writes "A new campaign, Showusthecode.com, requests every leader in the Linux world, and companies invested in Linux, to stand up and demand that Steve Ballmer show the world where Linux violates Microsoft's intellectual property. He has been making these claims since the Novell-Microsoft deal. If Microsoft answers this challenge — by May 1st — then Linux developers will be able to modify the code so that it remains 'free' software. If such infringing code doesn't exist, we will have called Microsoft's bluff. And if the campaign garners enough attention and if Steve Ballmer maintains silence, then the community and companies behind Linux can take the silence for the admission that it is."

I like those odds.....

Billions and billions of dollars and an army of lawyers in one corner:

A group with an idea and a web site in the other:

I like their spirit, but my best advice would be......RUN Bitches!

Re:I like those odds.....

Real, fake or nonexistant, Microsoft still has the edge here.

Any public accusations made against them will be met with suits, and discovery requests that would choke a maggot.

Reality suggests there wont be a lot of public support for this effort or its logical expressed outcome, but I wish them luck.

Re:I like those odds.....

I don't think Microsoft would do this, but as linux is open source, it would also be possible (in theory) to do the reverse of what you suggest and plant small routines from Microsoft code into sections of Linux. Of course that assumes someone working for Microsoft could get the code sections past other programmers reviewing the new Linux code, but it could be done.

I don't think Microsoft would try this to win any kind of legal action against Linux, (especially as a lot of people are watching the code), but I wouldn't put it past someone trying this kind of stunt from other companies with some open source software. Sadly it seems with corrupt human thinking, anything is possible in the pursuit of their goals, especially where that goal is money and/or power.

Its like the old saying ... "All's fair in love and war" .. that should be "All's fair in love, war and business" ... although the use of the word fair in that saying seems almost like positive PR to say, do anything unfair you can to get ahead. So its not really fair at all.

The interesting thing is most humans are not like this (most people have empathy and ethics) but there are enough bad ones who are like this, to make everyone suspicious of the actions of others.

Re:I like those odds.....

adding any MS code to the linux base

Where? Constants in an out-of-tree hardware driver maybe?
The lines of the linux kernel source have been moved about in plain sight like chesspieces these many years.
Unlikely that you could readily integrate any of the cruft-tastic 'Doze code with the linux kernel if you tried.
If the claim wasn't so diabolical, it could nearly approach comic.

Re:I like those odds.....

While that is true, this whole discussion has been muddied by the use of the imprecise term "intellectual property" in the blurb. I think this is more about patents than copyright, which makes the GPL issues here moot.

Re:I like those odds.....

Insightful. Microsoft holds all manner of weird patents, like "a user-interface entity that changes colors upon modification to indicate modified state" or somesuch. Thus if Linux incoprorates said, it violates patent, res ipso loquitor.

The reason that Microsoft doesn't just start litigating is that it'll start a nuclear war among all the major players in the industry, since they all hold patents on stuff that is obvious, has prior art, and everyone already uses. The long game for MS is to separate Linux from her big corporate sponsors, read IBM, so that suing linux become like nuking Eniweitok, as opposed to Pyongyang.

Re:I like those odds.....

German court rulings don't apply anywhere but Germany. And Daniel Wallace failed to state a valid claim so the issue NEVER WENT TO TRIAL. Wallace was dismissed in pre-trial motions. The comments from the court are just that COMMENTS, not rulings. See your own link: May of 2005, Daniel Wallace filed suit against the Free Software Foundation (FSF) in the Southern District of Indiana, contending that the GPL is an illegal attempt to fix prices at zero. The suit was dismissed in March 2006, on the grounds that Wallace had failed to state a valid anti-trust claim; the court noted that "the GPL encourages, rather than discourages, free competition and the distribution of computer operating systems, the benefits of which directly pass to consumers."[16] Wallace was denied the possibility of further amending his complaint, and was ordered to pay the FSF's legal expenses.

Re:I like those odds.....

You mean like they got caught stealing VMS code, techniques, and trade secrets to create NT? Or like they got caught prohibiting OEM vendors from bundling Netscape? Or like htey got caught pretending a hoplelessly scrambled and incomplete document of code descriptions is an API that developers can use to compete with Microsoft's products?

The list goes on and on: not only do they pull stunts this stupid, they get caught at it again and again. Getting busted is just a part of doing business for them.

Re:I like those odds.....

Hmm.. how hard would it be to find chance similarities in any two codebases?

I work on the evolution of languages (shameless plug [auckland.ac.nz]), and I know that it's quite possible to get the same words meaning the same thing, just due to change. For example "mata" means "eye" in both Greek and Maori, but there's just no chance that these languages are related anytime within the last, say, 20 thousand years, and this is just an outcome of plain old chance.

My question - how likely and to what degree is this sort of convergent evolution of code between two separate programs? Keeping in mind that there's a whole lot of functional constraints, i.e. both operating systems have to manage RAM somehow, or both have to manipulate graphics in some way, there are common good coding practices, there are common language idioms, etc.

So - how easy would it be, for Ballmer to find a chance similarity between linux and vista, and how would you distinguish between this and real similarity? (homoplasy vs. homology for you evolutionary biologists out there).

Re:I like those odds.....

So - how easy would it be, for Ballmer to find a chance similarity between linux and vista, and how would you distinguish between this and real similarity? (homoplasy vs. homology for you evolutionary biologists out there).

Impossible to say, really, but I would guess that the SCO unix code would be a lot more similar to linux than windows, and they weren't able to find anything (should I say 'yet?'). So I find it unlikely that they will find anything in the windows source code, which is much different.

Good Odds.

my best advice would be......RUN Bitches!

It's nice to know what corner you are in but your reasons for being there are flawed, as is your entire analogy. You can't expect to be protected by a bully, no matter how strong they might appear. Sooner or later, they will make you pay for your mistaken and mean spirited loyalty.

The problem with all of the FUD is that it's becoming increasingly evident that M$ is threatening everyone. A business that threatens it's customers is generally on the way out.

The great irony in all of this is that M$ themselves has little respect for the IP of others and regularly violates patents, trademarks and copyrights, while simultaneously calling for fanatical protection and enforcement. Their recent loss to Actel/Lucent, and the $1,500,000,000.00 judgment highlights this. M$ themselves are more venerable to the litigation monster they helped create than free software makers who are much more careful. Ballmer has no more to offer than SCO did and I mean that in every way.

Excuse me, while I go listen to some nice oggfiles I downloaded from archive.org. I'll keep right on partying while M$ flunks the bluff, and keeps getting dumped by customers [slashdot.org], partners [slashdot.org] and investors [google.com] alike. It's about time.

Re:Good Odds.

$1,500,000,000.00 is NOT chump change to Microsoft. Thats BILLION, not million. That will seriously hurt Microsoft's bottom line. Microsoft's profit for the last 12 months was $36.63 billion. Losing over 4% of their gross profit from a SINGLE cause would seriously hurt any company.

Re:Good Odds.

No, its operating revenue for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2004 was $36.8 billion (source [computerworld.com]). Its operating profit for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2006 was $16.5 billion (source [microsoft.com]). So basically your statement is wrong, based on a misunderstanding of finance (equating profit with revenue) and out-of-date. The good news though is your conclusion "$1.5 billion is not chump change to Microsoft" is probably accurate. And since, in my opinion, the vast majority of posts on this subject seem to draw the wrong conclusion based on false statements, your post that draws the right conclusion based on false statements deserves to be promoted. So MOD PARENT UP!!!

ugh, more stupid fud

That's both factually wrong and logically wrong. The fact that MS was vulnerable to suit by Actel/Lucent despite doing everything legally and by the book (and respecting the IP in question) should make companies using Linux all the more worried.

The court and jury disagree with you. They found M$ guilty and imposed a monster fine which reflected their outrage and the magnitude of the offense. You know, M$ thinking an army of lawyers with endless bullshit would protect them is what the jury is angry about. Obviously, you share the M$ valuation of other`s IP to take defend them without citing details and how M$ really did everything by the book. I'm starting to think they simply payed the lowest bidder and screwed everyone else.

Seeing how abusable the patent system is should make you afraid; very afraid.

More hot air? Show me what you've got. M$ is full of beans and others will see it that way too. As M$ burns down, and they start pulling out vague and crazy patents, they might just take software patents down with them, as is currently being looked at in the US Supreme Court fight between M$ and ATT.

Of course he's not going to show you the code

He's going to make unsubstantiated allegations, veiled threats of law-suits, and all sorts of FUD. For the business user (and that's where you're going to see Linux go from 2% to 10% of the desktop market), even the slim chance of getting sued is taken very seriously. I won't eat my hat, but I would be very surprised if Microsoft ever files 1 scrap of paper in court, suing a linux distributor for patent violations, or an end user for some kind of piracy(?) charge.

Re:Of course he's not going to show you the code

It is not about stealing code, but infringing patents. The real question ought to be "Show us the patents", which is more informative than "Show us the code", because even if Microsoft did show you some code, how are you supposed to know which patents were infringed by it?

SCO all over again

However, the interesting part about SCO is how they try to play "methods and concepts" without actually having any patents in the case. For that matter, if it isn't in the code then it just doesn't exist, regardless of the actual ownership (IANAL).

And may I be the first to say...

Open source Windows! Open source Windows!

(okay, probably not the first ...)

It's pointless for Microsoft to reply

As long as the truth is not known, microsoft can keep on threatening. If microsoft does prove some sort of infingement then they have to sue or else they will loose their threat as linux is changed. As such microsoft would never reply to it.

General Public...

And if the campaign garners enough attention and if Steve Ballmer maintains silence, then the community and companies behind Linux can take the silence for for the admission that it is.

And the general public still won't give a damn.

Sorry guys...

But the text on that website is extremely unprofessional; it reads more like a rant than an open letter to Ballmer. Grammatical mistakes abound, as does use of slang. I'm all for the idea, but it has to be pursued in a manner such that there is some chance of Microsoft responding.

Re:Sorry guys...

But the text on that website is extremely unprofessional; it reads more like a rant than an open letter ...

I stopped at the

It's come to many in the Linux community's attention ...

which, unfortunately, was the very first sentence.

If I was Balmer, I'd be thinking, "WTF? I run a billion dollar corporation and I'm supposed to read and respond to this? This is even worth picking up a small stool."

Re:Sorry guys...

And that is worse than a pit stained fat guy dancing all over a stage screaming "Give it up for me!" like a doped up schoolgirl?

Yeah, Microsoft's CEO looks real Professional.

Re:Sorry guys...

But the text on that website is extremely unprofessional; it reads more like a rant than an open letter to Ballmer. Grammatical mistakes abound, as does use of slang. I'm all for the idea, but it has to be pursued in a manner such that there is some chance of Microsoft responding.

No kidding. The writing is so bad it actually hurts to read it. The grammar is horrible, it's filled with sentence fragments, it's poorly worded, it's hard to understand, and it's filled with flamebait. Does this guy really expect people to take him seriously?

Microsoft is full of shit about their IP being in Linux, but poorly written flamebait isn't the best way to call their bluff.

Brave!

Well, this is a brave move and, if any of the people namedropped on the site (Torvalds, RMS et al) get behind it then it becomes even braver. Of course Microsoft are unlikely to raise to the bait - they are (or consider themselves to be) far too powerful for that. That said, just imagine they did actually identify particular patents that Linux infringes - and let's be honest, with the current state of the patent system, is that so unlikely? I don't imagine for a moment that any infringement is deliberate, or even known about now, but I'd say there's a non-trivial chance that it could happen. So, what then?

"Rewriting the code" is nowhere near so easy as the site makes it sound. Software patents are often granted for particular concepts - not just ways of doing them. What if some core kernel routine were found to be infringing? That can't just be ripped out and replaced, many years of development and testing have gone into it!

So, seriously, this is a brave move, and I'm pleased to see it. We should totally get behind it. But calling the bluff is a dangerous move if it turns out Microsoft really is holding the cards.

Re:Brave!

I think the point is that is MS actually does sue Linux users, there will be a huge retaliation. (And there always has been this threat). So they won't.

Before you say "won't that nullify the point of this site, since it won't prove anything about whether MS has patents or not", I'll point out that if "we can't sue or you'll retaliate by suing us" is MS's response (or excuse for not doing anything at all), then it proves that they can't do anything about it and we can get on without all this FUD.

It would also serve to show that they are equally, if not more, in violation of the open source community's patents than we are of them.

I was also interested to read [eweek.com] that the original study [eweek.com] (the "283 patents" which Ballmer refers to) was actually a finding that Linux contained 283 potential patents in total. It estimated that 1/3 of the patents were owned by the OS community companies themselves (eg. IBM). And Microsoft owned just 10% of them - which if my calculations are correct is just over 28 patents, not over 200 as Ballmer claims.

Cease And Desist

Does showusthecode.com have permission to use Microsoft's wallpaper on their site?

OK, here's an example

Patent #5845280 [uspto.gov], "Method and apparatus for transmitting a file in a network using a single transmit request from a user-mode process to a kernel-mode process". Compare this with the Linux (and BSD) SendFile() [die.net] API.

Yep, that's a patent violation.

Re:OK, here's an example

Patent #5845280, "Method and apparatus for transmitting a file in a network using a single transmit request from a user-mode process to a kernel-mode process". Compare this with the Linux (and BSD) SendFile() API.

I'm not sure I buy that sendfile() (not SendFile(), by the way) is really a violation of that patent. In particular, the patent abstract says this:

the requested file is retrieved from the secondary data storage device and placed in kernel-mode accessed memory (e.g., cache memory). After the requested file information is stored in the kernel-mode accessed memory, a kernel-mode data transmission procedure transmits the requested file information directly

The way I read that, this patented mechanism always loads the entire file into RAM before starting the transmission. Does sendfile() really operate in this manner? The way I understand it, in effect it just pushes the read()/write() loop into the kernel. But the virtual memory subsystem will typically fault in data from the filesystem (secondary storage) in a lazy manner. There may be some read-ahead caused by the disk driver or the filesystem, but if you open() a 500 MB file and then call sendfile() on it, the kernel is not going to read the entire 500 MB of data into RAM first.

I realize that's picky, but I'm assuming patent interpretation is inherently picky. Also, another technical point: sendfile() doesn't necessarily read from disk and write to the network. It just takes two file descriptors, so I don't see any reason why it couldn't be used to copy from one network connection to another (e.g. for a proxy server), or from disk to disk, or from /proc to /dev/tty, for all I care. Therefore, it seems to me that sendfile() by itself cannot be an infringement. You would have to write code that opens a disk file and a network connection and then calls sendfile() on the two in order to have infringement. (Not that there isn't code out there that does this; I think that's why sendfile() exists in the first place, after all...)

Even if

What is this going to accomplish? Even if they do have patents against Linux, then they aren't going to reveal them until it is most advantageous. This is like playing poker and saying to your opponent, "I dare you to show me your cards. If they are so good, then what are you afraid of?"

Of course, that's assuming Linux DOES violate Microsoft patents, and there is reason to believe that it does. [slashdot.org] Microsoft is planning a slow roast; the longer they can draw out the FUD the better, for them.

Why do they even need the code?

A cross comparison of the MS' patents (which are in the public record) with Linux code should be sufficient to find potential infringements. One of the advantages of the current patent system is that it forces the patent holder to publicly disclose the invention with sufficient detail so that a person versed in the art can copy the invention. That disclosure also lets anyone innovate around the patent if they want. If the Linux community is worried, then they can proactively start changing Linux to avoid MS IP. Why not use the open source ethos of freedon-to-modify to create a Linux that goes beyond anything MS can dream up as defined by those public documents.