On Fri, 19 Nov 2004, Mike Miller wrote: > On Fri, 19 Nov 2004 elhaddi at constantdata.com wrote: > > > Mr. Steve Ballmer goes to Singapore ... > > http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/biztech/11/19/tech.microsoft.linux3.reut/index.html > > The article claims: "Linux violates more than 228 patents, according to a > recent report from a research group, Microsoft Chief Executive Steve > Ballmer said at the company's Asian Government Leaders Forum in > Singapore." > > Can he name one? I think the number of successful suits so far is zero. > Many of them are probably bogus, such as the patent on is-not (http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/19/1426256&from=rss). The problem is, the average cost of litigating a patent suit is a million dollars. Microsoft can afford to drop $228 million on patent lawsuits. Can we? The answer is a surprising maybe. We have an ally in our corner in any sort of patent fight- IBM. Which has huge numbers of patents in it's portfolio. And fairly deep pockets itself. And a deep interest in Linux and open source. And, probably, the ability to in turn shut down Microsoft with counter-patent-suits (look at what they're doing with SCO). Unfortunately, this makes actual patent lawsuits "the nuclear option" in this "war". If it comes to that, we lose, but Microsoft loses as well. Which means for the time being, Microsoft will content itself with rattling it's patent sabres and spreading FUD. I don't expect the patent lawsuits to come out until Microsoft is signifigantly more desperate. Note that's a 'when', not an 'if'. Brian _______________________________________________ TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota Help beta test TCLUG's potential new home: http://plone.mn-linux.org Got pictures for TCLUG? Beta test http://plone.mn-linux.org/gallery tclug-list at mn-linux.org https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list