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Microsoft takes on the free world (Gates wants royalties on Linux)
Fortune Magazine ^ | May 13, 2007 | Roger Parloff

Posted on 05/13/2007 4:05:27 PM PDT by Zakeet

Free software is great, and corporate America loves it. It's often high-quality stuff that can be downloaded free off the Internet and then copied at will. It's versatile - it can be customized to perform almost any large-scale computing task - and it's blessedly crash-resistant.

A broad community of developers, from individuals to large companies like IBM, is constantly working to improve it and introduce new features. No wonder the business world has embraced it so enthusiastically: More than half the companies in the Fortune 500 are thought to be using the free operating system Linux in their data centers.

But now there's a shadow hanging over Linux and other free software, and it's being cast by Microsoft. The Redmond behemoth asserts that one reason free software is of such high quality is that it violates more than 200 of Microsoft's patents. And as a mature company facing unfavorable market trends and fearsome competitors like Google (Charts, Fortune 500), Microsoft is pulling no punches: It wants royalties. If the company gets its way, free software won't be free anymore.

(Excerpt) Read more at money.cnn.com ...


TOPICS:
KEYWORDS: chairthrowing; intellectualproperty; linux; microsoft; monkeyboy; opensource; patents; software; tech
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To: BlazingArizona
I actually count this as good news. It hastens the collapse of the American intellectual property system, which has now become the laughingstock of the world.

LOL nothing in America is goin to collapse, you wanting to see us act like the ignorant barbarians of the world who support Stallman is the obvious joke.

161 posted on 05/15/2007 4:57:43 AM PDT by Golden Eagle
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To: magellan

“I’m all for patenting new, real software inventions. But unfortunately, most software patents are B.S. They are not “inventions” per se.”

Quite right. Patent law is quite specific about “prior art”. Unfortunately, it is well known that the Patent Office just dealt out software patents without doing much checking into the “prior art” argument. In fact, a lot of patents were given for things that 2nd year Computer Science students would independently design.

One famous example that made Windows perform poorly in the early ‘90’s was the AT&T patent on the “backing store”, which was simply copying the hidden portion behind a window to disk. Microsoft wouldn’t pay the royalty, which is their right, but Windows performance suffered because they didn’t come up with a better non-violating technique for a while.


162 posted on 05/15/2007 5:13:56 AM PDT by BikerJoe
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To: antiRepublicrat
Linux is faster on the same box. OS X has some inefficiencies that slow it down.

Linus Torvalds may have called OSX "a piece of crap" too but it's actually the other way around when you compare the two, especially on the desktop. If you weren't so infatuated with foreigners and leftists like he is it would be obvious, but sales figures (how much someone is willing to actually pay for something vs. have dirty old uncle dick give it to them for free) tell the story you refuse to admit.

163 posted on 05/15/2007 5:15:08 AM PDT by Golden Eagle
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To: Golden Eagle
Linus Torvalds may have called OSX "a piece of crap" too

You always have a problem with warping facts. He was referring only to the free-software Mach kernel (not GPL, made by Carnegie-Mellon as a research project), and that was in OS X 10.0, which was pretty bad. Mach is still the reason for the performance problems I mentioned. Torvalds also personally prefers big, fast monolithic kernels as opposed to microkernels as Mach is. He even had a famous argument with the author of Minix over this design philosophy difference.

Personally, I can see both sides to the debate. Monolithic kernels are faster, but they're harder to debug, harder to port and inherently less robust. The big picture is that Mach made it easier for Apple to smoothly transition to Intel.

If you weren't so infatuated with foreigners and leftists

I'm infatuated with good software. You are the only one on this board infatuated with these people. You are the one who usually brings them up, as you did in your first post to this thread. Nobody had even discussed Torvalds or Stallman on this thread until that.

164 posted on 05/15/2007 7:13:55 AM PDT by antiRepublicrat
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To: Golden Eagle
So you think Linux should be able use Microsoft’s FAT, FAT32 or NTFS disk formats without paying a license?

Actually I think that requiring a license to use a disk format is a joke. Being able to patent a disk format is a *bad* joke.

165 posted on 05/15/2007 9:49:45 AM PDT by N3WBI3 (Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak....)
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To: Golden Eagle
ROFL.

Easier to laugh then address the fact that the license of OpenSource software was violated?

166 posted on 05/15/2007 9:54:50 AM PDT by N3WBI3 (Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak....)
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To: BJungNan
One of the people working with me turned on the auto-save and it slowed the computer down way too much. He turned it off.

Auto-save is always a pain when you're dealing with the 100+ megabyte files common in publishing. The only thing that can solve that is a fast, multi-processor computer and a really fast hard drive. Or even better, an XServe RAID attached with fiber. 400 MB/sec write speeds shouldn't slow you down much even for huge files.

167 posted on 05/15/2007 10:15:59 AM PDT by antiRepublicrat
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To: antiRepublicrat
He was referring only to the free-software Mach kernel...Mach is still the reason for the performance problems I mentioned.

Obviously your beloved free software isn't as magical and wonderful as you claimed.

You are the one who usually brings them up, as you did in your first post to this thread. Nobody had even discussed Torvalds or Stallman on this thread until that.

The article that spawned this thread mentions him extensively. You can try to hide the facts all you want but "the father of free software" is a green party leftist nutjob, and the more people who know it the better.

168 posted on 05/15/2007 11:13:01 AM PDT by Golden Eagle
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To: Golden Eagle
Obviously your beloved free software isn't as magical and wonderful as you claimed.

1) Mach falls under a category of free software that you have given a pass on, like BSD (its license is similar).

2) It is "magical." Microkernel-based operating systems (or even hybrid ones) are much more robust and portable than equivalent monolithic systems. Microsoft used a microkernel for NT, which allowed them the wide array of platforms that NT originally ran on. This caused performance issues (due to message passing and processing, a consequence of using microkernels), causing Microsoft to later fold much more into the kernel to avoid it. This made NT less robust and less portable, but faster.

The article that spawned this thread mentions him extensively.

Yet you are the first FReeper to bring him up. We just ignored him. That's because you are fanatical about Stallman, and we aren't.

169 posted on 05/15/2007 11:36:34 AM PDT by antiRepublicrat
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To: Golden Eagle

Wait a minute. Why am I having to educate you on the basics of operating systems architecture? Not only are you a troll, but you’re not a very good one. You should at least have some very slight knowledge of the subject on which you are trolling. You didn’t know what Torvalds’ criticism was about. And even when informed, you didn’t know of the implications of that criticism, and the age-old debate of microkernel vs. monolithic design.

You couldn’t have posted that with any honesty had you known that very, very basic information about operating systems.

Please get educated before you post in tech threads again. I would say get out of your mom’s basement, but most tech people living in their mom’s basement know a lot more about operating systems than you do.


170 posted on 05/15/2007 12:29:51 PM PDT by antiRepublicrat
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To: antiRepublicrat
Don't you put down on him like that..

At this very moment he is training for the Mr Universe Contest while looking at his Nobel prize. He is being cheered on by his supermodel wife in their John Edwards like estate while she put the final touches on the press release about the new Operating system he has written by himself from scratch..

171 posted on 05/15/2007 12:46:58 PM PDT by N3WBI3 (Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak....)
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To: Viking2002
Millions of users run Linux now - everywhere. This money grab - and make no mistake, that's what it is - is the very reason why Linux exists.

And that's the point I make to Microsoft defenders. Whether Gates's company is right or wrong, you've got to have seriously annoyed a lot of people when you cause your own worst competitor to spontaneously assemble itself from the grassroots.

172 posted on 05/15/2007 12:53:42 PM PDT by Oberon (What does it take to make government shrink?)
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To: N3WBI3
the new Operating system he has written by himself from scratch..

Microkernel, hybrid or monolithic? And what OS did he "copy" when writing it? How many bad patents does it violate?

173 posted on 05/15/2007 1:03:25 PM PDT by antiRepublicrat
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To: antiRepublicrat

Why is all three in one and not a single patent violated, in point of fat Linux has already violated 136 of his own patents..


174 posted on 05/15/2007 1:05:13 PM PDT by N3WBI3 (Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak....)
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To: N3WBI3; Swordmaker; Golden Eagle
Latest news, Microsoft backed off.

I kind of expected that given that they did not disclose any of the patents that the standard Linux distro supposedly infringes on. That meant they their patents were weak and they didn't want them invalidated, or they knew that the open source developers would immediately start working to make their products non-infringing. It's better for the dishonest to have the FUD threat hanging than to have the source of it corrected, thereby eliminating the FUD.

The problem is that Microsoft still plans to use the FUD threat to lure other unknowing or fearful companies into business deals. And all the while they'll keep those patent numbers in the dark, because light is the best disinfectant.

175 posted on 05/15/2007 1:15:15 PM PDT by antiRepublicrat
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To: antiRepublicrat
Well this says they are not going to sue users, it says nothing of companies.

The article also has some inaccuracies Microsoft's problem: The Free Software Foundation -- the group that controls Linux licensing terms While FSF wrote the GPL Linux controls the licensing terms as he has the copyright.

176 posted on 05/15/2007 1:22:44 PM PDT by N3WBI3 (Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak....)
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To: antiRepublicrat
Not only are you a troll, but youÂ’re not a very good one. You should at least have some very slight knowledge of the subject on which you are trolling.

Ridiculous of course, I'm keeping the thread on topic despite your endless attempts to divert it off into unrelated rechnical minutia. The topic is do you support intellectual property protections on US technology, or do you support radical leftists who want all software to be given away for free to everyone on Earth. You clearly want US software given away, including to communist countries, and even support line by line copying as in the case of China's Red Flag Linux. That is the subject, and no amount of you twisting or flailing around in desperation like usual is going to change it LOL.

177 posted on 05/15/2007 2:37:26 PM PDT by Golden Eagle
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To: antiRepublicrat
Latest news, Microsoft backed off.

LMAO, no they didn't, you should concentrate more on the subject matter than your pathetic diversion attempts. Since the leftist pukes running the FSF own the copyright on most Linux distro code they are a perfect target for an IP lawsuit from Microsoft. Microsoft has been ordered to pay a couple billion the last year or so for patent suits, wonder how well Stallman and his cronies can handle a hit like that? Don't worry, I'm sure you can still contribute to their defense fund LOL.

178 posted on 05/15/2007 2:49:39 PM PDT by Golden Eagle
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To: antiRepublicrat
Auto-save is always a pain when you're dealing with the 100+ megabyte files common in publishing. The only thing that can solve that is a fast, multi-processor computer and a really fast hard drive. Or even better, an XServe RAID attached with fiber. 400 MB/sec write speeds shouldn't slow you down much even for huge files.

You know what is really slowing things down (and likely causing the crashes)? They are using up so much system resources to watch everyone to make sure they areworking fast enough that they are slowing everyone down.

179 posted on 05/15/2007 5:12:59 PM PDT by BJungNan
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To: BJungNan
You know what is really slowing things down (and likely causing the crashes)? They are using up so much system resources to watch everyone to make sure they areworking fast enough that they are slowing everyone down.

That'll do it, especially since that kind of snooping software is often poorly written.

180 posted on 05/16/2007 6:10:21 AM PDT by antiRepublicrat
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