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They drew first blood, sir!

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Edvard:
I have a feeling this is going to get ugly...

Has Microsoft fired its first shot in the patent war against Linux?
While Microsoft will vehemently deny it, a lawsuit filed earlier this week by Microsoft against in-car GPS maker TomTom represents the first shot fired  in the Microsoft vs. free software war.

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http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=3650&tag=nl.e539

40hz:
To me, this whole incident seems to be a vintage Ballmer move.

I think MonkeyBoy flipped out and decided to do something to make people pay more attention to him now that Mr. Bill has moved towards the background.

But I'm guessing that Microsoft now realizes it has put its hand in a vise, and will be looking for a quiet way to claim victory through an undisclosed out-of-court settlement with TomTom.

They've hinted as much in some of their statements that followed the filing.

Otherwise, they're going to face the risk of having each of the patents they're claiming infringement on being reviewed by the courts. And if this does goes to court, Microsoft faces the very real possibility of having those eight patents revoked or more narrowly defined.

I think TomTom knows that and is calling their bluff.

It will be interesting to see if TomTom has the fortitude and financial resources to see it all the way through. But again, I'm guessing that TomTom will ultimately work out some token licensing deal with Redmond (like Novell did) just to get it out of the way.

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 :tellme: :tellme: :tellme:
If I were a conspiracy buff, I'd argue that this lawsuit was a smokescreen to hide their ongoing "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" campaigns. This is especially a problem in the virtualization market. Check out this bit of news:

Citrix Ruins Xen for Linux

The latest announcement from Citrix is one which was covered yesterday and here is the press release from the company. There is nothing particularly shocking there.

Ignition Partners and Citrix were apparently used for their relationships with Microsoft to bring over Xen to Microsoft’s side. Having planted influence/cronies inside XenSource, Microsoft then ‘bought’ it using a partner [1, 2], only to hand it over back to Microsoft, over time [1, 2, 3]. The saga can be summarised as follows:

   1. Former Microsoft employees (Ignition Partners) put money in XenSource, which other companies have come to depend on as means of enabling GNU/Linux and choice

   2. At least one crony was put in charge of Xen (former Microsoft General Manager)

   3. XenSource was sold to Citrix without resistance

   4. Microsoft took Xen’s agenda from Citrix, which was crowned Microsoft Partner of the Year (2008) after buying XenSource

According to Parallels, it’s not surprising that Xen is no longer what it used to be, which leads to a cascading effect (companies dependent on Xen.org).

    “I make the further prediction that Citrix will stop developing XenServer altogether since it is not needed to make XenApp work. This will signal the eventual end of XEN. You really have to applaud Microsoft’s Server group here: XEN could have been a serious competitor to them, but instead it ended up being a partner and technology provider. Now, when the difficult economic climate could have created considerable opportunities for the open source XEN offering, it is instead largely out of the picture due to its relationship with Citrix, and by extension with Microsoft.”


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Link to whole story: http://boycottnovell.com/2009/02/25/xen-spit-it-out-strategy/

 >:(

zridling:
Microsoft doesn't change, and the obstacles they put in front of innovation with regard to patents are predictably tired. Moreover, according to Jeremy Allison:

What people are missing about this is the either/or choice that Microsoft is giving Tom Tom. It isn't a case of cross-license and everything is ok. If Tom Tom or any other company cross licenses patents then by section 7 of GPLv2 (for the Linux kernel) they lose the rights to redistribute the kernel *at all*.

Microsoft has been going around and doing these patent cross licensing deals with companies under NDA's so they never come to light for *years*. That was the whole point of the Novell deal - Microsoft lawyers finally thought they'd found a way to *publicly* do these cross licensing deals and get around the GPLv2, but the GPLv3 put paid to that.

Tom Tom are the first company to publicly refuse to engage in this ugly little protection racket, and so they got sued. Had Tom Tom silently agreed to violate the GPL, as so many others have, then we'd only hear about a vague "patent cross licensing deal" just like the ones Microsoft announces with other companies.

Make no mistake, this is intended to force Tom Tom to violate the GPL, or change to Microsoft embedded software.

________________________________________________
For more background on how Microsoft could end up losing their own patents on this, check out the Bilski case result for what could be history repeating itself.

CWuestefeld:
This is a sort of war between Microsoft and the OSS folks. I can understand your annoyance with Microsoft, but why isn't this accompanied by an exact mirror back to the GPL zealots? If the GPL forbids any sort of compromise, don't they deserve every bit as much blame as Microsoft?

I imagine that MS never expected to prevail in a real lawsuit. Legally they must continue to protect their intellectual property, else they lose it. It needs to be preserved for this ongoing battle.

I you dislike the battle, you certainly can't blame Microsoft without blaming the Gnu folks as well. But since there clearly is a competition between these two parties, it also seems odd to blame them for using the tools that we, as a society, have given them. The real solution to this is to get your darned legislators to change the regime of intellectual property. (and really, the legislators are just such a bunch of a$$holes, especially lately, is there any reason not to just get rid of the lot of them?)

40hz:
(and really, the legislators are just such a bunch of a$$holes, especially lately, is there any reason not to just get rid of the lot of them?)
-CWuestefeld (March 01, 2009, 10:28 AM)
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Well ...we do have the best government money can buy.  ;)

And Corporate America just hates to walk away from an investment that's been paying big dividends since Ronald Regan, so...  ;D 8)

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