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Patent stupidity, greed and theft
  • Vote Up0Vote Down
    Howard_V_Agnew
     
    September 2011
    Pardon my negative tone, but ... this really gets under my skin.


    "Casio has signed a patent-licensing deal with Microsoft that will allow the company to continue to sell devices running Linux.

    (...)

    Microsoft has argued that the use of Linux in devices is a violation of its patents ..."

    How much code has Microsoft written that was copied and put into Linux?  So far as I know, none at all.

    Microsoft, as I recall, was caught with its pants down a few years back, in fact, as a glitch affecting Linux wound up affecting one of its NT-derived OSes because Microsoft (in violation of the GNU license) had incorporated some Linux source code into the OS without disclosing it nor making that open source-developed code available.
     
  • 4 Comments sorted by
  • Vote Up0Vote Down
    FlipnashFlipnash
     
    September 2011
    I didn't realize how screwed up the american patent system was if it allows for stuff like that to happen.
     
  • Vote Up0Vote Down
    mjnmjn
     
    September 2011
    >  How much code has Microsoft written that was copied and put into Linux?  So far as I know, none at all.

    Actually, that has nothing to do with patents.  If Linux copied Microsoft code, that would be a copyright violation, not a patent infringement.  Microsoft holds patents on certain fundamental processes and techniques that are independently implemented by Lninux - that is the basis of the dispute.  It's actually fairly easy to fall into this trap, since people re-invent software techniques all the time.

    - Mark
     
  • Vote Up0Vote Down
    Howard_V_Agnew
     
    September 2011
    That would be odd, considering Microsoft copied essential elements from Mac, which itself copied from Xerox.
     
  • Vote Up0Vote Down
    mjnmjn
     
    September 2011
    While some of the early elements of PC user interface design were cribbed from Apple and Xerox before that, it doesn't prevent new ideas from being thought of and patented.  Microsoft has done this.  So has IBM, Oracle, and many others.  The very concept of a software patent is at the root of the problem.  Microsoft plays the game like all the big players do.  They also lobbied Congress to allow software patents in the first place.

    - Mark
     
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