OneAndOneIs2

It looks like Microsoft is finally giving up on its constant vague "Linux infringes our patents" warnings and moving to the next level: They're finally going to get into some specifics.

235 patents, they say, are infringed by FOSS projects. At long last, they're getting out of the empty generalities. A bit, anyway. It's actually quite a low number, considering how many thousands of patents MS owns.

They clearly don't have much faith in them, either. And they lie when they say, with all the piety they can cram in, that it's not vindictive or anti-competitiveness, it's a "matter of principle" - FOSS has to "play by the same rules as the rest of the business," says Ballmer.

Both are shown to be false by the simple fact that MS won't reveal what any of the patents are: "Gutierrez refuses to identify specific patents or explain how they're being infringed, lest FOSS advocates start filing challenges to them."

If their only worry is that FOSS isn't playing fair, then just saying "These are the patents you're infringing, either work around them or get the patents ruled invalid" would be the way to go. And if they had faith in the validity of the patents, they wouldn't have any reason to prevent the FOSS community from challenging them.

Reading further through the article, however, makes it clear what the point of this is. They want money from all the big companies that are using Linux, and that means threats of patent infringement. Like the Linux community, such places aren't going to take an MS claim of "It infringes lots, honest." very seriously, certainly not enough to stump up large sums of cash for patent cross-licensing. So MS is going to have to show them the patents, probably under NDA knowing them.

MS knows all too well what the result of a genuine patent war against FOSS would be: It would lose. The few patents that weren't ruled invalid (And if would only be a few - see a recent court decision on patents) would simply be coded-around so that the FOSS project(s) in question didn't infringe any more.

Result: MS would lose a bunch of their patents, and lose forever its "FOSS infringes our patents, so leave the free stuff alone and buy ours instead" FUD. To say nothing of the extra ammo it would hand the anti-competitive lawsuits that are already troubling them.

Frankly, I was more worried the last time I sneezed than I am by this latest patent nonsense from MS.