(1) Microsoft already stole everything from Apple's orchard.
That's the most idiotic thing I've ever heard. EVER.
Its speculation, but it has been thought that Microsoft has stolen code from Apple. It has also been thought that Apple stole code from Xerox. This was a long time ago though...I doubt anything modern reflects anything they
might have stolen. They made a movie about this called Pirates of Silicon Valley.
P.S. Xerox had a "mouse", a GUI, a word processor, and ethernet, 10 years before anybody else had it.
Please see any book on Xerox PARC or
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_PARCIt is best known for inventing laser printing, Ethernet, the modern personal computer graphical user interface (GUI) paradigm, object-oriented programming, and ubiquitous computing.
So, I don't think its too far fetched to think that Apple or Microsoft stole
at least ideas from Xerox and each other.
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(2) I think the case is hopeless. The menus "Applications," "Places," and "System" in linux guis are as standard as tabbed browsing in browsers. Yet you don't see Mozilla suing Microsoft for tabbed browsing. Furthermore, how else do you make a word processor? and a spreadsheet? and a presentation program like power point? It'slike putting a patent on particle accelators: it's plain stupid. It thwarts advancement in science and technology and puts money in corrupt hands.
Tabbed browsing? Really? Do you know how long the tabbed document interface has been around?
Microsoft Visual Studio .NET was the first major Microsoft product to use a tabbed document interface that conformed to design guidelines (such as Ctrl+Tab support). Its final version was released with the .NET Framework 1.0 in Q1 2002 (VS.NET was available in beta much earlier). When did Firefox incorporate tabbed browsing? In "Lucia," version 0.3, released October 14, 2002.
So quit bitching about how Microsoft "stole" the idea of using tabs for documents
Opera is usually credited as the first browser having tabbed browsing, far before Mozilla and Microsoft even thought about it.
Please see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera_(browser)Tabbed browsing with a true multiple document interface (MDI) was an original Opera innovation in the field of publicly available web browsers.
Considering Opera came out circa '94-'95...I'd say Opera would own any such patent, not Microsoft.
(3) I heard that IBM and other companies set aside funds for linux's defense.
That's the point of the MS rep. It's not that free if companies are setting aside these kinds of funds.
Anybody who knows BSD/Linux would already know that there is a heavy maitenance cost to run BSD/Linux. The only advantage to BSD/Linux is that you don't need to buy licensing.
As an example, one of the FreeBSD core developers cite $170/hr for consulting services and IT work.
(4) Microsoft is showing itself to be desperate and giving linux more public attention.
It's marketing. Not desparation. Do you know much about marketing? Successfully marketing your product means making it look better than the competition, especially when you charge a per-seat licensing fee and your competition does not.
It sounds like Microsoft is uneasy about competition from the Apple and Linux front...especially with lots of talk around the net of people moving to Apple/Linux over Vista.
When I worked at the math help center, I noticed a steady increase of Apple laptops appearing in the help center over the years (People would bring laptops to do online work). It went from rarely ever seeing an Apple laptop in 2003 when I started, to frequently seeing Apple laptops in 2006. I don't have numbers, but the mere observation suggests that the Apple userbase is growing.
(5) So many corporations use linux that it would be disastrous if they all of a sudden had to pay royalties... wtf kind of court would allow this?
I don't know.... the same court that awarded a woman multiple millions of dollars for spilling coffee on herself?
Realistically, though, the user companies won't have to pay the royalties. It's the companies that have infringed on the patents. They won't go back and charge the users post-hoc fees.
Although unrelated, the same court awarded a woman millions of dollars for far more than merely spilling coffee on herself. I joked about it too, until I pissed someone off about it.
In 1992, McDonald's settled with Stella Liebeck, a 79-year-old woman from Albuquerque, New Mexico, who suffered third-degree burns from hot coffee that she ordered at one of the company's drive-thrus.[15] The lawsuit, which became known as the "McDonald's coffee case", is a well-known product liability lawsuit in the United States that became a flashpoint in the debate in the US over tort reform.
Liebeck was in the passenger seat of her grandson's car when the accident happened. After receiving the order, her grandson pulled the car forward and stopped so she could add cream and sugar to her coffee. She placed the cup between her knees and attempted to remove the plastic lid from the cup. As she did, the entire contents spilled into her lap. The sweatpants she was wearing absorbed the coffee and held it next to her skin. Liebeck suffered third-degree burns over her inner thighs, perineum, buttocks, genitals and groin. She was hospitalised for eight days, during which time she underwent skin grafts and debridement treatments.
I think thats exactly Microsoft's intent...they want to destroy Linux. For our sake (and even yours) they hopefully won't. (Yes I hate Linux too, but I don't want it to be destroyed)
(6) If Microsoft wins, everyone else loses (royalties from users and distributors). If Microsoft loses, only Microsoft loses.
So, twenty fat people form a class-action lawsuit against McDonald's for making them fat. Clearly, these people had a choice about whether to eat McDonald's and chose to do so, perhaps to excess. If they win, only McDonald's loses. But if McDonald's wins, everyone else loses. Therefore, despite McDonald's being in the right, we should rule against them because it's in the more-common good?
If Microsoft wins...who knows what will happen? If they can do this against Linux, they can probably do it against BSD (which would be ironic). Maybe even Apple?
