"They're fallin' like dominoes"
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| tymiles Jun 15, 2007 4:14 AM EDT |
I don't think they are fallin like dominoes. Anyone paying attention will notice that the companies that are jumping on this are companies that are not really Linux friendly anyway. Most people in the community never liked Linspire or Xandros to be honest. And even though the community liked Suse and most people felt that Novell at one point was a really innovative company. We all know that Novell has always been a proprietary software company. The interesting thing I am trying to figure out is how you can provide patent protection to a company like Linspire who does not own any of the code they are using? They are not owners of Linux or any code in Linux or in the GNU parts that make up a distro. As a matter of fact, Linspire is now based on Ubuntu so it's not even a Distro. Its a distro that is Based on Ubuntu which is based on Debian. ??? How will that hold up in court when none of the companies have ownership rights to any of the code they sell or ship? How will those patent agreements not also apply to the actual owners of the code? |
| ABCC Jun 15, 2007 5:44 AM EDT |
The patent protection is a sham, MS aim to make people _believe_ Linux infringes patents. They know some of their patents won't stand up in court and fear any reprisals from patent trolls. Hence, fighting free software in the legal system isn't going to fly. For the charade to continue, they have to create news events where Linux distrubitors give MS' patents a nod as if to say "yes, we think those patents would all stand up in court". All that patent stuff is hard to figure out because there is simply no reality to it. It is brought up as a distraction which allows the cuckoo to lay her egg (or attempts to). MS' eggs are of course their 'experience enhancing licensed technologies'. If Lindows had merely licensed those bits mentioned (fonts, speech codecs, wmv) they probably still would've gotten some stick from the community it would've been ok. However, now that they've played along they have given credence to the idea that those ~235 patents are a threat that need to be dealt with. There is a way to deal with a community, this isn't it. From MS you can't really expect much better but Lindows have definitely bit the hand that feeds them. Oh, and btw, if you want some fully licensed MS ttf fonts you can always 'apt-get install msttcorefonts', no need for siging some ridiculous patent covenant with the boys and girls in Redmond. |
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