Mutually Assured Destruction: Patent Armageddon
Latest news from CNN Money:
Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith and licensing chief Horacio Gutierrez sat down with Fortune recently to map out their strategy for getting FOSS users to pay royalties. Revealing the precise figure for the first time, they state that FOSS infringes on no fewer than 235 Microsoft patents.
The report covers the threat from Microsoft to sue the end users of certain Open Source programs which Microsoft themselves feel that are infringing on their patents.
The Open Source Community are unfazed by the threat as reported with their grounds on the fact the software algorithms are nothing but a sequence of mathematics equation and hence cannot be patented. True enough, we have seen the outcome of the gif format lawsuit and many Open Source project had since not undertake the gif format in their features. But of course there is PNG who comes in and fill the gap left by gif.
My opinion is that the threat by Microsoft is one to retart the market share lost it is experiencing in their flagship product of MS office. OpenOffice offers a strong alternative to MS Office and it is literally free. Likewise Apache host most of the internet websites as compared to MS Server.
Giving such threat may slow down the take up rate of Open Source programs by some entities but if it comes up blank, MS will need to have some really huge PR campaign to make up for even more lost ground.
My take on this: If MS wins, users who cannot afford MS office goes to Google Apps. If MS list, users who are afraid of potential similar lawsuit, will move to Google Apps.
Now now, MS is playing catching up on the Search Engine front, while waging a war that can potentially drives more users to Google Apps. Hmmm… Hope MS’s legal eagles are doing the right thing.
Google wins.
And Open Source to come back stronger, even with their own patent. Not to mention that some big companies behind the Open Source Movement may throw their muscles behind Linux and co. programs to ensure a mutually assured destruction via Patent Armageddon.
May 15th, 2007 at 3:51 am
Yup, the safest bet would be: Google wins.
May 15th, 2007 at 9:01 am
Yes. Google maybe there to sweep up converts from OpenOffice. But there is this corporate users that may not be comfortable with using Google Apps and such. That will be a big opening for either another Open Source Project to take over.
Another thing, I wonder how MS can gather royalties from countries that have less than robust IP laws should MS get what they wanted from the potential lawsuits.
I think MS bitten more than they can chew and surely not scoring any karma points here.