Here We Go Again
-
“A Microsoft move to seek patent royalties from open-source distributors and users may be an attempt to use legal threats to deflect attention from company problems.”
-
“Here’s why I’m not unduly worried so far.”
-
“But in the long term Microsoft is the one who will suffer from its actions, since the company should be more focused on providing more valuable and innovative products than threatening to sue companies that have outsmarted them.”
-
“If Microsoft believes that Free and Open Source Software violates any of their patents, let them put those patents forward now, in the light of day, where we can all evaluate them on their merits. If not, then stop trying to bully customers into paying royalties to use Open Source.”
-
“Microsoft claims that open-source software like Linux infringes on 235 of its patents (which ones, it won’t say).”
-
“With one stroke, Microsoft has ended any illusion that it planned to try to build bridges with the open-source community.”
-
“Opinion: While Microsoft’s latest claims may sound terrible to the layman, any attorney worth his or her salt will know that these are old and basically bogus statements.”
-
“Google is eating its lunch on the Internet, and big PC vendors like Dell are warming up to Linux. What to do? Sue, Sue, Sue.”
-
“Previously, the only head-butting between Microsoft and OpenOffice.org has been over document formats, with the former pushing its Open XML and the latter promoting the open-source ODF (Open Document Format).”
-
“If the comments and opinions surrounding the Fortune article are true then there is nothing to worry about at all. If they are false, then Microsoft is about to launch total war on the FOSS community that is sure to fight back.”
-
“The Linux Foundation is prepared to defend any Linux user charged with violating Microsoft’s patents, but … a critical review of Windows code would show that it can be claimed to violate other vendors’ patents as well.”
And Now For Some Positive and Constructive News
-
“Write to your representatives and tell them public money can be saved by standardizing on ODF. “
-
“Norway now joins Belgium, Finland, and France (among other nations) in moving towards a final decision to require such use.”
This is just the dirty way of M$ to play, they are just making noise against Open Source because the Vista sales are on the floor, and the just very scare because DELL will be shipped with GNU/Linus Ubuntu… are you afraid M$… play clean… better pay the use of Xeros, IBM, Apple patents…
There’s nothing to worry about – the sounds emanating from One Microsoft Way are Microsoft Executives with their feet in their mouths, busily making sure that Microsoft doesn’t have a leg to stand on.
If they do it to themselves, it’s not a “cruel and unusual punishment”, I suppose. ;)
Facetiously ;) , they have taken great care not to divulge which patents and where Linux (the broader OS) infringes. Apart from the fact that every ma-and-his-dog’s been reminded of The SCO Group and its fifteen minutes of fame and four years of ever-increasing ignominy, the Microsoft counsel has explained that if they did divulge these patents, they would either be worked around or invalidated.
An organization like the USPTO is supposed to have standards. It is supposed to protect its good name by living up to those standards. If patents alleged to be infringed, have to hide behind a veil of secrecy because of their fragility, then what on earth is the USPTO doing issuing those patents in the first place? That’s bringing their good name into disrepute. Bringing one’s good name into disrepute by carelessness, is not a good thing for a government-related organization to be doing.
I’m wondering if Ballmer’s put ketchup on his feet. That should make the exercise more palatable. ;)
“If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today’s ideas were invented and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today. … The solution is patenting as much as we can. A future startup with no patents of its own will be forced to pay whatever price the giants choose to impose. That price might be high. Established companies have an interest in excluding future competitors.”
1991 Bill Gates, Microsoft
The quote above is the primer to what Microsoft is about. It is about “excluding future competitors”, plain and simple. Let me make my case for why.
Let’s assume FOSS developers do _not_ want to violate the law. As there is not a _single_ instance of _any_ FOSS project being charged (I think we can all agree SCO doesn’t count) much less found guilty of violating either copyright or patent, the previous assumption seems valid by any reasonable metric. I hope you would be willing to agree to that and state as much. Certainly the numerous calls to simply point out what might be considered a violation from many quarters would reinforce that assumption, as would the open nature of development. You simply can not expect to succeed with an intentional violation when that violation will exist open to the scrutiny of the entire world.
Now lets go over some hypotheticals.
1) Microsoft’s patents are valid.
2) They successfully prosecute someone with deep pockets, let’s say IBM.
2) they are awarded the maximum damages possible.
4) There is no counter action.
What could the hypothetical consequences be of those hypotheticals?
1) IBM has (wildly, astronomically high) a charge of 4 billion to pay out, huge bite but they will go on.
2) All offending code has to be adjusted to deal with the patents, lets say it takes a year (again wildly inflated for our hypothetical).
This is an ideal set of hypotheticals and would seem to satisfy the stated desire and requirement of Microsoft toward their fiduciary shareholder responsibility and business 101.
Now for any other company 4 billion would be the lottery but for MS it a quarters proffit. While shipping reduced functionality software would be a blow to FOSS until they deal with rewrites, it won’t be a killer. It could stall adoption, it could send some to Novell, it could even eat into the install base. But the truth is it’s FOSS, even if all the paid programmers leave, it will continue. In all the countries that haven’t yet introduced sw patents, among all the poorer countries that face the choice of reduced functionality software or the increasing difficulty of pirating it will go on.
Microsoft suing and wining doesn’t change the rules of the game, it doesn’t get them what they want. So what do they want?
MS has a monopoly of some 90% on desktops, market share of some 60% in servers, what about 95% of office suites. This is the bulk of their revenue. Their first directive is to not lose revenue, their second directive is to increase revenue.
There are three primary ways MS can increase revenue (not withstanding the marginal increases to be had from increased efficiencies)
1) Derive more revenue from their current market share.
2) Increase their market share.
3) Successfully enter new markets.
Yea, I know much of this is elementary, bear with me.
Microsoft’s ability to increase revenue from current market share comes from two quarters, price increases and reducing piracy levels. The primary constraint on price increases comes from Linux, without it they are once again the lowest price offering (granted OSX as a broken out item is less than XP but as a system it is generally higher). While they have historically drastically undercut UNIX much of the current server market can’t support UNIX pricing levels, the point being that for the current installed base there are modest limits to what they can achieve through price increases. Piracy is another matter. If we assume an average global piracy rate of 50% we are talking about real money. To take advantage of that MS needs two things, one they need a way to enforce payment and second they need to be the lowest cost or only choice (especially if we assume that one of the primary motivations to piracy is economic). The easiest, surest way to enforce payment is a technological kill switch, a capability MS is clearly building toward. Now once they build that kill switch before they throw it they have to make sure there is no credible alternative, and certainly not one that is cheaper and arguably of comparable functionality.
Increasing market share, MS is a victim of their own business success here. It’s hard to go anywhere but down with some of their market percentages, unless you factor in the growth of their current markets. Currently about 1/6 of the world is computerized, if we assume a conservative 1/2 of the population ends up computerized that is a threefold increase in market size. Unfortunately for MS the next 2/6 are less affluent than the current 1/6, how much of that market can they count on capturing if they aren’t the lowest cost option? This is what MS has to be most focused on. If Linux remains in the market what percentage of this increasingly cost conscious 2/6 will break to Linux, 30%, 50%, 70%, especially if they are forced to actually pay for it? If it is even the conservative number a very important thing happens, their position as a monopoly falters.
MS’s record on entering new markets has two success rates one for markets that have a corollary to a market they currently dominate, and a very different one for markets without that corollary. Additionally, the resistance from possible partners for new markets has increased over time do to there predatory business practices. Clearly their ability to quickly dominate new markets and set defacto standards is fundamentally affected with the loss of monopoly positions. Without monopoly position they have to compete in ways they haven’t had to for some time.
MS has two advantages over nearly all other competitors, first is their monopoly position and second is the extent of the network effect that they can bring to bear throughout their platform. FOSS is the only other cohesive entity that has been able to credibly challenge the former and can match the latter. From a global perspective it is FOSS that provides the competition and obstacle to all of MS’s growth opportunities, market by market. And these growth opportunities dwarf by many orders of magnitude even the the most wildly optimistic possible monetary wins from litigation.
The only worthwhile goal here for MS is “excluding future competitors”, and they can’t achieve that by actually going to court.
But what happens if they can get Redhat and other successfull commercial organizations to do similar Novell deals? It seems you would begin to fracture the FOSS comunity and this has to be their goal. Their efforts to date have been to divide FOSS participants, whether that is their effort to differentiate between paid and non-paid developers or one FOSS distributor from another. If Novell developers are free to develop code that is “safe” from MS patents but no one else is safe to use it, they have created a division. If other distributors do a similar Novell deal only “distributors” that MS is willing to do such a deal with are safe to distribute the code. If MS is successfull propagating the Novell deal it fractures the FOSS ecosystem _as well as_ giving them a revenue stream, but the primary goal is to short circut the virtuous cycle of FOSS licenses. Divide and conquer is the goal here and that is not accomplished by going to court.
Foss can’t continue as it has on code that is patent encumbered, and if MS can get a percentage of FOSS players to accept that premise they have taken the first step to halting it.
That’s the game they are up to. It’s not about collecting royalties on patents, it’s about rolling in a Trojan horse to destroy the community from within.