Hi Luis! First off, personal blog, opinions don’t represent that of my employer, not a corporate shill, blah blah blah.
Which is why they are going after Linux users, most of whom have no patents of their own to retaliate with. Besides the original Fortune article, check out this latest Ballmer quote, where he carefully points out that ‘people that use Red Hat’, rather than Red Hat, owe Microsoft money. (Of course, implicit in that is a threat against all Linux users who haven’t bought immunity from Novell.)
You’re the lawyer so you might know better ;) but I would think that the “mutually assured destruction” option would still be on the table if Microsoft started going after users of Linux rather than the distributors, as that kind of extortion affects the bottom line of everybody, including Novell. In some sense I wonder why we allow Microsoft to continue making these claims when we have a patent troll on our side — the OIN — but my suspicion is that the off-the-cuff cost-benefit analysis there would show that there’s more to lose in a pre-emptive strike than allowing MS to just bully people.
And let’s be honest, MS would still be hammering Linux users with the patent fearmongering if the Novell deal hadn’t happened. Now they just try to spin it in a way beneficial to them, but I suspect the number of users who used Red Hat and are more skittish about patents because of the Novell deal are (a) small and (b) irrationally afraid because the patent threat is much larger than Microsoft.
Well, yes and no; reform is important, but Novell’s alliance with Microsoft actively undermines reform by making the current system seem more reasonable.
I emphatically disagree here. To whom does this deal make reform seem less necessary? Certainly not to the community. Given that Microsoft itself is a big target and consistently loses patent challenges (or seemingly so) seems to put it on the wrong side of the line — it’s just a matter of time before they realize it. It also doesn’t seem like that’s the case for Novell, who despite all the bad press they’ve gotten have taken a harder line with regards to software patents in Europe and investing in the EFF’s patent busting program.
As to whether it makes it easier from a patent or antitrust standpoint, I wouldn’t be surprised if those investigators see it as another way that Microsoft is unfairly throwing their weight around, especially considering the weaknesses in the patent system and how radically they outpace everyone else in filing and acquiring new ones. I also suspect that Novell would argue against Microsoft to those same patent and antitrust investigators.
Completely correct, except that there is no ‘until then’, unless by reform you mean ‘abolition of software patents’. Otherwise, likely everyone will always have to play the game; ‘reform’ by itself will not be sufficient to protect anyone, since trolls with a dozen strong patents will be just as threatening as trolls with hundreds of patents of unknown quality.
I agree totally that the end goal is the elimination of software patents. Moreover, given that the idea behind patents is a temporary monopoly to productize a novel idea to the betterment of the arts and sciences, I feel there should be some requirement that patents be somehow integrated into a shipping product within a certain amount of time, or you lose the protection it provides. I think that would largely take patent trolls out of the equation.