MS Announces intentions of collecting royalties from Linux users

Posted by jerry as Uncategorized

It was only a matter of time.  A company like Microsoft has a vast portfolio of patents.  So vast, that most people that do anything with a computer are violating one patent or another.  Apparently, MS has not been sufficiently pleased with the return on it’s contributions to the SCO lawsuits, and is starting to make noise about going after users themselves.  They have already struck a deal with SUSE, which grants all SUSE users rights to use MS’ intellectual property, and are looking to do the same with others.

The reality is that MS has to do something soon to keep themselves from becoming irrelevant in the server and desktop OS space.  It’s also a good business model to make money off of your competitors’ success.  In MS’ case, it likely crosses the monopolistic barrier.  The really interesting part of this story, though, is their timing.  MS has had 6 years of a sympathetic administration and congress.  They wait until a week and a half after a democratic majority is elected into the congress - a majority that has already started gumming up the ATT/Bell South merger.

I suspect MS is cognizant of this and will keep their actions to rhetoric and the occaisional “protection racket” deal like they signed with SUSE/Novell.  Here’s the story: http://www.macworld.com/news/2006/11/17/ballmer/index.php