Roy Schestowitz wrote:
> Updated again - Microsoft Linux patent FUDwatch
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | Given the recent comments from Microsoft's Steve Ballmer and others I
> | thought it was time for an update. I particularly enjoyed Microsoft
> | lawyer Brad Smith's explanation of why patent protection is important
> | even if no one actually needs it.
> `----
>
>
http://www.businessreviewonline.com/os/archives/2007/02/updated_again_-.html
>
Mr Ballmer,
Like the picture of your office by the way, looks a bit like mine, bit
messy, uninviting to keep nuisances out so you can get on with your work.
The question is not a matter of whether there is an interlectual property
out there, it is only a matter who it belongs to.
Who's interlectual property is it that MS is sitting on, or that UNIX is
built on? Well it isn't yours, it is the interlectual property of all of
the many programmers and software designers who ever wrote a line of code.
Let us say you got hold of a very early Bell's UNIX distro, and compiled it
for your PC, it wouldn't work. Oh, Joe in Germany is a TSR (transient stay
resident) expert I'll put him in touch with you. Also Motorola have put
together a particularly good driver developement kit, that took TSRs to a
new level.
Now you have your drivers, can see the console and can type. What have you
got? Well you have a good communicator, a line editor, you even have a
network game with ascii graphics. Plus a very good assembler, concidering
the time that we are talking about, the asm compiler was really an
excellent one, debugging was a touch tricky, sort of 'Run it and see if it
crashes' type debugging.
My mate Bob wrote some decent editor software, he's called it Vi, Fred in
Australia and Pedre in France both added to it with emmulators and command
enhancements. Have a chat with those two, that gives you a nicer platform
to get writing more code.
... and so it goes on Mr Ballmer, many programmers in many places all
sharing code and ideas. No one asked for money. One of the main things that
kept it all going was the fact that very often we were working entirely on
our own, there wasn't anyone to ask, you had the UNIX manuals, but who
could help you understand them? The only way was to get as much contact as
possible with your fellow IT/programmers. My main bit was comms and asm
databases, I could share that, others would share their strong areas.
It carried on like that in DOS, Program Now and the many computer mags
openly sharing snippets of code and ideas. Even in MS Win many of us were
sharing. Those buttons and textboxes you claim as yours were not written by
MS, it wasn't MS's idea at all, it was a good idea taken from another
system. We all did it, dipping in to get the good bits, feeling disapointed
if no one borrowed bits of your code, because it probably meant they
already had a better way to do what ever the code did.
Then suddenly out of the blue someone comes along and claims that all that
was ever written is the property right of some unknown bloke/s in a country
that as far as I remember actually played very little part in any of this.
So of cause people are angry and of cause people will ignore those patents.
Because in our minds the patents are theft and theft is illegal. I will
never accept those patents and I will never pay a single penny to make use
of any code or idea covered by those patents.
So, the deal with Novell did not protect me from anything at all, I didn't
need protection, I wasn't under threat.
There are parts in all of that code that are *my* interlectual property, I
don't know which parts, but the rate at which I was chucking out databases
and comms code to fellow programmers it could be a fair amount of code. So,
as you Mr Ballemr claim that all the MS Win code is yours, I declare then
that All database and comms code is mine.
I declare that my part can be freely used, shared and distributed as those
of my mates and fellow developers can be, I do not require a piece of paper
with licence or patent written on it, I do not want any sort of payment. I
don't even want a 'thankyou', because for every 'thankyou' I would be given
I know that I owe many more to others who helped me.
Rob
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