Roy Schestowitz wrote:
> Patent threats bad for Microsoft business - Red Hat
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | Microsoft going around threatening customers with patent litigation does
> | not make good business sense. This is according to Red Hat's Middle
> | East and Africa channel sales manager, David Postel, who was speaking
> | in Johannesburg last week.
> `----
>
> http://www.tectonic.co.za/view.php?src=rss&id=1594
>
Someone asked a question in chat over the weekend.
What will happen if after these agreements are made MS is somehow forced to
actually tell us what patents we are abusing and they prove as false as
SCO's.
Do all of those signing the agreements get to sue MS for false claims? I
suppose it depends on if they were shown anything by MS that suggested that
they were breaching the patents. If they were shown nothing, then the
courts can just say 'Tuff titties, you should have made sure MS had a claim
before you signed'
(sorry for the lawyer speak, for those who haven't ready law it means 'No,
you can not sue').
If they were shown something that scared them into signing, then I would
love to know what it was, maybe was a horses head in their bed or
something.
> Watch how Microsoft fiddles with the media and spreads FUD...
>
> White Hat
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | A narrative is forming around Microsoft’s patent FUD campaign, and it’s
> | not a paean to their business acumen, nor an ode to their brinksmanship.
> | The real story is more of a folktale-in-progress that turns on
> | a simple dramatic question: What is Red Hat going to do?
> `----
>
> http://truthhappens.redhatmagazine.com/2007/06/18/white-hat/
>
I hope that they do nothing at all. Someone has to stand and fight and force
these patents to be made public (basically so we can all rubbish them).
MS don't stand a chance in this, Novell and the others either took nice
little bungs or they signed too soon through cowardice.
Of cause Mr Redhat might fancy a nice little bung of his own. Must be
tempting if Mr GaberdeanMan turns up at his door and offers him a piece of
paper with the details of a swiss bank account on it, all he has to do is
pretend MS have a case and sign Redhat up to the agreement.
Assuming that bung is significant, how many of us could really resist it,
just for an operating system? Afterall the OS doesn't actually die once the
agreement is made (not yet anyway, we can't see the man about to pull the
rug at this stage in the play).
You watch the bravehearst saying 'I would never take money from MS'.
Well I would take it, a nice 200 foot fishing yaght anchored off the jetty
of my Malibu summer mansion, I can't see me turning that sort of life down
just for an operating system.
But seeing MS struggle to make good their false claims, would I turn down
the bung to see that? Would be sort of sordidly amusing to see MS fall from
grace as quickly as SCO did.
But is it worth my yaght? I'll go toss a coin and let you know.
It's tails, I keep the fishing yaght, can someone lend me a pint of magots?
I've never done shark fishing before, I suspect the magots have to be
really really big, do they come up for sweetcorn?
|
|
