On Jul 15, 7:33 pm, Homer <use...@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Verily I say unto thee, that Rex Ballard spake thusly:
> > In order to get as much of this prior art into the public archives as
> > possible, companies like IBM, Kodak, HP, Sun, and even Red Hat,
> > began to file thousands of patent applications every year, listing as
> > much prior art as they possibly could, in "High Quality" patent
> > applications. It didn't matter whether the patent was granted or
> > not, the mention of the prior art made the prior art part of the
> > patent office archive.
>
> This would explain why IBM is currently the biggest holder of software
> patents, and makes the most new claims. They use patents defensively
> rather than aggressively like Microsoft. The fact that Microsoft has not
> actually pursued anyone for patent violations in /court/, does not mean
> that they don't abuse their "IP" as a weapon against others ... they
> certainly do. FUD and veiled threats has turned out to be a far more
> effective weapon than litigation, and cheaper too ("Linux infringes 235
> of our patents", "Red Hat customers have an obligation to compensate
> us", "we believe every Linux customer basically has an undisclosed
> balance-sheet liability").
Microsoft knows that they would be in trouble if they tried to enforce
most of their patents against OSS and Linux. Keep in mind that OSS
has been around since about 1977, with licenses such as the BSD
license. Later the GPL license limited the kinds of changes that
could be made to the source code (no proprietary changes that weren't
given back to the author). Other OSS licenses make allowances for
plug-ins, calling functions through a shared library, or use of client/
server solutions including RPC, CORBA, RMI, SOAP, XML-RPC, and REST.
One of my favorite patents is Microsoft's patent on having a spell
checker in an editor. There is an entire archive of prior art showing
that Emacs had this feature back in 1984, and there is even revision
history that shows when that feature was added.
If Microsoft actually tried to enforce this patent, they might find
that they would have to come to terms with Richard Stallman, who might
demand that ALL of Microsoft Office be distributed under the GPL.
That wouldn't be good for Microsoft.
The biggest archives of "patent killers" would be IBM, HP (who
inherited source code from DEC, Tandem, and the companies DEC obtained
through mergers and aquisitions, as well as the ones HP aquired. HP
also has all of the technology created by Compaq. If Microsoft tried
to get too nasty with HP or IBM, they might not even be left with most
of the rights to Windows.
And don't even think about messing with MA Bell, when AT&T broke up,
Lucent retained a huge portion of that AT&T software repository. Then
there are companies like Novell, who owns the IP rights to UNIX.
The other biggest archive is OSS repositiories. This includes
software written for the DOD, including ARPA, software written for
NASA, and software funded by government grants. There is also the
National Science Foundation, and there is even the corporate funded
grants like project Athena, BSD, Mach, and OSF.
If Microsoft tried to enforce their patents, there is a very good
chance that most, if not all, of those patents would be nullified.
> Maybe people like Smith can shut up now about their claim of "hypocrisy"
> WRT our complaining about Microsoft's patents whilst ignoring IBM's. As
> with so many other things, motivation is the key. Microsoft is clearly a
> /threat/, IBM is not.
Quite the opposite. IBM licenses many of it's patents to the OSS
community under the terms of the GPL. They simply agree not to
attempt to enforce those patents against code published under the OSS
Licenses.
It was rather amusing when SCO tried to claim that IBM stole the
scheduler used in Linux from SCO. The reality is that IBM has been
using this technology since the 1960s. What's worse, IBM has a record
of giving SCO permission to use the code in their Itanium version of
Unix, but SCO was horribly behind schedule and not meeting their side
of the contract.
Meanwhile, Linux had a fully functional version of Linux for the
Itanium even before the silicon came out. Their implementation worked
perfectly on the emulator, and even better on the silicon. I think
the only "glitches" were some flaws in one of the early itanium masks.
The OSS community has consistently exceeded IBM's expectations, and
IBM generates a huge portion of their revenue, including hardware,
software, and consulting, that can be directly tied to Linux. Then
again, so to HP, Sun, Accenture, and BEA.
> He even tried to use this "same behaviour" excuse to claim "hypocrisy"
> against those who complained about Microsoft's bribery and corruption
> during the OOXML debate, claiming that IBM was essentially doing the
> same thing. Ignoring for one moment that AFAIK IBM didn't (unlike
> Microsoft) actually bribe anyone during either the OOXML or ODF debates,
> and that IBM's fictitious "vested self-interest" was for something they
> could not possibly abuse to benefit themselves exclusively (unlike
> Microsoft with OOXML), again it boils down to motivation. Microsoft's
> motivation is monopolistic greed derived through the destruction of
> others, whereas IBM seems to be quite happy to coexist with the rest of
> the industry. That wasn't always the case, but it certainly is today.
One of the biggest problems IBM has is enterprise content management,
and more specifically, a few billion documents written in Microsoft
office formats, that have been saved in versions dating back to Word
2.0 for OS/2 and even multiplan.
Even with a corporate google search engine, dozens of knowledge
centers, and lots of tools to help you find what you need, it can
still take 3-4 days to find a specific document that a consultant
needs for an enngagement. The problem is that if a Senior IT
Architect is doing the search, and is the only one with the expertise
to know that he has the right document(s), that can be $200/hour times
10 hours times 2 days, or about $4,000 dollars. Multiply that by
450,000 employees, and that's a lot of money wasted trying to find
documents that haven't been archived properly, because they were saved
in Microsoft's proprietary formats.
If you figure that the innefficiencies of Office formats only inflict
a penalty of 10 hours/week (which is made up by working/billing 50
hours/week) that's about 4.5 million hours PER WEEK, lost due to
Office. Let's multiply that by 50 weeks (225 million hours) and
figure an average cost of $25/hour (over 5.6 billion dollars) lost due
to MS-Office.
Add to that, the cost of upgrading to Vista and Office 2007, including
even MORE lost time (average of 40 hours per worker for back-up,
recovery, reinstallation of 3rd party software, resetting of
preferences, recovering lost passwords,... and one can see why IBM is
looking at ODF very aggressively.
Having some vendor on a project who insists on giving us docx and pptx
documents doesn't improve the situation either. There is more time
installing patches, converting the documents to OfficeXP formats, and
trying to figure out whether you've lost critical information (if you
use the plug-in, it tells you that a bunch of stuff will be lost in
the conversion).
Google has 10 billion documents archived in HTML, XML (including ODF),
and PDF formats, and you can find the right document in less than 3
minutes, at less than 2 seconds per search.
Trying to find a memo written in word for a court case can take weeks,
even in a company as small as Novell.
> Regardless of whether one is considering patents or standards, or pretty
> much any other aspect of computing, Microsoft is a threat where others
> in the same area may not necessarily be. Microsoft are only interested
> in /one/ thing, and that is total domination through destruction. They
> prove that in word and deed every day. The fact that other companies
> have patents, or lobby for one standard over another, does not magically
> turn those companies into monsters like Microsoft. They have entirely
> different motives.
Microsoft is, by nature, a predatory monopoly, and they are committed
to using their monopoly power to not only protect their monopoly, but
to expand that monopoly control into all other areas of the
Information infrastructure.
In 1984, Bill Gates told a reporter for Byte magazine how he would
achieve "world domination". He would make sure that every PC ran not
only Microsofts OS, but that all of the other applications would be
owned and controlled by Microsoft. He would also get all these PCs
networked together in a way that gave Microsoft access to all of the
information on any computer. This information could then be used to
influence the outcome of political campaigns, even depose leaders who
stood in Microsoft's way.
Recently, we've seen the Mayor of Detroit, the Governor of New York,
and several other key politicians discredited and even forced to
resign, because information on their computers was mysteriously leaked
to the press.
The problem now is that Bill Gates, a relatively benevolent dictator
has stepped aside after putting George Bush into office, and there is
now a vacuum of power that could be filled by a more malevolent
personality. Gates didn't exterminate his opposition, or have them
thrown into the gulag, but who can say what the next holder of the
keys will do.
Perhaps these flagrant attempts at overthrow of top government
officials through scandals is Ballmer's way of flexing his muscles.
> To repeat an analogy I used recently: A chef with a knife is simply a
> man chopping carrots, but a psychopath with a knife is a dangerous
> murderer. IBM may have a knife, but unlike Microsoft they just want to
> chop carrots, not kill people.
Microsoft on the other hand, wants control of your information. When
you think about that, it's far more dangerous than psychopath, who
only wants to kill one person at a time. Microsoft could use this
control to destroy people's lives, cause a "Great Depression", or even
get a real tyrant elected instead of just an idiot.
> K.http://slated.org
> .----
> | "The idea that Bill Gates has appeared like a knight in shining
> | armour to lead all customers out of a mire of technological chaos
> | neatly ignores the fact that it was he who, by peddling second-rate
> | technology, led them into it in the first place." ~ Douglas Adams
> `----
The irony is that it was IBM, not Bill Gates, who unified PC makers
under the "PC Compatible" brand. They allowed Gates to sell MS-DOS,
they licensed the hard ware and firmware to OEMs, and they established
standards, and published them, to assure uniformity.
It's hard to say whether it was IBM of Microsoft who held back the PC
during the 1980s, but it is VERY clear that it was Microsoft who held
back the PC during the 90s and the 21st century.
While Microsoft was still trying to get multitasking to work properly
on NT 3.1, Linux had Plug-and-Play, full preemptive multitasking, full
interprocess communication, a huge suite of OSS software, and both Web
Browser and Web Servers - all included for the price of a CD, which
could be as low as $2 per copy if you wanted to buy a few thousand
copies at a time.
To get Linux off the desktop, Microsoft decided that it would be
better to have Windows 95 wipe out their customer's data, than to risk
having a Linux boot manager that would allow the PC user to choose
Linux instead of Windows 95. Furthermore, the OEMs were not allowed,
by contract, to make any modifications to the installed system without
Microsoft's written permission. Getting permission to put your
company's logo on the background took a few hours, but getting
permission to install a boot manager or partition the drive
differently seemed to take years, and most of these requests were
never answered.
When Compaq tried to move Netscape into the same desktop position as
IE, and removed the IE icon from the desktop (for which Netscape was
willing to pay Compaq), Microsoft simply revoked their licenses.
Microsoft was not completely unreasonable, Compaq was allowed to
repurchase the needed licenses at a substantial discount, in exchange
for even more concessions.
It's Microsoft's willingness to use this "All or Nothing" gambit that
makes it so dangerous. Microsoft isn't like a psychopath with a
knife, it's more like a psychopath with a hand grenade and 4 glass
bottles of anthrax in a subway tunnel. By waiting until the perfect
moment, then letting it be known that they are willing to inflict
monumental damage, they can get almost anything they want.
When Retailers put PCs running Warp 4.0 on their display shelves,
Microsoft told them that if the Warp machines were not removed, they
would have to remove all Microsoft trademarks and logos from their
store, including the PCs running Windows.
The man who had to relay this bad news back to the top executives at
IBM was Sam Palmisano. He was directly responsible for the death of
WARP, and he was furious at Microsoft for making him do it.
> Fedora release 8 (Werewolf) on sky, running kernel 2.6.23.8-63.fc8
> 17:33:30 up 207 days, 14:09, 4 users, load average: 0.49, 0.46, 0.41
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