On Sunday 13 May 2007, Philipp Thomas wrote:

On Sun, 13 May 2007 18:40:17 -0800, John Andersen wrote:

...

But I have yet to see Mr Frank Nelson weigh in on this.

And since he claims authority on this subject I'm sure more denials of Microsoft's true intent are forthcoming....

If MSFT had that much *enforceable* patents, you think they wouldn't have sued yet?

Why sue and expose your patents to attack fighting something that amounts two tenths of one percent of the desktop market? Especially when they have been successful in scaring large companies away from Linux for years with veiled threats. When Dell/HP/Lenovo start selling significant numbers of Linux PCs you can bet these threats will become more real. Can you imagine the sales of Linux machines to the corporate world surviving even one successful prosecution? To the extent they actually have any case (and I am not saying they do) the smart play would be to wait till significant corporate adoption of Linux has STARTED, sue some company somewhere and watch all the Risk Management bean counters black-ball linux for the next 20 years. -- _____________________________________ John Andersen -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Monday 14 May 2007 06:16, James Knott wrote:

The MS claims remind me of the mob saying "You've  got a nice business here.  It'd be a shame if it burned down". That is precisely what they are saying... and it ain't no joke...

I'm gonna start calling them MOB$ -- Kind regards, M Harris <>< -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Philipp Thomas wrote:

On Sun, 13 May 2007 18:40:17 -0800, John Andersen wrote:

...

But I have yet to see Mr Frank Nelson weigh in on this.

And since he claims authority on this subject I'm sure more denials of Microsoft's true intent are forthcoming....

If MSFT had that much *enforceable* patents, you think they wouldn't have sued yet? This is the old FUD spreading issue that MSFT has been so good at in the past. I'd say just ignore such statements. Those that really believe those statements have the worst punishment: they'll have to keep sticking to Windows :)

Philipp

I'll play the devil's advocate for a minute here. Any lawyer will tell you that taking a case to court is risky at best. Even if your claim is valid, once you add people into the mix, nothing's ever truly certain. Giving the best possible explanation for Microsoft--and please don't laugh too hard--what they may be doing is trying to see if they can negotiate a settlement that's more certain. Okay, to end that whole charade, even if Microsoft's patents are valid, there's a six year statute of limitations, so the question boils down to when did Microsoft notice the patents were being violated. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Sunday 13 May 2007 21:44, Pueblo Native wrote:

I believe the term is bold faced liars, but in any case, if you look at that article, by the way, MS seems to be trying to go after the Fortune 500 companies.  Never mind the fact that they are some of their biggest and best customers. ehem...... (Balled Faced Liar) is a bad English pun on Steve Ball-mer's name...

... maybe it should just be Ballmer Faced Liar.... :-} -- Kind regards, M Harris <>< -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Sunday 13 May 2007, Patrick Shanahan wrote:

* M Harris [05-13-07 22:18]:

...

ehem, vindicated ... again ... Cool airshow photos!

Cheers.

-- Patrick Shanahan Plainfield, Indiana, USA HOG # US1244711 http://wahoo.no-ip.org Photo Album: http://wahoo.no-ip.org/gallery2 OpenSUSE Linux http://en.opensuse.org/ Registered Linux User #207535 @ http://counter.li.org

-- Spammers Beware: Trespassers will be shot, survivors will be shot again! I don't want a politician I can believe in. I simply want a politician I can believe! -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 M Harris wrote:

On Sunday 13 May 2007 21:20, M Harris wrote:

...

Well, the other shoe has dropped. The leopard in Redmond is really desperate...

MICRO4OFT'S OPEN SOURCE FETISH

This is another take on the same theme... this guy blogs that M$ will never sue because they can't afford it... read his three reasons why. This guy's ire is really up...

http://weblog.infoworld.com/openresource/archives/2007/05/making_sense_of.ht...

Both articles are interesting and relevant in terms of the American Marketplace as being the largest in the world. I would view this article as an analysis intended to keep investors and shareholders on board, and the business equivalent to the Haka(*) before the big (rugby) game. MSs major cash cow is the OEM distribution of the OS to the consumer sector, if this should dry up, or MS fail to make an impact in growing markets such as China, India, and the Russian Republic then they could be in major trouble. MSs attempts to move in to other sectors such as game consoles or mobile devices, no matter how successful will not make for such a failure. (One should remember the IBM PC success effectively destroyed the market for the very much more profitable RS6000 series which was a major factor in precipitating IBMs later financial woes). There is further issue that the home PCs marketplace may be stagnating (no new PCs bought no Vista sold). Vista is not exactly setting the world alight, and I would suspect that very few of MSs major account players are contemplating mass migration in the near future, many were still migrating from NT4 to W2K when XP came out, and the pain of that particular experience is probably still fresh in their minds. At the moment Linux is having more success at replacing UNIX than MS deployments in the corporate world, and the actual level of Linux deployment is very hard to determine given the nature of the distribution. At the moment the Open Source community is in more danger of shooting itself in the foot by showing unreasoned hostility to the pragmatic deal that Novell and Microsoft have hammered out than it is from the deal itself. The critics ignore the fact that the business sector in general is positive to the deal, and the kneejerk reaction of some elements of the community will do more harm than good in the mid to long term to the reputation of the open source community with that business sector. Ideological purity often comes with the price tags of extinction or isolation. For the home machine, Linux is nowhere in the serious gaming space, but for home office, education and some multi-media functionality it a serious player. However, one best ways of bringing things forward is to have both environments on the same box. MS may want to rule the world, but does the world want it to rule them. MSs american centred approach to its product has, and continues to irritate outside of US real estate, many parts of planet would prefer not to do MS simply because it is too (USA) american. MS is also having definite problems with the EU on a variety of issues. (*) The maori haka is a ritual hurling of abuse and threats before getting down to the serious business of mutual brain bashing... used by the All Blacks in Rugby Union for much the same purpose... [NZ members of the list may wish to elaborate] -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with SUSE - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFGSCvMasN0sSnLmgIRAvlwAJ9hHgBNuUtkkX2aHPqfFYX5x8I5CwCg3zt1 HIpTWtUBzhJjADKG9Ldkx80= =Wu4N -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 John Andersen wrote:

On Monday 14 May 2007, G T Smith wrote:

...

MSs major cash cow is the OEM distribution of the OS to the consumer sector,

MS's major cash cow is MS Office, not Vista or any version of windows.

- From MS accounts profit (Operating Income) by division.... Client Division 9 months to March 31 2007 $8745m (basically windows) Business Division " $7845m This on approx same revenue stream... Business division is not solely office. BTW Server + Tools Division is additional $2842 of profit. MS has a lower margin on office .... The bulk of the Client division revenue will be OEM sales.. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with SUSE - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFGSMIvasN0sSnLmgIRAivkAKCBvrCYYappTtNuEhgfMytE3+dXhACeNgQ3 aPPQVmrBfBI3jHRXP+dxxKs= =laZH -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

The FAA is not doing anything to students. You mean the RIAA. To find out what the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) is .. check out this site.. http://www.faa.gov/ - Ben On May 14, 2007, at 8:53 PM, tino perez wrote:

FAA sue universities students, M$ going after few lines of codes in my computer. please ... my dear Americans, get a hold of your lawyers!

M$ is about to get stump in the head... tamate tamate!

...

Both articles are interesting and relevant in terms of the American Marketplace as being the largest in the world. I would view this article as an analysis intended to keep investors and shareholders on board, and the business equivalent to the Haka(*) before the big (rugby) game. bla bla bla (*) The maori haka is a ritual hurling of abuse and threats before getting down to the serious business of mutual brain bashing... used by the All Blacks in Rugby Union for much the same purpose... [NZ members of the list may wish to elaborate]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with SUSE - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFGSCvMasN0sSnLmgIRAvlwAJ9hHgBNuUtkkX2aHPqfFYX5x8I5CwCg3zt1 HIpTWtUBzhJjADKG9Ldkx80= =Wu4N -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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-- "We should forgive our enemies. But not before they are hanged." Heinrich Heine -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Monday 14 May 2007 11:44, James Knott wrote:

...

...

http://weblog.infoworld.com/openresource/archives/2007/05/making_se nse_of.html

The comment I like is:

"Of course, the funniest thing in all this is the alleged violation of the "garbage in, garbage out" rule. Microsoft, whose software is notoriously buggy, believes that the open soure community has somehow stolen that buggy code...and made much less buggy products out of it:

It's not well reasoned, though, is it? First of all, the claim is that patents were infringed upon, not that source code was stolen. Patents describe concepts. Code is a reduction to practice. Bugs are introduced in the reduction to practice, while they're not an aspect of the essential concept. If Microsoft's implementation of these putatively misappropriated concepts is truly more bug-laden that those constituting the supposedly infringing open-source code, it only indicates that the practitioners at Microsoft (management included) are less skilled than those in the open-source community. That, or the open-source development model does yield better quality owing to wider analysis ("more eyeballs") and better feedback, including solutions and improvements contributed from outside the project's core development team. I'm inclined to believe both are true, though probably it's more the latter than the former--that is, open-source development intrinsically embodies the potential to produce better quality results than does a closed process.

...

Randall Schulz -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org