05.18.07
Could the Number of Patents Be Made Up?
It turns out that Microsoft not only refuses to be specific about so-called infridngements which it counted, but it also refuses to say how these were counted. This leads some to wondering if alleged patents violations were ever truly counted. Was anything at all counted properly? Was it possibly bogus? SJVN weighs in and asks “how dumb does Microsoft think we are?”:
You can’t make this stuff up. Top Microsoft blogger Mary Jo Foley asked, “What kinds of tools/processes did Microsoft use to determine which open-source code allegedly infringes on Microsoft’s patents?” Their answer: “No further details are available at this time.”
Does this remind you of anything? Other than SCO, there is another analogy which Tim O’Reilly, SJVN and even the following blog gleefully mention.
Sen. Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin made a speech in Wheeling, W. Va., in which he said he had a list of 205 names of State Department employees “that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party.”
Is Microsoft playing the same game? Has it taken a lesson from sad history and (yet again) decided to equate us to communists? Of course not. That’s just far-fetched, but it has a certain value of hilarity.
Highlight: Novell was the first to acknowledge that Microsoft FUD tactics had substance. Novell then used anti-Linux FUD to market itself. 
Highlight: Xandros let Microsoft make patent claims and brag about (paid-for) OOXML support. 
Highlight: Linspire's CEO not only fell into Microsoft arms, but he also assisted the company's attack on GNU/Linux. 
Highlight: Microsoft craves pseudo (proprietary) standards and gets its way using proxies and influence which it buys. 
Highlight: The invasion into the open source world is intended to leave Linux companies neglected, due to financial incentives from Microsoft. 
Analysis: Xen, an open source hypervisor, possibly fell victim to Microsoft's aggressive (and stealthy) acquisition-by-proxy strategy.
Larry Cafiero said,
May 18, 2007 at 4:04 am
Roy –
Thanks for mentioning my blog item about Microsoft’s “digital McCarthyism” in your blog.
Far-fetched? Don’t be so sure. The degree of FUD — whether it was by Joe McCarthy and Roy Cohn in the early ’50s with the Red Scare or with the misinformation Microsoft doles out today — is arguably comparable.
We’ll just have to see how this plays out.
Larry Cafiero
http://larrytheopensourceguy.wordpress.com
http://www.opensourcereporter.net