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Microsoft Patent FUD Appears to be Exactly That

Since I just finished running a day on open source at TDWI, I thought it would be worthwhile to comment on this. It's always hard to tell what's going on when they toss out FUD, but the authors of the study about potential Linux infringements say that Microsoft is misrepresenting their conclusions:

"The point of the study was actually to eliminate the FUD about Linux's alleged legal problems by attaching a quantifiable measure versus the speculation," he said. "And the number we found, to anyone familiar with this issue, is so average as to be boring; almost any piece of software potentially infringes at least that many patents."

This looks like another case of bogus interpretation similar to the Linux TCO study, where they concluded that Linux was ten times more expensive to run than Windows. It's true, when you look at what they compared: an Intel PC running Windows vs. an IBM mainframe running Linux.

Labels: microsoft, open source, patents

Posted by Mark Saturday, May 19, 2007 1:03:00 PM | permalink |