A Sáb, 2004-05-15 às 00:27, Niall Douglas escreveu:
On 14 May 2004 at 23:39, João Miguel Neves wrote: The key battleground where software patents have and will continue to be used at their ugliest will be the US. There is crucial to all computer technology worldwide. If they could freeze Linux like AT&T did to BSD, it's all that would be needed.
I'm working in a way to solve that problem. It's strange, but possible... It's just too soon for details.
However I don't think MS will choose to deploy this unless times get desperate. Bill knows it's better to get as many as possible onto proprietary managed code as he kills a few extra birds with the same stone too (eg; buffer overruns :) and Java). And Linux doesn't interrupt his core market which is home & commercial desktops. He should be far more concerned about OpenOffice than Linux.
I'm not that sure about patent attacks from MS. They hired Phelps last year (the guy who set up IBM's patent extortion business) and they just cleaned up several litigation cases with over 3 000 million dollars in the last weeks. According to a portuguese MS employee, they aren't downsizing the litigation department.
Well, you probably can understand what I'm expecting from Redmond in the next months.