Some good news for M$FT haters

[skunk]

http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/s...0/daily53.html

"A judge in Texas has stopped Microsoft Corp. from selling copies of its Word software that can open files containing XML because of patent infringement."

[irlandes]

Re: Some good news for M$FT haters

I just read in the last day or two they were turned back on. Does anyone expect MS to have to follow the laws like the rest of us? Sarcasm intended.

[GreyGeek]

Re: Some good news for M$FT haters

You are correct.

Dell and HP contributed "moral support" to Microsoft in Amicus Briefs (Friends of the Court).

The Judge relented. In his eyes it is much better that a small corporation, i4i, continue to suffer financial loss (theft by Microsoft) than a gian multi-national, Microsoft, be held accountable to the law and lose Billions in revenue. He must have been thinking of the children.

[Snowhog]

Re: Some good news for M$FT haters

Oh for the return of the days when it was possible for Samson to slay Goliath.

He must have been thinking of the children.

Yeah, if he conciders his stock portfolios to be his 'children.' :P

[russlar]

Re: Some good news for M$FT haters

Oh for the return of the days when it was possible for Samson to slay Goliath.

He must have been thinking of the children.

Yeah, if he conciders his stock portfolios to be his 'children.' :P

His stock portfolios will benefit his children

[kjjjjshab]

Re: Some good news for M$FT haters

...The Judge relented. ...

If the judge wouldn't in cases like this, you wouldn't have been able to buy a cell phone, or LCD television the past 3 or 4 years due to all the lawsuits... this protects the consumers and is justified, IMO.

[GreyGeek]

Re: Some good news for M$FT haters

Good point, but Microsoft said, after the Judge originally shut down their Office sales, that they COULD remove XML technology from Office and still sell the product.

[kjjjjshab]

Re: Some good news for M$FT haters

Good point, but Microsoft said, after the Judge originally shut down their Office sales, that they COULD remove XML technology from Office and still sell the product.

And I'm sure that Torvalds could have removed the "SCO code" from the kernel and still managed to exist/function... so should he have without a final day in court?

[Ole Juul]

Re: Some good news for M$FT haters

It is interesting that the judge relented. I've read that they have already fixed the problem, and yet if MS doesn't tell the judge that, then it doesn't count. I guess legal decisions are based on the honour system. I wonder if that will come back to haunt them. The judge already gave them a $40 million fine for disrespectful behaviour.

Regarding other companies suffering from this: I don't believe that is a good legal excuse. (They might still get away with it though!) For example, if you are found in possession of stolen goods, the fact that you didn't know, is not a defense - even if someone else stole those goods and then sold them to you. In the end, the loss or gain of profit is not something which, in itself, determines right from wrong. Most people would agree, but in this case it would appear that MS is trying to argue that loss of profit is a different case for, say, bank robbers, than it is for them. Perhaps they are right!. Perhaps we shouldn't even have software patents. Microsoft is the one that calls it "theft" and lets not forget that there weren't any software patents when MS started making their fortune. Now that they have gathered all that ip and are on top, those patents start to become really important to them.

[Snowhog]

Re: Some good news for M$FT haters

Remember also, that Bill Gates got his 'start' by *legally* swindling the developer of DOS! The enter M$ colossus was established upon a foundation of deception and intimidation. And now that they are the 'Goliath' in the OS arena, they wield their clout and claim 'victim status' when ever it suits them. It's amazing just how much 'justice' one can get if you just have BILLIONS of $$$ at your disposal.

[GreyGeek]

Re: Some good news for M$FT haters

Good point, but Microsoft said, after the Judge originally shut down their Office sales, that they COULD remove XML technology from Office and still sell the product.

And I'm sure that Torvalds could have removed the "SCO code" from the kernel and still managed to exist/function... so should he have without a final day in court?

You are "sure"? Just how sure are you, and base on what evidence? O'gara's articles?

Here is one analysis: http://perens.com/SCO/SCOCopiedCode.html

The AT&T code that was subject of this lawsuit survives into SCO's current system. SCO's "pattern analysis team" found this code and correctly concluded that it was similar to code in Linux. But they didn't take the additional step of checking whether or not the code had been released for others to copy legally.

Actually, you don't need a "pattern-analysis team" - you can just type lines of the allegedly copied program text into google.com, and google will show you some of the places where that code has been posted to the net.

It strikes me that SCO would show their best example. This is it?!?!? Hoary old code from 1973 that's been all over the net for three decades and is released under a license that allows the Linux developers to use it with impunity? If this is their best example, they are bound to lose.

SCO's response to this document is It's his word against ours. I'm not, however, asking you to rely on my word. I've presented you with links to the evidence, all of which is available at web sites not under my control. I've never asked you for a non-disclosure agreement. I haven't changed any of my information into unreadable fonts. It would be nice if SCO would operate that way, too.

Oh, the "two NASA rocket scientists" SCO claimed had performed the "pattern analysis"? SCO couldn't produce them in court. The "Millions of lines of SCO code in Linux" in a suitcase? They couldn't produce that either, and a million lines of code wouldn't fit in a suitcase. When they finally presented all that they had to the judge his response was "Is that all you have?"

Before McBride brought his business model to SCO (sue, sue, sue), SCO was a Linux distributor and contributed code to the kernel and several apps: http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=196

And, Torvolds has already responded to accusations that you've made: http://searchenterpriselinux.techtar...913874,00.html

SCO recently essentially blamed you for allowing proprietary Unix code into Linux and for not checking into where the contributed code is coming from. Is the Linux development process flawed? Will it change?

Torvalds: The process is fine and, in fact, the very openness of the process makes a lot of the accusations completely ridiculous. I'll guarantee you that it is a lot more likely that SCO's SVR4 code base contains open-source code than that Linux contains improper SVR4 code. (In fact, the AT&T vs. Berkeley lawsuit years ago showed that SVR4 does contain code taken from the BSD project with the copyright attributions, etc., removed, so I'm on fairly safe ground there!)

And perhaps more importantly, the thing is, the openness makes it easy for suspicious code to be pointed out, and we can go back and look where it really came from. The very fact that SCO doesn't want to point to the code in the open is only another indication of the fact that they know that, when people go back and see where it came from, it will be clear that it wasn't code that SCO had IP rights to in the first place.

These days, SCO has actually named some of the code they are unhappy about, in particular the RCU [read-copy-update] code that IBM made available to Linux. But the thing is, that code was written by IBM, and IBM even holds the patents to it (well, it was Sequent at the time, but they're long since assimilated into IBM).

The point being that the code got into Linux [in] quite legal ways -- from the real IP holder -- and we can point to exactly how it got into Linux and how IBM made not only the code available, but licensed the patents, too, the way the GPL requires. So SCO's case is clearly not about IP.

It appears that SCO's case is about the fact that IBM helped 'the competition' (never mind that SCO was into Linux back then, so it wasn't the competition back then). And SCO is unhappy about the fact that IBM wasn't their exclusive valentine, and that IBM screwed around with other partners after having dated SCO.

Then the is this little matter of SCO stealing GPL code and then claiming it as its own IP. They got caught:
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/...der-sco-notice


Then, there is this little admission: http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Linux-and-O...olate-the-GPL/

A source close to SCO, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told eWEEK that parts of the Linux kernel code were copied into the Unix System V source tree by former or current SCO employees.

That could violate the conditions of the GNU GPL, which states that any amendments to open-source code used in a commercial product must be given back to the community and a copyright notice must be displayed attributable to Linux, he said.

The source, who has seen both the Unix System V source code and the Linux source code and who assisted with a SCO project to bring the two kernels closer together, said that SCO "basically re-implemented the Linux kernel with functions available in the Unix kernel to build what is now known as the Linux Kernel Personality (LKP) in SCO Unix."

The sources "close to SCO"? SCO programmers who contributed to the Linux kernel with the approval of their boss:
http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic....31210111235600

Groklaw has reported before on contributions made to the Linux kernel by Christoph Hellwig while he was a Caldera employee. We have also offered some evidence of contributions by oldSCO employees as well. Alex Rosten decided to do some more digging about the contributions of one kernel coder, Tigran Aivazian.

Tigran contributed code to the kernel, including to SMP, while working at oldSCO, and he informs us he did it with the approval of his superiors there at the company and his boss knew the code would be distributed under the GPL.

This paper is a group effort. Alex's research was shared with others in the Groklaw community, who honed, edited, and added further research. Then the final draft was sent to Tigran himself, so he could correct and/or amplify, which he has done.
...

Can you do what SCO could not? Show stolen SCO that exists in the Linux kernel? Don't forget, the kernel.org website has ALL of the source code for ALL of the kernels that were released. Finding that code should be easy. The Kernel code has ALWAYS been in PUBLIC VIEW from the first day Torvolds started the project.

[Snowhog]

Re: Some good news for M$FT haters

Point, set, and match!

[kjjjjshab]

Re: Some good news for M$FT haters

...Can you do what SCO could not? Show stolen SCO that exists in the Linux kernel? Don't forget, the kernel.org website has ALL of the source code for ALL of the kernels that were released. Finding that code should be easy. The Kernel code has ALWAYS been in PUBLIC VIEW from the first day Torvolds started the project.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. It was just a weak comparison to perhaps help people see things from the other point of view (i.e. SCO being the "small guy" against the big, evil company - IBM/Novell).

I was not trying to argue the merits of their case. It is always good to step back from a subject and see it from a different point angle. Sorry if that was not understood.

But look at all the examples you found as that case was allowed to proceed. Now what if a judge had ruled very early on that Torvalds had to remove the code since it appeared that SCO had a case

And RE the Microsoft ruling, I remember a Jay Leno quote (not sure if he is the originator...) ~"The problem with the judicial system is that you are judged by 12 people that weren't smart enough to get out of jury duty". (Yes, of course it's a civic duty, just a joke to lighten the mood.)

[GreyGeek]

Re: Some good news for M$FT haters

.........

But look at all the examples you found as that case was allowed to proceed. Now what if a judge had ruled very early on that Torvalds had to remove the code since it appeared that SCO had a case

That's the point I made. It NEVER "appeared" that SCO had a case, aside from their own, EVEN YET UNPROVEN claims. Courts do NOT issue injunctions without proof. i4i could point to their code, their copyrights and patents, and then to Office's implementation. SCO could NOT point to any particular code segment which had come from System V (UnixWare) and was found in the Linux kernel, except for the code THEY donated to the Kernel and which was added by their programmers UNDER the GPL. SCO's claims against Linux have evaporated. The reversal in the judge's ruling about the ownership of UnixWare code merely means that a jury gets to decide, IF the person in charge of SCO under chapter 13, decided that SCO can afford the trial, and if the creditors allow such expenditure instead of paying off their claims. The ONLY people making any noise about this in the media are the Linux-haters and MS lovers, and sycophants. THe O'Gara types, MS TE's, etc....

And RE the Microsoft ruling, I remember a Jay Leno quote (not sure if he is the originator...) ~"The problem with the judicial system is that you are judged by 12 people that weren't smart enough to get out of jury duty". (Yes, of course it's a civic duty, just a joke to lighten the mood.)

I remember that! Funny, but true. I had my own consulting business for more than 15 years. Because of my training one aspect of it was criminal ballistic forensics and biological trace analysis. This was before CSI became popular. I was using lasers to track projectile flights, make finger prints and blood spots glow, histological staining, etc... in the homicide cases I investigated 20 years ago. I testified as an expert witness in many cases, and been on the jury in a couple, and made some interesting observations.

First, the lawyer with the most frayed cuffs and collar usually lost. If he had holes in the soles of his shoes his client's conviction was almost a lock-in. These lawyers were, almost without exception, assigned by the judge to represent poor defendents. The lawyer with the custom, expensive suits and shoes, the cultured hair-do, and flashing expensive "looking" rings and tie-pins, etc... almost always won. And, they were usually very good.

Second, in my part of the country, a pool of 36 potential taxpayers are selected from a larger pool from which anyone who could, has found a way out of duty. It may be a civic responsibility but jury duty can economically cripple a juror. In times past defendants were tried, convicted and sentenced, or found not guilty, in a few days, usually less than a week. Now, a juror can be forced to set in the jury box for months while the case plods on in an over-loaded court system. Fifteen bucks a day, or what ever it is today, isn't enough to cover daily living costs and meet the bills, and not every employer can afford to pay full salary or wages for an employee who will be absent for who know how long, while also paying his temp replacement. The attorneys question the jury pool members and each can toss out nine. It's my experience that the rejected jury members are those who have the highest degrees, are most knowledgeable, most read, most current in public affairs, especially if the juror's knowledge or experience is in areas the trial may be concerned with. If anyone with any formal training appears on a jury it is because he had the least education/training of those in the pool.

BTW, the easiest way to get out of jury duty is to have a relationship to the defendant, no matter how distant, or friendship, or workmate, OR, demonstrate that you're well read in the case and have formed an opinion as to the guilt or innocence of the defendant, presenting "facts" you've read about in the case which, in your opinion, prove the guilt or innocence of the defendant beyond a shadow of a doubt, and laywers tricks or judges rulings won't change your mind. The better read you are the more convincing you present your opinion the more likely a lawyer will toss you out of the pool, unless you are among the final 18.

[skunk]

Re: Some good news for M$FT haters

In today's news

"WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court agreed Monday to referee a $290 million dispute between Microsoft Corp. and a Canadian technology company over complaints that a tool used in the popular Microsoft Word program violated patent protections.

The high court on Monday agreed to hear an appeal from the Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft, which wants the multimillion dollar judgment against it erased.

Toronto-based i4i sued Microsoft in 2007, saying it owned the technology behind a tool used in Microsoft Word. The technology in question gave Word 2003 and Word 2007 users an improved way to edit XML, which is computer code that tells the program how to interpret and display a document's contents.

The lower courts say Microsoft willfully infringed on the patent, and ordered the world's largest software maker to pay i4i $290 million and stop selling versions of Word containing the infringing technology.

Microsoft now sells versions of Word that do not contain the technology in question.

Microsoft executive David Howard said the company is glad the justices decided to hear their appeal.

"It's a clear affirmation that the issues raised in this case are critical to the integrity of our patent system," Howard said. "We look forward to presenting our case to the Supreme Court."

Chief Justice John Roberts did not take part in the consideration or the decision in this case. He reported owning between $100,000-$250,000 worth of Microsoft stock in 2009 on his annual disclosure report."