Microsoft is not an ordinary company. Apparently it is trying to get special treatment from governments by colluding with the oppressive, increasingly-globalised police state (NSA) and selling people out. Recently, Microsoft used an occupied Nokia to attack Android not just with patents but also with antitrust complaints.
Aha! Microsoft. So, it's about *Microsoft's* business model, not any other FairSearch member? Well, maybe Microsoft's little partner, Nokia, but that is the same thing, having trouble competing against Android, and complaining to regulators that it's not fair to distribute Android for free when others have proprietary products that they claim they have to charge for to recoup their investment. That makes this complaint yet another anti-Linux, anti-Open Source, anti-GPL attack from Microsoft, which has a long history of such behavior. It's an attack against the Open Source development model itself. Free distribution is the norm for Open Source. It's also, I believe, part of a coordinated smear campaign against Google. And while FairSearch claims it's not dominated by Microsoft, this complaint demonstrates otherwise.
Florian Mueller, Microsoft’s paid consultant, weighed in on this last Friday. He seems to feel that Microsoft has suffered some kind of injustice.
Unlike Florian, I have litigated at the ITC; although I’m no expert, I do have some familiarity with the process. I can’t agree with his take.
First, some background. At the ITC, Microsoft accused Motorola of infringing 7 patents based on the calendar syncing in some of its Android phones. Microsoft lost on all but one of the patents. But Motorola’s smartphones were held to infringe one patent, U.S. Patent No. 6,370,566, which the Commission found was not invalid.
A competitive strategist at Microsoft has told cloudy partners that competing with Google on price is proving to be commercial suicide, particularly in industries where firms are under financial constraint.
The confession was made at a breakout session at the Worldwide Partner Conference, which Microsoft plainly didn't intend to go any further judging by the "private and confidential" wording heading the webcast.
But while Linux in general may still lack some features available in modern versions of Windows, and vice versa, drawing comparisons between the two operating systems is much more difficult today than it was a decade or two ago. The relationship between Microsoft and Linux has shifted fundamentally since then. Redmond is no longer so deeply at odds with the open source community.