An article that we mentioned before has just made it into popular national press in South Africa. To quote:

The recent threats made by Microsoft towards the open source software (OSS) community appear to have done little to worry South African OSS companies.

Having dismissed the threats and shown apathy, Red Hat begins to put the finger at the real issue at hand.

Asked about Red Hat's feisty response to Microsoft's claim that it held 235 patents which were infringed by Linux and other free and open source software projects - the Red Hat IP team's response was headlined 'Deploy with confidence' - Webbink said at some point one had to "get in the fight or yield ground to the bully."

[...]

Webbink said the patent rhetoric coming out of Redmond had started going up in volume about three years ago - right at the time when Microsoft started seeing its timeline for releasing Vista pushed back.

That's right! Internal problems are still the cause for the verbal attacks, just as this other little piece confirms.

Ashley Vance had a story on theregister last week about Microsoft's use of an article in Fortune Magazine to communicate a patent threat. Here's his summary paragraph:

It would seem that Microsoft now relies on the likes of Fortune to perform scoldings. The software maker, as you've no doubt heard, placed a terse article with the publication.

[...]

What caught my eye in the comments was a heading "Apologies to Flanders and Swann" which, sadly, did not live up to its billing. The one below it, however, has much to recommend it:

By Carl

Posted Monday 14th May 2007 21:13 GMT

If Linux is using all this patented Mugrosoft code why are they so much better?! Apparently Mugrosoft views Linux as a threat since they would not bother unless there really is a viable business/GPL model for Linux. The sad fact is Mugrosoft is on the way out, Vista is a Blackhole, the security problems are interfering with other software releases. The gaming side of things is notably unprofitable. Visual Studio and C# are not attracting as many developers as python and php unless you count corporate shills onboard for all the freebies. Mugrosoft Server software is apparently working now but with this kind of irresponsible market behavior why would an IT department spend the cash to become dependent on the unwieldy and seemingly abusive Mugrosoft model of programming and corporate bullying?

Some would say that a unanimous vote has shown us that patent infringement -- if valid at all -- was never the real problem. It's just being used as what we have come to know as "scareware".