Bonum Certa Men Certa

Microsoft and Apple Still Intend to Use Software Patents Against GNU/Linux

Paper pile
Make patents, not software



Summary: The latest developments which involve Apple's and Microsoft's agenda, with patents that help marginalise Free software

Apple's anti-Android/Linux lawsuit [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6] is supported by Microsoft [1, 2, 3], which keeps suggesting that that there might be more lawsuits on their way. The proprietary software giants use software patents against the common idealogical enemy, GNU/Linux. The Register says that battle lines are drawn in Apple-Google warfare and Microsoft's booster Brier Dudley says that Microsoft is getting closer to Apple. This is Dudley's second article on this subject this month. "Road map for you," writes Pamela Jones in relation to the latter among his articles, "proprietary closed v. open source, aka old v. new."



Yes, Apple is the old. It insists on primitive devices, as we last showed yesterday. It makes technology that disables rather than enables.

Yesterday we wrote about Apple's "mobile social networking" patent (same post as above) and now we find this:

Google, Apple and Microsoft Target Social Media



[...]

Apple, Google and Microsoft are desperate to find a place in this market and are trying to enhance their social networking position in various ways.


Social networking is important to them also because of AstroTurfing, which both companies (Apple and Microsoft at least) refer to as "evangelism". They are paying outside agencies to have people leave comments in social networks. Apple uses fake hype and fake "leaks" and Microsoft follows these footsteps. We have covered many examples of fake Microsoft "leaks" in recent months.

“Microsoft wanted to become a patent licensing company rather than a software company because the landscape had changed and Microsoft could not quite compete based on cost anymore.”Apple and Microsoft are both pursuing a strategy whereby patents -- not software -- are sold as a product. Microsoft's patent troll Nathan Myhrvold (who receives investments also from Apple) said that "intellectual property is the next software." That's just their vision of the software industry. By "intellectual property" he means software patents, not copyrights. As we showed last week, he continues to extort businesses secretly and Microsoft sells access to its patent portfolio as though "protection money" is merchandise now. We repeatedly warned about this in 2007. Microsoft wanted to become a patent licensing company rather than a software company because the landscape had changed and Microsoft could not quite compete based on cost anymore.

"Google, Microsoft, [and] Yahoo [Are] Granted Similar Patents," argues this article. There is just too much room for overlap in software patents, which makes it a nightmare to write programs (either Free or proprietary).

Three patents granted Tuesday to Google, Microsoft and Yahoo describe how each search engine might take a close look at page addresses, or URLs on dynamic Web sites, which can often include large amounts of information, Bill Slawski tells us.


This whole game is just a matter of throwing money at filing of papers and paying lawyers to claim credit for unclaimed algorithms (never mind prior art, as Microsoft has an internal policy of never looking at patents when implementing something, either).

“Patents are strategy of filing, not inventing.”Seattle's Microsoft boosters are raving about meaningless numbers of patents [1, 2] and use these to glorify their beloved monopolist that uses racketeering [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7] to compete against superior software such as GNU/Linux.

Microsoft's booster Preston Gralla [1, 2] deliberately misleads by equating patents to "invention". There is similar praise from patent lawyers/maximalists at IAM, who are repeating the same tired old myths

Microsoft's entire history is one of taking other people's ideas, shamelessly copying them without admission. Patents are strategy of filing, not inventing.

Here is a biased new poll from Microsoft Nick and the Microsoft fans who read his blog that he runs at the moment (it passes from hand to hand). He asks: "Does Microsoft respect others' intellectual property?" Given the obvious bias of this population of readers over there (Microsoft blog in Seattle), the answers will be meaningless and cannot be extrapolated. If one looks for an example that the Seattle 'press' reports PR and spin, this new example is it [1, 2].

Microsoft is increasingly resorting to patents as a business strategy and this is actually a sign of weakness, meaning the products are not strong enough to stand on their own. Someone should tell David Kappos that his patent system is being used to suppress software development rather than promote any. Here is the next chance to speak to him (New York Law School).

“What do they [Microsoft] care if you can view the code, so long as you have to pay them for the patents?”
      --Pamela Jones, Groklaw
Despite Microsoft's patent war against Free software, IDG's Microsoft-boosting corner keeps spinning it as though Microsoft is playing "nice" with F/OSS. What utter nonsense. Referring to this article which quotes Microsoft's McKee as saying that he feels "strongly that Microsoft's success has been based on the fact that we can run a lot of diverse technologies on the Microsoft platform including open source," Pamela Jones writes in Groklaw: "See? Just like Ballmer said. They want Open Source apps to run on Windows instead of on Linux. It's just a teensy bit evil, in Microsoft usual style.They'll play nice, until they feel they can destroy Linux with patents. What do they care if you can view the code, so long as you have to pay them for the patents?"

The other day we wrote about Microsoft's very active lobby for software patents in Europe. One knowledgeable source tells that "it is interesting that the Irish commissioner continues the pro-patent "saga" of her precedent McCreevy. Luckily from a much powerless DG than Internal Market.

"It seems that the Ireland Gov. continues working for Microsoft as in previous legislature usually."

In relation to Microsoft's announcement about hardware-accelerated HTML5, Jones wrote: "I gather they want to be on the iPhone and iPad. And their definition of "interoperability" is you can use their stuff easier, which matches the goal Steve Ballmer set for "Open Source", that it all run on Windows instead of the Linux kernel."

"I would love to see all open source innovation happen on top of Windows."

--Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO



"It puts the Linux phenomenon and the Unix phenomenon at the top of the list."

--Steve Ballmer

Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

Rejecting 'Snoop-Phones' and Turning "Old" Phones (or Tablets) Into Freedom-Respecting Appliances
Paul Fernhout (pdfernhout.net) wrote back to Akira Urushibatathis this past weekend
Apple is the Company of Dictators and Worse
Apple is just another greedy corporation in search of sweatshops and even pedophiles (especially the high-profile ones)
Counting Unhatched Eggs Is Not Counting Chickens
Everything here will persist as normal
The "Infinite Bread"
The biblical story of Jesus feeding the 5,000 has software parallels
In Many Cases and in Many Different Ways, Technology Became Less Durable and Less Reliable Over Time
The "modern" things are more complex. And complexity is a foe or reliability and repair-ability.
Microsoft's LinkedIn is Losing Money, Traffic, and Hope; Now It Wants to Sell Its Users' Lifeblood (and Data)
Let this be a reminder of what social control media really is about
Microsoft Lunduke: Freedom of Speech Means Spreading What I Have to Say and Banning People I Disagree With
4Chan is one he aims for and he is siccing 4Chan trolls at people he doesn't like
 
More Publishers and Companies Nowadays Say "GNU/Linux", Not "Linux"
It's not to see InstallAware saying GNU/Linux this week
Google News is Now Promoting a Parasitic Slopfarm Called "findarticles.com", Where Plagiarism of "Linux" Articles is Rampant
Does Google even care about the slop epidemic? Google itself is a vendor of slop now (and it calls it "Gemini")
Gemini Links 20/10/2025: Pumpkin Carving, "Hey Hi", and Other Buzzwords
Links for the day
Slopwatch: Google News Promoting Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt (FUD)
What is the value of Google News if so many results in it are fake 'articles?
Our Uptime This Year Was Better Than AWS (Also a Lot Cheaper)
We never used "the cloud"
Amazon Web Shenanigans
An ongoing, experimental endeavour
Death of Elias Diem: FSFE mailing list archives hidden
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 20/10/2025: Louvre Museum Reveals Weakness, About 7 Million Protest US Turning Into Oligarchy/Monarchy
Links for the day
They Should Have Listened to Techrights Over a Month Earlier (Xubuntu Site Compromised)
we reported this issue about 40 days earlier and nobody did anything about it
Richard Stallman to Give Another Talk Today in Bavaria (Bavarian Academy of Science)
Tomorrow at 6 PM he speaks in Munich
Barry Kauler Explains That Puppy Linux and EasyOS Exclude Systemd to Keep Things Simple
Barry Kauler's Puppy Linux is in the community's hands. He now focuses on EasyOS and more.
Half a Year After Brian Fagioli Got Kicked Out of BetaNews for Slop He's Still Doing LLM Slop and Slop Images Targeting 'Linux' (Plagiarising Original Works)
If the Web gets polluted or flooded by slopfarms such as these, and Slashdot then sends traffic so these slopfarms (Slashdot probably doesn't do this intentionally), then real writers with real knowledge of GNU/Linux will lose the spark for publishing
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, October 19, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, October 19, 2025
Campaign of FUD Against Framework Laptops and GNU/Linux (Using Microsoft's Attack on Linux, 'Secure Boot')
Ritual Defamation Cult has turned its attention over to Framework
Liberation From 'The Feed'
They rank things based on the editor's choice/ideology (he or she knows the sponsors, hence the masters)
Microsoft's Killing of Vista 10 Seems to Have Resulted in More Articles About GNU/Linux (But Also FUD)
We not only saw a rise in traffic, we also saw a remarkable rise in the number of articles
Today (a Day Before Richard Stallman Talk at TUM) There's a Patent Propaganda Event at TUM
Perhaps an opportunity for Dr. Stallman to rebut this "invention to patent" nonsense/fantasy (conflating monopolies with innovation)
OpenSource or "Open Source" as a Brand is Dying, Let's Get Back to Talking About Software Freedom
Those of us who actually want to reform the industry and put users in control of their systems/devices will recognise that "Open Source" was selling a lie or got-co-opted by liars
19 Years in Numbers: Techrights' Anniversary Countdown and Retrospective
In 2019 we began improving our workflows and, accordingly/predictably, we became a lot more productive
Slop Turns People Off (LLMs Lack Intelligence, They're Just Plagiarism Powerhouses That Fail to Deliver Any Real, Measurable Value)
"More" (or "MOAR") isn't always better
IBM Red Hat Has Re-calibrated or Adjusted to Bubble Economics, False Promises, and Slop/Plagiarism
This won't end well
Fake Numbers, Fake Claims, Fake Economy, and Media Grifters That Prop Up Fraud
Grifters like The Register MS won't be looked upon kindly after the bubble implodes
For Some, the GNU Web Site is Not Accessible This Week
They seem to have gone into some kind of lock-down mode
Richard Stallman Back at the "Rudolf-Diesel" Hörsal "MW 2001" in About 40 Hours
He spoke there before; there's a very high seating capacity there
Symptoms of Upcoming Microsoft Layoffs in XBox
A crashing franchise
Psychiatrist confession: Germanwings crash & Debian toxic culture recognized before suicides
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gemini Links 19/10/2025: Scentjacking 101, Slop Hype Boosters, and Steam Next Fest
Links for the day
Slopwatch: The Serial Slopper, LinuxSecurity, and Google News
Let's hope slopfarms die as soon as possible
Links 19/10/2025: Cambodia Scam Centres, Slop Hurting Wikipedia Traffic
Links for the day
As Economies Crumble Free as in Beer Will Matter, Not Just Free as in Freedom/Libre (Libertad)
French regions choosing to embrace Software Freedom
25 Years Ago, an Explanation of How Reducing Free Software to 'Apps' Would Interfere With Freedom Goals
there's nothing unreasonable about it
A List of 63 Known Gemini Clients (Software to Browse Geminispace Content With Gemini Protocol)
Not counting browser plugins for Web browsers
Gemini Links 19/10/2025: "Firma Odin Is Transforming" and Bot Attacks While "AFK"
Links for the day
US Government: 6.1% of Site Visitors Use GNU/Linux
GNU/Linux has a considerable share and it is growing
LLM Slop Could Not Rise to Prominence Without Media Complicity and Artificial Hype
Inane garbage disguised as "journalism"
Why the FSF No Longer Recommends Debian, as Explained by Richard Stallman This Month
some weeks ago
All the Latest Half Dozen Articles by Mehedi Hasan (UbuntuPIT) Only Admit at the End That He's Using LLM Slop
Disclosure is OK, but the practice of using slop is not
The 'Modern' Web of Fake Security and Easy Censorship of Whole Domains
Each year it gets worse
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, October 18, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, October 18, 2025