[arch-general] Patent protection

[Peter Lewis]

On Thursday 09 December 2010 11:00:43 Mauro Santos wrote:
> > If Microsoft wants to get you, they will do so anyways, OIN member or
> > not. OIN does not have a patent license for ALL patents that are being
> > sold, and even if they had them, Microsoft has several other trivial
> > patents like the ones on VFAT that can be used to sue everybody.
> > Newsflash: they don't.
> > Remember Google getting sued by Oracle? Both are OIN members, it's just
> > a fact that not all patents owned by Oracle are shared with OIN, so
> > Oracle is free to sue any OIN-member that uses those patents without a
> > license.
> 
> I have to agree that MS isn't going after the small guys, it's not
> profitable. I also have to agree with Ng Oon-Ee that joining may be
> raising the subjective value of the patents.
> 
> However if joining is free and there are no maintenance costs, being
> protected from some patents is better than nothing, even if MS or any
> other party have other patents in their arsenal that can make the small
> guys close the shop if they want to.
> 
> It would be interesting to know what other distros are doing, specially
> the larger ones which might be a target first.

My view would be that we need to reject even the idea of stuff like this. It's 
just FUD, and quite effective FUD at that.

Pete.