Bad Windows

In the troubled economy of Europe Bill Gates and Microsoft try to make the population more Redmond dependent and in the United States too the Gates Foundation shapes (changes) public library policies

WHAT clearly contributed to financial problems in Greece was Microsoft dependency and outrageous deals with this monopolist. A couple of years ago Bill Gates traveled to Greece in order to ensure that the country stays stuck with Microsoft. We also wrote about Greece in relation to software patents and in relation to OOXML. Microsoft clearly knows which politicians to exploit there.

Read more at Techrights

For years, decades, the big companies didn’t tend to wage patent wars on each other. The reason is simple. Major patent holders don’t tend to target other major patent holders because of MAD (mutually assured destruction). Or, in other words, if you sue me, I sue you, and we can both burn potentially hundreds of millions per year in legal costs just to conduct a business fight. Well that was the case until Oracle went after Google and now Allen is suing the world.

OK, well maybe not the world, but his company, Interval Licensing, is suing AOL, Apple, eBay, Facebook, Google, Netflix, Office Depot, OfficeMax, Staples, Yahoo and YouTube for violating one or more of four patents.

Read more at IT World

So, do you hate software patents yet, now that you’ve read about Paul Allen’s patent infringement lawsuit against the world and his dog?

I think it ought to inspire you, reading Allen’s complaint [PDF], that it might get you to the tipping point, or at least help you to understand why most engineers do hate software patents, because they are a drain on the economy and a hindrance to innovation. So we did Allen’s complaint as text, sort of as Exhibit A, shall we say, illustrating the point.

But if you can figure out precisely what this litigation is about from this complaint, what the defendants are alleged to have done wrong, you are doing better than I am. It’s unbelievably vague.

So are the patents. What is it that these patents do? What’s the process or method? I mean, “Alerting Users to Items of Current Interest”, a patent on a system for recommending things that might interest you based on your interest in something else? How’s this for prior art? When I go to the local hamburger joint, they ask me if I want fries with my burger.

What? It’s patent-worthy if the computer asks instead of a human?

Read more at Groklaw

I’ve upgraded old XP PCs to Windows 7 and I’ve bought new PCs equipped with Windows 7. Either way I’ve found that it’s not cheap. Now, Gartner, the research company, has worked out just how expensive upgrading to Windows 7 can be for enterprises. In one word, moving to Windows 7 can be described in one word: “Ow!”

Charles Smulders, Gartner’s managing VP believes that “Corporate IT departments typically prefer to migrate PC operating systems (OSs) via hardware attrition, which means bringing in the new OS as they replace hardware through a normal refresh cycle. Microsoft will support Windows XP for four more years. With most migrations not starting until the fourth quarter of 2010 at the earliest, and PC hardware replacement cycles typically running at four to five years, most organizations will not be able to migrate to Windows 7 through usual planned hardware refresh before support for Windows XP ends.”

Read more at IT World

Former Microsoft executive and billionaire Paul Allen sued several major Internet companies and three large retailers for patent infringement today, asserting that four patents originating at Interval Research, Allen’s dot-com era think tank, cover basic web browsing and e-commerce technologies.

The lawsuit [PDF] was filed by Interval Licensing LLC, a patent-holding company owned by Allen, and names eleven companies as defendants: AOL, Apple, eBay, Facebook, Google, Netflix, Office Depot, OfficeMax, Staples, Yahoo, and YouTube.

Interval Research was founded in 1992. It closed its doors in 2000, but the lawsuit is necessary to monetize the investment that Allen made in the organization, said David Postman, a spokesman for Allen.

Read more at The Prior Art

Warnings:

* This article represents my point of view. You may think whatever you want.
* My native language it is not English.

Last April (April-29-2010) there was a local event in Ecuador organized by AESoft, the Ecuadorian Software association. This event was names “Integrated Technologies” and was sponsored by Microsoft, CodePlex, Port25 and The Apache Foundation.

On this conference Microsoft sent a message saying that they are Open Source friendly and they support Open Source development. I saw this even as a Microsoft response of the growing “Free Software” (as in Freedom) movement here in Ecuador. So Microsoft tried to convince the audience that they care about Open Source and there are a lot of OSS software they promote.

Read more at Martin Iturbide

Everyone in the Linux world remembers Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s famous comment that Linux is a “cancer” that threatened Microsoft’s intellectual property.

Ballmer is still CEO of Microsoft, but that comment occurred in 2001, a lifetime ago in the technology market. While Microsoft hasn’t formally rescinded its declaration that Linux violates its patents, at least one Microsoft executive admits that the company’s earlier battle stance was a mistake. Microsoft wants the world to understand, whatever its issues with Linux, it no longer has any gripe toward open source.
In 2010 Microsoft is trying hard not to be public enemy No. 1 to open source proponents, in some cases by making key contributions to open source code and in other cases by making Microsoft products interoperable with open source software.

Read more at NetworkWorld