andrew carter

This article in Fortune is scary stuff. Microsoft looks to be taking action on their patent claims. I think this could get very bloody. Microsoft won’t directly go after IBM but once they go after a Red Hat, IBM will step in like they did against SCO. I simply don’t get how Microsoft thinks this can go well for them. It literally is them against every other company out there - HP, IBM, Google, Amazon, Red Hat, Apple, Sony, etc. Also, there are many other large corporations like Walmart and financial companies like Merrill Lynch that are big open source/Linux users.The only good that I can see coming out of this is a Supreme Court decision that dramatically reduces the reach of software patents. Judgements from earlier this year give hope that it could happen. I think Microsoft’s strategy here is to scare customers away from using Linux. It feels like round two of SCO - except that the real instigators are coming out from behind the curtain this time.