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.
