Microsoft: Linux violates 235 patents

Some of you will recall that shortly after inking a deal with Novell back in November, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer made the cryptic comment that Linux "uses our intellectual property" and ominously suggested that "...we believe every Linux customer basically has an undisclosed balance-sheet liability." Most of us were baffled at the time and though Ballmer was asked to elaborate, he failed to do so. It may be almost half a year later but the company is finally showing its cards, claiming that free and open-source software (FOSS) violates 235 Microsoft patents: Linux kernel (42), Linux GUI (65), Open Office suite (45), email (15), and an additional 68 patents spread across the board.

Are advocates of open-source shaking in their boots? Not quite. Eben Moglen, longtime counsel to the Free Software Foundation and the head of the Software Freedom Law Center, contends that software is a mathematical algorithm and as such, cannot be patented. What's more, he's not intimidated by the number of patents Microsoft claims to hold. "Numbers aren't where the action is," Moglen says. "The action is in very tight qualitative analysis of individual situations." Moglen might prove to be right: given a recent Supreme Court ruling, the upholding of any software patent is something that has been called into question.

So, does Microsoft plan to launch a legal offensive against open-source software? Probably not. It would certainly be a long and messy legal battle for both sides and the company is likely just puffing up its chest in the hopes of brokering a few quick settlements that would boost the bottom line. Fortune magazine compared the legal quagmire to the cold war, insisting that "what keeps the peace is the threat of mutually assured destruction: patent Armageddon--an unending series of suits and countersuits that would hobble the industry and its customers." Let's hope it never comes to that.

For more on the 235 patents:
- see this Fortune article