[nzlug] Brett Roberts responds re Novell/Microsoft

[Vik Olliver]

On Wed, 2006-11-22 at 23:36 +1300, Peter Harrison wrote:
> Here is a email question and answer interview with a Brett Roberts,
> Director of Innovation, Microsoft New Zealand regarding the
> Microsoft/Novell deal:

Yup, sounds like SCO all over again, but with patents.

I believe in the US - presumably where the patents are at their most
significant - there is something called the doctrine of "unclean hands".
As I understand it, if you behave as SCO has and say that someone is
breaking a patent but refuse to specify which one, you are now complicit
in the breaking of that patent by failing to prevent its implementation.

As Steve Balmer has clearly stated that Linux is breaking patents, and
many, many requests for the patent details have been rebuffed, Microsoft
will likely find itself unable to prosecute any patent claims - even
without taking their anti-trust position into account.

I forsee a typical American "celebrity marriage" imploding here,
particularly if the nice people at Novell do something rash - like
implement GPL'd ODF/OpenXML interoperability - or if Microsoft puts
nasties in Vista to prevent SuSE from installing and inter-operating
on/with Vista PCs.

Vik :v)
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"Diplomacy: The art of saying 'Nice doggy' until you can find a stick."

- Wynn Catlin