Sue Microsoft?
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Last year, members of the community created an Open Source patent pool, where they intend to store patents, trademarks, patent pledges, and other Intellectual Properties (IP).
Should Microsoft and Sun be worried?
A while back, I described the growing signs of the software apocalypse, and
speculated that Gates and McNealy might be preparing for litigious warfare
against their common enemy, Linux. The Open Source community appears to
have created a defensive shield by gathering together their own IP.
It would be categorically insane for OSDL and friends to launch a first
strike against Microsoft and the rapidly setting Sun, but a defensive
counterstrike is both possible and reasonable. As IBM taught us so long ago in
their fight with the Feds, and recently in their fight with SCO, wearing your
enemy down to a nub with a barrage of claims, discovery, motions, and a league
of lawyers is a sound strategy. Death by a thousand paper cuts if you
will.
What should Microsoft and Sun do? You will note that they were not
contributors to the Open Source IP pool, but perhaps they should be. If it
ever comes to a duel between lawyers, it helps to know your enemy, and you tend
to get to know someone you sleep with. Could or should OSDL snub patent
contributions by Sun or Microsoft? Were I running OSDL (and thankfully I’m
not), I’d decline their phone calls much less their software.
The tasty corner case within my demented speculation would be the OSDL
counter suits. What if OSDL held IP that either Microsoft or Sun had
leveraged, however innocently? What if the community could demand an
injunction on all new Windows sales? What if they could extract payment
for every Windows license Microsoft had sold?
If I were Bill Gates, I’d learn how to play nice — damn fast.
