Linux Violates Microsoft's Patents

The Conspiracy Theory:

Linux Violates Microsoft's Patents

The penetration of GNU/Linux had increased and Microsoft just couldn't sit back and see its potential clients move out of its camp. It wanted to make money out of GNU/Linux, and it did!

By Swapnil Bhartiya, assistant editor, EFYTimes.com

Run! Hide! Surrender! That's the reaction Microsoft probably expected from the open source community when, in a high profile interview, Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith and licensing chief Horacio Gutierrez told Fortune magazine that GNU/Linux infringes on at least 235 of its patents. But it seems Microsoft missed the bull's eye not by inches, but by a few feet. And we are still not sure as to what Microsoft wanted to achieve with its shenanigans.

One would doubt that this is something Microsoft had thought of overnight - simply because it's one of those companies that plan strategies far ahead, after analysing market trends. The company might have noticed some trends upsetting its dominance in the global market. Most of its online properties werenot performing well. Hotmail, a name that was once synonymous with email, seemed to be losing ground to Yahoo! And people were not even searching for something called MSN Search in Google, let alone using it. Meanwhile, GNU/Linux was trespassing heavily into its core territory -- the desktop market.

Apart from that, while OpenOffice.org was offering strong competition to Microsoft Office, Google was reshaping the computing world by taking desktop-based applications to a virtual online world, with its Google Docs and other applications.

Linux was dominating the server market, and there was little space for Microsoft to fight that with its closed model when enterprises wanted transparency. Desktop-oriented GNU/ Linux operating systems were getting glossier and more user friendly. And distributions like Ubuntu had started to replace Windows as the preferred OS.

Adding insult to injury, Microsoft's much-hyped Windows Vista turned out to be a jobless prodigal son. IT managers, after looking at the cost of transition, the limited number of device drivers for Vista, the incompatibility of file formats and the restraining issues, had made the decision to not switch to the 'new' thing. The only Vista buyers were those who were getting it preinstalled with new PCs. Even new users had started demanding XP instead of Vista (refer to They Want XP back, published in the June issue of 'i.t.' magazine, page 22). This same pattern was repeated with office suites -- only a few had moved from Office 2003 to Office 2007. In a nutshell, nothing seemed to be working in favour of Microsoft.

''In the time it will probably take your readers to go through this article, Microsoft will have made $500,000 in net profit. It's instructive to note that the majority of that profit comes from its Windows and Office lines of business; not coincidently, the two lines of business most threatened by Linux and OpenOffice.org (also, these are the primary technologies whose intellectual property Microsoft claims are being infringed on). Given the high stakes involved, it's not surprising that Microsoft would take steps to protect its turf,'' says Jim Zemlin, executive director, The Linux Foundation.

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The hidden agenda

The software industry saw a major trend emerge when software patents started getting recognition in the United States. Most companies started piling up stacks of patents. Microsoft picked up the trend, though a little late, and began filing for new patents. In this heap of patents, Microsoft might have seen a very promising revenue generation model -- envisaging that it could make money from the markets it had no direct presence in. The company started signing cross-licensing deals with other companies, en masse. The rule of cross licensing is simple: 'I will pay you for the 10 licences you hold, and you will pay me for the 20 licences I have.' The company that holds greater value in their licences ends up getting royalties for them.

Microsoft, being the company it is, would have been aware that the increasing penetration of GNU/Linux had started burning a hole in its pocket. Red Hat and Novell were enjoying the lion's share of the Linux server market. Microsoft seemed to be getting nothing out of this lucrative market. Also, the corporate open source world was posing direct competition to Microsoft's products. The Redmond giant needed a plan to take on the market. So it did what anyone else would have done -- it started tapping open source companies for cross-licensing deals.

''They want to put a tax on open source -- even though they had nothing to do with its development. Their modus operandi is to seek a fee from every computer user in the world, and they can't imagine someone using a computer without becoming a licensee of Microsoft. It feels like 'free money' to them, so why not? They're only acting in their shareholders' interests, which they are legally required to do,'' says Brian Behlendorf, CTO, CollabNet.

To be continue.........