Red Hat Vows To Stand Up To Patent Intimidation

mrcgran writes "Eweek is reporting on Red Hat's assurances that can continue to deploy Linux without fear of legal retribution from Microsoft. This, despite the increasingly vocal threats emanating from Redmond. 'In a scathing response to Ballmer's remarks, Red Hat's IP team said the reality is that the community development approach of free and open-source code represents a healthy development paradigm, which, when viewed from the perspective of pending lawsuits related to intellectual property, is at least as safe as proprietary software. "We are also aware of no patent lawsuit against Linux. Ever. Anywhere," the team said in a blog posting.'"

No Lawsuits against linux is misleading

[goombah99]

No one is likely to sue "linux" since it has no deep pockets. Instead they can sue or threaten to sue companies that use linux or people who re-sell linux. So SCO suing IBM does not apply because they were suing IBM for contributing what they alledge was SCO owned code to Linux. Linux itself was not sued. But SCO also threatened major corporations that were using Linux without an SCO lic.

The latter is the one that matters. If companies can be sued for using linux then they are at risk.

The real question is does the same concept apply to Windows. Windows has be accused of and even lost lawsuits for infringing on other peoples code or patents (Stacker, Eolas, etc...) Indeed they are legendary for this. Now could someone sue a customer of MS or get an injunction against customers using MS software on the basis of the code contianing others IP. MS has said they will indemnify companies, but I doubt that covers lost revenues.

It is also true I beleive that Windows contains a fair amount of LGPL or BSD code inside it. That's legal under those lic. But what if someone, say SCO, were to say that the code in the LGLP lic was theirs? Then If it makes sense to sue users of Linux it would make sense to sue users of MS.

So if GNU is at risk of containing other people's IP then since MS uses GNU they are too.

Re:Quote goes on to say

[darkonc]

SCO may have had nothing, but they sued about everything.

The problem with Microsoft taking the SCO path, however, is that -- when it looks like the suit is about to tank, declaring bankruptcy to avoid the final trial would only result in a charge of mass-murder (when the entire federal bankruptcy court dies laughing).