stephenbooth's Journal: Chris Pratley attacks OSS and GPL - Software Patents

In his blog Chris Pratley (program manager at Microsoft for Word) has posted an entry discussing Open Source, GPL and Software Patents. Makes interesting, if slightly perverted, reading.

His view on open source seems to be that the big companies getting involved (he doesn't name any but I guess he's talking about Sun, IBM, Novell &c) are taking advantage of the 'hobbyists' for thier own profits. He then goes on to talk about the GPL saying it makes it hard for anyone to own software (not quite how I understand the license).

Finally he goes into somewhat of a tirade about how Microsoft is hurt by patents, claiming that they are often finding that when they develop a new innovation some small company pops up with a patent (which they've never used to develop something) claiming they already have a patent on it and suing Microsoft. That doesn't quite ring true. For one thing, small companies wouldn't have the resources to develop an idea, patent it and then just sit on it in the hope that some company with deep pockets will develop a similar enough product to get a big payout. You'd need to be a big company (like Microsoft) to have the resources to do that. Also, I'd expect that when they applied for a patent themselves the prior art check would through up any competing patents, isn't thgat one of the major features of patents? That there's a publically accessible way of checking if someones already done what you're trying to do. He also seems to be equating the development of an open source product with similar functionality to a Microsoft product (the specific products referred to are OpenOffice.org and Microsoft word) with smashign the window of store during a riot and making off with a 'free' TV.

Stephen