9.04 is broken for me in some spectacularly stupid and disappointing ways.

-Intel video sucks. Actually come to think of it, this one has probably 3 or 4 sub-issues all on its own
-Brasero doesn't work. Luckily K3B does.
-God awful performance on some Q3 engine based games (8.10 wasn't much better but 8.04 was)
-Right mouse clicks in Firefox randomly do strange things like pick a random item out of the right click menu and select it automatically
-DVD playback is broken despite hours of trying to fix it
-VPNC has a stupidly bizarre bug where it won't let me configure a VPN connection. How this made it out of QA defies explanation.
-Occasionally the computer hangs while the screen is locked.
-Lock screen is taken out of the default CTRL+ALT+DEL menu. Who thought THAT was a good idea?

And these are only the things I've found in a couple of weeks. God only know what other stupid things await me to discover.

In my opinion, 9.04 feel more like a very rough beta at best. To say I'm disappointed with them over this release would be the understatement of the year.

There are people certainly violating Microsoft's IP in areas like Samba

Wrong. Microsoft has worked with the Samba team to get their protocols implemented as required by the European Union stipulation. To try to attack the Samba team over this would essentially spell an end to Microsoft doing business in the EU.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=1064