Wednesday, 30 May 2007

Proprietary vs Open Source: The Fight Continues

Microsoft can’t make up its mind whether it wants to maintain amicable relationship or an estranged one when it comes to Novell and the open source community. CEO, Steve Ballmer, has again pointed fingers at the Linux community of infringing 235 untested patents...

Microsoft can’t make up its mind whether it wants to maintain amicable relationship or an estranged one when it comes to Novell and the open source community. CEO, Steve Ballmer, has again pointed fingers at the Linux community of infringing 235 untested patents.

"We're discussing the patent issue more directly now in an effort to call attention to the problem and emphasise the importance of a bridge in a world where many customers have mixed technology solutions," adds the spokesperson.

The spokesperson added, "The Free Software Foundation (FSF), a non-profit corporation that supports the free software movement and in particular the GNU project believes there is overlap between our IP portfolio and various Open source software components." He stresses this is supported by a review done by the Open Source Risk Management group (OSRM), indicating areas of IP overlap between major software vendors and open source communities.

Asheesh Raina, principal research analyst for Gartner's Software Group said, "We believe that Microsoft is strengthening its patent portfolio to rectify the exploitation of its Intellectual Property (IP) by technology providers that generate substantial revenue from OSS including Linux."

"Whether or not the real breach has happened needs to be proven in court," added Raina.