thelinuxlink.net

I'm obviously no fan of Microsoft, but this seems quite ridiculous to me:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6388273.stm

They had already licensed MP3 from Fraunhofer. Looks like Alcatel bought Lucent at least in part to become a patent troll.

Can there be any doubt that open standards have significant advantages, now?

Now would be a great time to get some kick-ass OGG propaganda out there!

"1.5 billion dollars down the drain. I should've used OGG!"

Classic.

Tsuroerusu wrote:Now would be a great time to get some kick-ass OGG propaganda out there!

thats right, fly the ogg flag

I'd love to move to entirely ogg, but I already got bitten in the ass once by drinking the koolaid and moving my entire library to aac a few years ago. Reripping all that content is a real PITA. Also, aside from my computers, nothing I own can deal with the format. Not even my damn 770 - yet, at least.

Realise this about this case:

Microsoft has appealled to the Supreme Court on the validity of this lawsuite.

Basic it stems around weither or not 'software' is a computer componate.

You see in the patent they are fighting against is patent violations that they've done _outside_ the US were US patent law does not apply. Normally they don't have to pay fees in that case. However there is export laws that say that if you ship something physically outside the USA that violates patents you still have to pay for it, even if it's in seperate componates.

With this paticular patent Microsoft can only violate it when it's installed onto a computer since it has something to do with how the software interacts with the hardware. The software by itself or the hardware by itself does not violate the patent.

So since they ship the hardware, then people download the software later, combine it then sell it Microsoft figures they don't violate AT&T's patents.

The answer to weither or not they are right stems around: Is the software on a computer _part_ of the computer or is a seperate things. Does downloading software count the same as physically shipping something?

Microsoft is arguing 'no' software is not a physical thing.

As part of this arguement they are stating that software, by itself, is _not_something_that_is_patentable_.

They are trying to get the supreme court of the USA to invalidate software patents in a very significant way!

1.5 billion dollars in Microsoft money is riding on weither or not software patents are valid...


Because of this the Software Freedom law center is patitioning the court _on_the_side_of_Microsoft_!

In case you don't know Software Freedom Law Center is a originization founded by Eblen Molgen (professor of law and history of law at Columbia University, and primary legal consol for the GPLv2 and GPLv3 licenses for Ricard Stallman) that does Pro-bono legal console for free software authors.

So these guys are hardcore about software freedom and they are doing what they can to help Microsoft defeat AT&T and at the same time win a huge score for Linux and freedom in general.

Very bizzare stuff.

http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS3644018018.html

They do make strange bedfellows, but what's more fun is that Microsoft is complaining about linux violating their patents, while they have much more to lose if they support software patents as shown by this case. Getting rid of software patents would mean that they lose what seems to be their only useful weapon against linux and open source, but it might be of greater worth to them to fight software patents in the long run so they stop getting broadsided by patent trolls.

FWIW, AT&T are far worse than MS in many respects - in the telcom world they are feared and hated about in the same way, too. Remember 22 cent a minute long distance? You can thank AT&T for that. Remember the telco breakup years ago because they and several bells were proven to be acting in a monopolistic fashion? Strange how years later all of the spinnoffs, selloffs and buyouts have all re-merged (reemerged?) again, pretty much like the bad guy in Terminator 2.

Then again, I work for a CLEC, so of course I think that way, right?

Now wait, I read that this was Alcatel/Lucent, a French company. So there's a connection between Alcatel and AT&T, too? I had no idea about that.

I have no love for AT&T, either, though I'm already with Cingular, who is "The New AT&T." Didn't plan on that happening, but might have to switch because of it. I did sell AT&T to businesses for that horrid telemarketing place I worked at, and discovered some serious nastiness going on in the telecommunications industry, though I usually saw the non-AT&T cons and tricks instead of the other way around. Just assumed that AT&T was almost as bad if not worse.

Lucent was part of AT&T. The more electronical/technological stuff.

Lucent was AT&T's equipment manufacturer, was spun off and generally went to crap. It was one of those tech darlings of the 90's that ended up rolling snake eyes.

Alcatel is a french company that does about the same sort of stuff.

They had a merger.

Yeah, I just remember Lucent being spun off from AT&T, making a decent answering machine just before voice mail was starting to become common. After that they pretty much disappeared from the public eye. I hadn't heard that Alcatel had bought Lucent, but now that they have, is there really a direct connection to AT&T in this? Why are we bringing up AT&T if this is happening because of some company that bought a company they spun off, since it doesn't seem like they have much to do with this at the moment.

Because it looks like alcatel-lucent and att are both hitting MS in the wallet.

see here

Ahh, so that was a different court case with AT&T, though it's related to the case with Alcatel/Lucent and Microsoft. Those previous comments make sense to me now. Thanks for that link, Snarkout.

I'm not convinced that Alcatel's intent is to go after anyone but Microsoft. According to these articles, they seem to be linux advocates:

http://linuxdevices.com/news/NS5098545140.html

http://www.linuxworld.com/news/2007/021 ... sh-in.html

http://alllinuxdevices.com/news_story.p ... 7-PL-TP-MV

Having worked for telcos (including "The Evil Empire") for a few years, I can tell you that Lucent (formerly Bell Labs) is not part of a monpolization plot. At least on the wireless side Sprint and Verizon (formerly Bell Atlantic Mobile until a merger with GTE) are the ones using Lucent equipment.

Back to the topic at hand... This may be wishful thinking, but what if Alcatel is doing this in response to the Zune, which applies DRM to every file it touches. A few years ago, Philips successfully sued several companies for calling their DRM-inflicted discs enhanced CDs because they own the patent on CDs. Alcatel could've gone after the Linux distros. They chose Microsoft instead. Could Alcatel possibly see the benefits of of all the great software they have now as an equal trade for usage on MP3?