February 02, 2005
Patents as WMD's

From Good Morning Silicon Valley:

During a panel discussion at the OSDL Linux Summit, Linux founder Linus Torvalds; Brian Behlendorf, a co-founder of the Apache Web server software; and Mitch Kapor, chairman of the Mozilla Foundation and the Open Source Applications Foundation, spoke out against software patents. "Are software patents useful," asked Torvalds. "That's pretty clearly not the case. Software patents are clearly a problem." Kapor and Behlendorf both echoed Torvalds' criticism, Kapor by posing a particularly disturbing scenario in which Microsoft, to defend its market share, is eventually driven to launch wide-ranging patent lawsuits. "We have to be concerned about ... the use of patent WMDs. That will be the last stand of Microsoft," Kapor said. "If totally pushed to the wall -- because their business model no longer holds up in an era in which open-source is an economically superior way to produce software, and the customers understand it, and it's cheaper and more robust, and you've got the last monopolist standing -- of course they're going to unleash the WMDs. How can they not?"
Link Posted by mitch@osafoundation.org at February 02, 2005 12:29 PM
Comments

I think laying the blame squarely at Microsoft's feet is a bit unfair. A lot of companies threatened by open source software will use Patent WMDs.


Posted by: blaze [TypeKey Profile Page] at February 2, 2005 04:04 PM

I didn't say others wouldn't use patent litigation (they have and will), just that I thought MS would if no other alternatives were left to them. This may be harsh, but I don't think it's unfair.

Strong criticism of MS is fair if it's in proportion to the damage done, but not if it's personal sour grapes.

Posted by: mitch@kapor.com [TypeKey Profile Page] at February 2, 2005 04:57 PM

Mitch, you are a big supporter of open source, but do you think you would reach the same position you are in today (in terms of money and credibility) if you were starting now in the software business embracing the open source model?

I do not mean to be antagonistic, I am truly curious of what your opinion is about this. I am sure this is a question people ask you a lot, and maybe you have written about this already.

Posted by: ianm [TypeKey Profile Page] at February 3, 2005 08:56 AM

My point was, and I guess I should have made it more clear, is that people tend to use the public hatred of Microsoft as a way to 'win their arguments'.

Ie:

1 Microsoft is evil
2 Therefore, everything Microsoft does is evil
3 Microsoft will do A
4 Therefore, A is evil

Unfortunately, conclusion/assumption 2 is terribly illogical.

Posted by: blaze [TypeKey Profile Page] at February 3, 2005 04:37 PM

Next time, try replacing Microsoft with "smallbusiness.com" when you talk.

Eg: "smallbusiness.com may threaten to sue an open source project because it's going out of business due to all this free software"

See how that sounds.

Posted by: blaze [TypeKey Profile Page] at February 3, 2005 04:40 PM