Wired: Bracing for MS Patent Suit Attack

“Hackers like Jeremy Allison would rather pore over source code
than legal documents, but the recent Microsoft antitrust settlement
decision has the Samba leader thinking about lawsuits. Patent
lawsuits.

“The open-source developer fears that, having settled its
long-running antitrust suit, Microsoft will now become more
aggressive in competing with open-source software. And for
Samba–software that allows Windows machines to read files on Linux
servers–as well as other open-source projects that compete with
Microsoft’s products, that may mean dealing with patent
lawsuits.

“‘Now that the government has given the green light to an
aggressive monopoly, the gloves have been taken off and they can do
what they want,’ Allison said…”

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