[ Thanks to Glyn
Moody for this link. ]
“Some companies, used to these kind of games, will
simply cross-license stuff if they have a big enough portfolio of
similarly obvious patents. Others will just cough up some dosh to
get Microsoft off their backs. But amidst all these conventional
players, there is one very unconventional one: Linux, in its
various mobile incarnations.“Taking legal action against *all* companies producing software
stacks for smartphones would allow Microsoft to claim with some
semblance of plausibility that it was not specifically targeting
Linux this time (unlike its previous sabre-rattling statements
about patent infringement that were specifically aimed at Linux).
But the net effect would be that Linux would be the chief victim of
such an approach, since any companies using it in their smartphones
are likely to end up doing deals with Microsoft – and hence
implicitly accepting its claims – whatever the open source
community might think or want. It would be like Novell’s pact with
Microsoft, writ large and much worse.”