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If you ask the right group of people, you’ll learn that Microsoft hates a lot of things: puppies, rainbows, free market economics, you name it. I don’t tend to believe these rumors because well, these same people would say similar things about Apple had their 5th grade birthday present been an Compaq instead of a iMac.

What I do believe is that Microsoft hates open source. Here’s why.

As a large, multinational corporation with tens of billions of dollars sitting in its coffers (which it only releases a tiny share of back to stockholders), Microsoft has the ability to file patents on just about every thought that passes through its collective mind. Not only do they have the means, but they also have the inclination.

Cue, Steve Ballmer.

Upon reviewing some of its loosely defined patents and brainstorming on how to get through flagging trends in its market positioning, Microsoft has decided to go after Opensource. It claims that Linux and many of its surrounding software offerings violate over 200 of its patents. It’s the Web 2.0 version of the Salem Witch Trials, with Steve Ballmer watching the pyre.

Now, it’s time to choose sides.

Microsoft

Believes that FOSS violates its patents, which in some ways may be true. However, one has to realize that all that is required to gain a patent is for the overworked patent office not to be able to find “prior art” relating to your idea. That idea can be almost anything these days, take this gem from a Scientific America article.

Training manuals. Using training manuals in education is routine. But the technique in this 1998 patent merely describes how an experienced person can teach a novice by using an illustrated publication, such as a training manual. “The technique is so common as to be something that probably isn’t written about because it’s too trivial,” Aharonian observes. The practice of patenting such basic business methods has increasingly come under fire. (U.S.: 5,851,117: “Building Block Training Systems and Training Methods”; Keith A. Alsheimer and others.)

AIG, Walmart, Goldman Sachs oh my!

These are some of the largest consumers of FOSS and the people who have the most to lose from having their free software suddenly straggled in litigation. Unfortunately, they are also the least inclined to take any real stance against a company like Microsoft. Expect them to sit idly on the sidelines until this entire sad mess blows over.

FOSS

Led by the Free Software Foundation (and its plucky, prophetesque president Richard Stallman) and backed by the likes of Red Hat, IBM, Sony and Phillips. These organizations have a vested interest in keeping free software free and have formed an investigative body, Open Invention Network, to try to bring together a portfolio of patents that might violate Microsoft’s copyrights.

The Defense

Eben Moglen, legal counsel for the Free Software Foundation sums up the defense of FOSS as such:

software is a mathematical algorithm and, as such, not patentable. (The Supreme Court has never expressly ruled on the question.) In any case, the fact that Microsoft might possess many relevant patents doesn’t impress [Moglen]. “Numbers aren’t where the action is,” he says. “The action is in very tight qualitative analysis of individual situations.” Patents can be invalidated in court on numerous grounds, he observes. Others can easily be “invented around.” Still others might be valid, yet not infringed under the particular circumstances.

Whether Microsoft will be able to take down free software is still up in the air, but at the very least this action breaths a little life into a company that has become excruciatingly boring in the last several months.

Web 2.0 Roundup

Why Microsoft will not be sueing FOSS anytime in the near future.

Why Microsoft should not sue FOSS anytime in the near future.

Why Microsoft just might sue FOSS sometime in the near future.