Open source armageddon
And so it begins. Microsoft, in an unholy alliance with once-proud proprietary Novell, has unleashed the hounds. Hundreds of patent claims against Linux have been unleashed by the software Saladin. This isn’t a surprise, and ever since the Microsoft/Novell alliance in Nov. 2006, we have all been waiting for it. Microsoft has had their huge arsenal of patent lawyers on the job since then, filing a flurry of patents with which to sue little free software folks when the time came.
Standing in the way of this onslaught against free software is Richard Stallman and a small band of freedom fighters. As Linux vendors rush to protect themselves from the storm and one by one sign their souls away to Microsoft for protection, Stallman and the Free Software Foundation stand firm for freedom. If you promise to think a little bit he won’t say he told you so.
Stallman’s attorney, Moglen notes that “The free world says that software is the embodiment of knowledge about technology, which needs to be free in the same way that mathematics is free,” he says. “Everybody is allowed to know as much of it as he wants, regardless of whether he can pay for it, and everybody can contribute and everybody can share.”
Comment posted on 5-14-2007
Sounds like a bonanza for the BSD’s