Those who can compete, do. Those who can't, sue
It's an old adage, originally applied to the teaching profession ("those who can't, teach"), but it's probably more appropriate to the software world. I'm a wee bit tired by patent FUD and other substitutes for real competition from Microsoft. Microsoft has built a great business on comparatively good products. Yet in its old age, it seems incapable of competing on customer value and instead keeps fetishing its patent portfolio, as if anyone but its lawyers care about those.
If Microsoft wants to compete in the 21st Century, it's going to have to build 21st Century value. Patents and copyright don't provide that value. They hardly even demonstrate it.
Sharepoint is a good start. While it may have started as a way to preserve its 20th Century monopoly, it actually provides quiet a bit of value. Kudos to Microsoft for that.
The XBox is also a good start, though Microsoft can't seem to make real money (meaning, profit) from it.
Beyond these, the future looks bleak for Microsoft. It has consistently underperformed whenever it steps outside its Windows/Office comfort zones, which is perhaps why it continues to turn to the one thing that requires little talent but lots of monetary heft: litigation.
I want the old Microsoft back. The company that thought its products were better, even when they weren't. The company that would compete tooth and nail to demonstrate superior customer value (even when it didn't have it). A real competitor, in other words. A competitor to a wide range of products, not to an array of legal services.
These days Microsoft looks more like Baker & McKenzie LLP than it does a software company. This must be embarrassing to competitors like Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates, who hate to lose and have built a business on solving customer problems. It must be galling to feel that the only real value they provide to customers these days is to bill in 15-minute increments instead of six-minute increments.
Microsoft needs to return to its roots as a software company, and not as a boutique litigation firm specializing in patent terrorism. It should consider new ways of delivering software (SaaS and open source), delivery mechanisms that will challenge its foundations but provide new sources of growth and innovation (as Sun is discovering).
In short, Microsoft needs to look forward to its future, rather than trying to horde its past. There's a lot more money in the future than in the past.
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
Microsoft continues to compete effectively. Windows Vista and Microsoft Office are more powerful and easier to use than Linux and Open Office, and they are used by fifty times more people than their open-source competitors.
Completely apart from that whole discussion, it's certainly true that open-source software uses technology that Microsoft has patented. There are, for example, Microsoft patents covering the NTFS filesystem, as well as open-source implementations of NTFS.
It's easy to build an informal list of the potential infringements; after all, some of the biggest open-source projects are imitations of commercial products. Over time, Microsoft will likely identify more of the patents it believes are being infringed by Linux and other open-source software.
Not all of the infringed patents are valid, of course, but some of them certainly are. Microsoft alone has more people doing more fundamental research than the entire open-source community combined.
It's just grossly irresponsible of you to smear all this together to form such a ridiculous argument. In essence, you're saying that because Microsoft is threatening to sue, therefore its products must be non-competitive.
That kind of weak-minded reasoning may score points from open-source fundamentalists, but it doesn't impress me.
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http://speedsnfeeds.com/
First of all let me say that I work with Windows and with some Office products (Luckily I have found in LyX an amazing replacement for Microsoft Word. I say "luckily" beacuse with LyX I have control over my documents and the editor, and not the other way around.).
Let me also say that Microsoft has done an amazing job in making computers accessible to everybody. No one can negate that.
Now let's go to the point. Your logic has allowed you to infer that Matt's message was: "Microsoft is threatening to sue, therefore its products must be non-competitive". Interesting logic! According to my own logic he tries to say this: "Microsoft has done a reasonable good job so far. It should continue doing that and stop competitors with its better products, rather than crying on court".
You say that open-source software uses technology that Microsoft has patented. And I say... possibly! But what about the concept of desktop in Windows? Is that an original idea from Microsoft or from Apple? Sorry, what did you say? Aplle? Right! (Well, possibly Aplle got also influenced by the Xerox Star's desktop). And what do you say about the new Windows Vista desktop? Don't you think it resembles the functionality of Mac OS Tiger? Looking at may officemate's Mac I would say so.
We could mention many other aspects of Windows that are a copy of other systems, but that is not the point here. The point for me is that stupid patents such as those Microsoft is claiming do not contribute to the advance of technology and our society. I would applaud if Microsoft, which "alone has more people doing more fundamental research than the entire open-source community combined", employs its fundamental research to develop cutting-edge products and technology, instead of patenting the way rain drops fall.
Cheers!
Good luck!
previous human experience.
An invention needs only one element which wasn't previously recognized.
You're using this term "prior art" in a way completely contrary to its actual
meaning. The term simply refers to the state of the relevant technical field
before the invention. Inventors disclose prior art on their patent applications
all the time.
What you're thinking of here is more properly called "anticipatory prior art" or
"disqualifying prior art"-- that is, prior art which shows the invention isn't
new.
The fact is that NO patent is granted when the examiner is aware of
anticipatory prior art. When the examiner discovers anticipatory prior art, the
patent application has to be revised or abandoned.
So to answer the question the way you should have asked it-- every newly
issued patent is not based on anticipatory prior art.
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- Response to Peter's comment.
- by Antipeko October 16, 2007 4:08 AM PDT
- First of all let me say that I work with Windows and with some Office products (Luckily I have found in LyX an amazing replacement for Microsoft Word. I say "luckily" beacuse with LyX I have control over my documents and the editor, and not the other way around.).
- Reply to this comment
-
-
- Sloppy, sloppy
- by Peter N. Glaskowsky October 18, 2007 4:13 PM PDT
- Asay presents the either-or case several times: in the headline, in the first
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(6 Comments)Let me also say that Microsoft has done an amazing job in making computers accessible to everybody. No one can negate that.
Now let's go to the point. Your logic has allowed you to infer that Matt's message was: "Microsoft is threatening to sue, therefore its products must be non-competitive". Interesting logic! According to my own logic he tries to say this: "Microsoft has done a reasonable good job so far. It should continue doing that and stop competitors with its better products, rather than crying on court".
You say that open-source software uses technology that Microsoft has patented. And I say... possibly! But what about the concept of desktop in Windows? Is that an original idea from Microsoft or from Apple? Sorry, what did you say? Aplle? Right! (Well, possibly Aplle got also influenced by the Xerox Star's desktop). And what do you say about the new Windows Vista desktop? Don't you think it resembles the functionality of Mac OS Tiger? Looking at may officemate's Mac I would say so.
We could mention many other aspects of Windows that are a copy of other systems, but that is not the point here. The point for me is that stupid patents such as those Microsoft is claiming do not contribute to the advance of technology and our society. I would applaud if Microsoft, which "alone has more people doing more fundamental research than the entire open-source community combined", employs its fundamental research to develop cutting-edge products and technology, instead of patenting the way raindrops fall.
Cheers!
paragraph (with the use of the word "instead" rather than something like
"also"), and right on through to the last paragraph ("rather than").
And c'mon, are you really saying that because Microsoft has sometimes
copied what other companies do, it must not be making original
contributions itself? You yourself are using this "instead of" style of argument,
and it's just sloppy.
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