Re: Tom Tom and Microsofts Linux patent lock-down ..

[Sermo Malifer]

Hadron wrote:

> Rex Ballard <rex.ballard@gmail.com> writes:
> 
>> On Mar 14, 4:06 pm, Doug Mentohl <doug_ment...@linuxmail.org> wrote:
>>> 'Microsoft's got a long history of licensing its File Allocation
>>> Table/Long File Name (FAT LFN) with companies in the car navigation
>>> space and that have specifically been using Linux and open source'
>>
>> Linux had LFN for FAT back in 1993.   Microsoft didn't introduce it
>> until Windows 95.
> 
> Wrong. NT had it first.
> 
>>
>> Even before that was Sun PCNFS, which had it back in 1988-ish.
>>
>> Pat Volkerding had a fully functional LFN for FAT back in Slackware
>> 1.0, allowing Linux users to use FAT file systems for Linux files.
>>
>> Microsoft seems not to have noticed that there are more than a few
>> similarities between how Linux did it in 1993 and how Microsoft
>> finally did it in 1995.  Keep in mind that Microsoft's code was
>> carefully guarded as trade secret, while the Linux code was published
>> in source code format.  The preponderance of the evidence says that it
>> was Microsoft that stole from Linux, not the other way around.  The
>> patent should be nullified, and the code should be published as Open
>> Source.
>>
>>> 'Microsoft's corporate vice president and deputy general counsel of
>>> intellectual property and licensing Horacio Gutierrez said 18 companies
>>> had signed up, including Kenwood, Alpine, and Pioneer'
>>
>> Just because they agreed to be part of Microsoft's "patent umbrella"
>> which protects them from patent troll whiplash lawyers, doesn't
>> necessarily mean that Microsoft has the right to enforce the patents.
>> Quite the opposite, if the patent application was fraudulent, and
>> failed to mention the pre-existing GPL code, the patent itself could
>> be nullified, or awarded to the prior author.  That's the ugly problem
>> with Software Patents.  Just because you were "first to file" doesn't
>> mean that you have the right to poach other people's work.
>>
>> For most of 30 years, Microsoft has depended on trade secrets,
>> proprietary code, copyright laws and licenses that strictly forbade
>> reverse engineering of code.
> 
> Uh huh.
> 
> So Wine is a figment of our imagination eh Rexx "Kingmaker" Ballard?

What does Wine have to do with anything that Rexx wrote about?