http://www.orangutan.org.au/index.php?id=313

The total budget for the first year of the project was: AUD $80,426

Having said that I don’t want to sound negative. It’s clearly great news & a clear endorsement for the value of FLOSS (another interesting piece of recent news ratifying FLOSS: http://www.cchit.org/certified/2006/WorldVistA+EHR.htm )

Ergo: any anti-OS patent lawsuits are actually frivolous in the long term.

If you’re as big as MS
& you ain’t defining the game
(i.e. just squabbling with the rest of the players..),
…then you ain’t got game.

ok. I’m monologuing here.best I shut up.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=436&tag=nl.e622

If they want to assert that patents are being infringed – why don’t they just list which patents are being infringed…?
I mean, what do they have to hide? Why do they have to use these tactics..?

Hm just like Goliath. Using size, muscle & scare tactics.
It’ll be their nemesis, if they don’t heed the warnings.

Why don’t the adopt a different approach…??
Try some REAL innovation… to take them to the next level.
Own The Game ….by redefining it…
Now that’d be something to watch ;-}

(p.s. in the 90’s when Netscape was a real threat to fledgling IE…
Paul Maritz… one of Bill’s inner-20 circle – Microsoft’s VP of strategy at the time…
maths & strat genius, ex-Michaelhouse lad…
had the bizarre notion of giving away IE for free.
Blow me down.
It worked…It made Netscape a non-player & IE became pervasive….

MS need that kind of thinking to pull them out the mire
they’re getting themselves into with bullying tactics..
Redefine their revenue streams & how they realise value for their clients & charge for it…
They’re stuck in 90’s license fee thinking…but that’s Ballmer for you.

But you just never know.

Who would have predicted that Google would outstrip MS in market value, when they were a start-up in the late 90’s ?
Or the whole apple music monopoly via i-pod & i-tunes ?
Or that Thawte would be challenge enough to Verisign for them to buy it…
OpenSource might be more of a David
to Microsoft’s Goliath
than many realise at this juncture…

Redmond has been wrong & almost wrong before..
(they almost let Netscape get a hold on the Explorer market…
They should’ve owned the Search engine market – but Google does etc
They’re not getting into the latest technologies either…

If you consider MS’s position:
1.Many of the great innovative minds who built MS to what it is, have cashed in their share options & are now happily retired from operational involvement..
2.MS now have an established position to defend…without the strategic intellectual engines they had before.
3.Their market proposition is becoming increasingly commoditised…
Previously they sat in the star quadrant : the held perceived intrinsic value-add + a volume “corporate” market to farm…
The market would palate their extortionate pricing..

But now they’re being pushed into the commoditised market (by alternatives such as OS, Linux etc) :
their intrinsic value add is being increasingly questioned…
& their volume corporate market is balking at their high margins on licensing..

Inevitably, they’ll slip up again & not respond appropriately to market forces.
Options like uBuntu must be ready for when they do…

“What’s fair is fair,” Ballmer told Fortune.
“We live in a world where we honor, and support the honoring of, intellectual property.”

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-6183437.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=zdnn

That’s incredibly rich given Microsoft’s legacy of trampling over other people’s IP
as & when they please…
Since when was Microsoft a “fair & honorable” company ?
Or do they assume that moniker only when it suits them…?

Hm they must be worried about the OS threat..
to start asserting patents in this way.

What’s next? Here’s an idea: Linux compatibility logos. A little penguin on boxes of hardware products or peripherals that signifies that an open source driver is in the kernel. MacOS has a Mac logo, Windows has their own.

I can see how such a scheme could cover its own costs by charging minor administration fees — but it will require a fair amount of resources to institute. It is a difficult task that will require a bit of ‘weight’ behind it to get it off the ground. It appears that Canonical and Ubuntu – with the support of Dell – have that weight. I’d love to see such a scheme take off. Once it gained traction, it would benefit the community in more ways than one…