Business as usual
I don’t get all the outrage about the recent Amazon-Microsoft patent cross-licensing deal. It’s 100% business as usual for both of the companies involved.
Amazon.com
Amazon is a proud champion of such innovative patents as one-click buying , and consumer reviews, both sterling examples of something not in anyway whatsoever obvious to a practitioner in the art.
Point is: Amazon.com has never shied away from exploiting software patents. I’m not sure why anyone would expect them to act differently here.
Microsoft.com
Microsoft is just continuing its practice of using patent cross-licensing deals to spread FUD about Linux and Open Source. They are very careful to include “Linux” and “Open Source” explicitly in press releases about the deal:
[The agreement covers] Amazon’s popular e-reading device, Kindle™, which employs both open source and Amazon’s proprietary software components, and Amazon’s use of Linux-based servers.
…
[T]his agreement demonstrates our mutual respect for intellectual property as well as our ability to reach pragmatic solutions to IP issues regardless of whether proprietary or open source software is involved.
Point is: Microsoft doing what it always does: attack Linux and Open Source on whatever front it thinks it can get away with. Right now, they think FUD around patents and so-called “intellectual property” is a winner for them.
Thanks to the traitorous support they receive from “insiders” like Novell they are probably right.
Summary
So yeah, I think Amazon.com is helping Microsoft make the most of FUD attacks against Linux and Open Source here. I also don’t see one thing surprising about that.
Long ass Footnote: Again with ZDNet
I know I’ve been beating on this drum a little bit frequently of late, but check out this inane analysis by Dana Blankenhorn over at ZDNet:
So who, assuming this continues, is the real target? I’d say it would be patent trolls, of whom Microsoft faces a host. The nastiest may be its own former chief technology officer, Nathan Myhrvold.
Um, the whole problem with patent trolls is that they don’t produce anything, so they have nothing to fear from a patent attack – having nothing to attack in the first place. If they did, they wouldn’t be patent trolls. Patent trolls, by definition, have no intention to manufacture or market an actual product. It’s simply not possible that such a cross-licensing deal is targeting patent trolls, because you can’t target them in this way:
Among the common techniques rendered ineffective are [...] going on the offensive with counterclaims that accuse the patent plaintiff of infringing patents owned by the defendant (the mutual threat often leads the parties to arrive at a mutually beneficial cross-licensing arrangement) [...] Patent “pooling” arrangements where many companies collaborate to bring their patented knowledge together to create new products are also inapplicable to patent trolls because they operate outside the system.
Seriously, this is so retarded it’s not even wrong.
It’s further compounded by Mr. Blankenhorn’s link referencing i4i as a patent troll, except i4i had an actual product on the market since 1998 - one might recall the period as a time didn’t see a lot of XML support in Microsoft Word. However, even if you think i4i are “patent trolls”, a cross-licensing deal is no sort of protection whatsoever.
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