Michael Dolan Dot Com

Tuesday, May 15th, 2007

Jerry Rosenthal of OIN quoted regarding Microsoft’s patent FUD

See Jerry’s quote at the end taken from this MSNBC.com article.

Open-source proponents are frustrated by Microsoft’s repeated allusions to patent violations because “they never say what patents being violated, never make any assertions, never put the evidence out there,” said Larry Augustin, a technology startup investor who launched SourceForge.net, a prominent open-source development site, in 1999.

But Augustin also acknowledged that it’s not in Microsoft’s interest to do so: Open-source programmers could rewrite their code to avoid infringing on specific patents, or the courts could find that Microsoft’s patent isn’t valid.

If Microsoft were to start suing, it could also kick off a patent war on a grand scale. An organization called the Open Innovation Network, funded by IBM Corp., Red Hat Inc. and others, has amassed a vast number of software patents. In the event of a Microsoft lawsuit against open source companies or customers, the OIN would retaliate in kind.

“We believe it’s highly likely that Microsoft would infringe some of our patents,” said Jerry Rosenthal, OIN’s chief executive.