news: Microsoft's Ballmer Threatens Red Hat

[Nick Demou]

καλή κάλυψη στο http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20071008205138925

αποσπάσματα απο τις δηλώσεις του κου Ballmer:
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People who use Red Hat, at least with respect to our intellectual
property, in a sense have an obligation to compensate us

On the other hand, I'd also tell you the following is true. All... I
would love to see all Open Source innovation happen on top of Windows.
So we've done a lot to encourage, for example, the team building, PHP,
the team building, many of the other Open Source components, I'd love
to see those sorts of innovations proceed very successfully on top of
Windows.

Because our battle is not sort of business model to business model.
Our battle is product to product, Windows versus Linux, Office versus
OpenOffice.

The only other thing I would say that is probably germane is, we spend
a lot of money, the rest of the commercial industry spends a lot of
money on R & D. We've spent a lot of money licensing patents, when
people come to us and say, "Hey, this commercial piece of software
violates our patent, our intellectual propery, we'll either get a
court judgment or we'll pay a big check. And we are going to -- I
think it is important that the Open Source products also have an
obligation to participate in the same way in the intellectual property
regime.

That's why we've done the deal we have with Novell, where not only are
we working on technical interoperability between Linux and Windows but
we've also made sure that we could provide the appropriate, for the
appropriate fee Novell customers also get essentially the right to use
our patented intellectual property. And I think it's great the way
Novell stepped up to kind of say intellectual property matters. People
who use Red hat, at least with respect to *our* intellectual property
in a sense have an obligation to eventually compensate us.

There are plenty of other people who may also have intellectual
property. And every time an Eolas comes to Microsoft and says, "Pay
us," I suspect they also would like to eventually go to the Open
Source world.
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κι ως προς το τελευταίο λίγη σάτιρα(?):

Ballmer: There are plenty of other people who may also have
intellectual property. And every time an Eolas comes to Microsoft and
says, "Pay us," we reply "OK, OK, we'll pay, in fact we'll pay double
price if you promise to go after those linux guys also... Oh c'mon it
aint fair to only go after us... Well what about triple price?" and at
that point if they are not convinced I believe I'm excused to through
a chair at them.



-- 
Σεβασμός της ανθρώπινης ζωής και του περιβάλλοντος στην Ελλάδα:
http://news.kathimerini.gr/4dcgi/_w_articles_ell_100007_08/07/2007_233651
http://news.kathimerini.gr/4dcgi/_w_articles_ell_100008_08/07/2007_233650
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