Napoleon Courtney's blog

Last week the U.S. Patents Office issued a new patent to Microsoft, patent 7,269,853, it has to with the method for notifying people when a privacy policy has changed and locking them out of their data unless and until they agree to the change. Is this what the future may hold for individuals or companies who are considering buying into the “software as a service” model that so many companies are moving towards. Microsoft and Google and many other software companies want to stop selling software and instead charge you monthly rent.

The open source is hurting to some degree, it's the same problem the mobile phone industry is having. People got accustomed to getting a free phone when they signed up for service, and the phone itself at least in the perception of the consumer had no real value (It was free after all.) when in reality the phone wasn't free, the consumer paid for it on the back end, in the form of a monthly service plan and if they discontinued service, an early disconnect fee. The open source community is having the same perception problem. They perceive free, and therefore the product has no true value.

Red Hat will only sign an interoperability agreement with Microsoft if it is based entirely on open standards, the company's executive vice president of engineering Paul Cormier told vnunet.com.

"Interoperability done on closed APIs isn't interoperability,' Cormier said. 'We'll never do interoperability based on closed APIs.

My sentiments exactly.

Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith told Fortune that open source software violates 235 Microsoft patents, it sent tremors through the tech industry.

It's ironic that Microsoft is making these statements, considering how they benefited from a ruling by the Supreme Court last week that stated U.S. companies could not sue other U.S. companies in U.S. courts for patents infringed upon in other countries. Is Microsoft really going to seek royalties from every company in the world that is using some version of Linux?