Microsoft Complains About Patents on Linux

Bill Gates's Microsoft complains that open source software violates hundreds of its patents and intends to make open source communities pay to use them.

A Microsoft spokesman confirmed today that the softwares are infringing on about 235 of Microsoft's patents. Linux's kernel violates 42, the graphic user interfaces such as Gnome and KDE break another 65, and OpenOffice infringes on 45.

Microsoft also claims that e-mail programs account for another 15 violations, but the company did not identify any individual patent infringment by the softwares, because that could allow open source developers to challenge the patent or re-program the softwares to circumvent the violations.

Microsoft says that the number of alleged patent infringements indicates the extent of the problem, but Eben Moglen, long time counsel to the Free Software Foundation and former head of the Software Freedom Law Center, disagreed with Microsoft's position.

"Numbers are not where the action is," he said in an interview with Fortune. "The action is in very tight qualitative analysis of individual situations."

Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer has already warned about an upcoming legal battle. "The only real solution that [the free software] folks have to offer is that they first burn down the bridge, and then they burn down the patent system," said Brad Smith, Microsoft's Senior Vice President and General Counsel.

"That to me is not a goal that's likely to be achieved, and not a goal that should be achieved."