[aklug] Re: Ought to be fun - Microsoft has patented "sudo"

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Jim Gribbin wrote:
> I'm not enough of a lawyer to quite get a handle on everything Groklaw
> was saying about it, but I did also have the impression that they think
> the patent covers sudo itself.
>
> I would have thought "prior art" would have killed the patent on it's
> face, but I've already learned that what looks like prior art to me
> doesn't necessarily qualify as prior art in the minds of the patent
> lawyers.
>
> On Thu, 2009-11-12 at 11:38 -0900, Christopher Howard wrote:
> Jim Gribbin wrote:
>>>> http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20091111094923390
>>>>
>>>> Jim G
>>>>
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> Well, just when I thought no stupidity in the world could surprise me,
> the scumbags at Microsoft pull it off.
>
> But, the important question: are they trying to patent sudo itself, or
> an interface on top of it? These guys seems to be saying they are
> actually trying to patent sudo itself:
>
> http://ubuntulinuxtipstricks.blogspot.com/2007/05/did-microsoft-just-patent-sudo.html
>
> If that is the case, then they will be blown to pieces at the first
> lawsuit, right, since sudo has long been under a BSD-style license?
>

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Well, at least its nice to see Microsoft being creative for a change.
Rather than threatening to sue us for patent violations we never
committed, they'll just threaten to sue us for using products we created
decades ago. How novel.

Sigh... I'm getting tired of all the Linux users I run into online who
think that we should find a "balance" between proprietary software and
FOSS, and that Microsoft is some kind of neutral organization we should
work more closely with.

- --
Christopher Howard
http://indicium.us
http://theologia.indicium.us
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Received on Thu Nov 12 13:37:44 2009