Big actions coming from the Big Company in a Big way

The big news for court watchers, Microsoft followers, and fans of open source this week appeared on newsstands on Friday and online on Monday.

Underline the appropriate headline “Microsoft takes on the free world,” Roger Parloff describes a scary “tinderbox” of a situation seemingly inevitable and destined to fatten Microsoft further.

What has captured the public imagination is the future legal barrage about to be unleashed by Microsoft: “The Redmond behemoth asserts that one reason that free software is of such high quality is that it violates more than 200 of Microsoft’s patents,” writes Parloff. “And as a mature company facing unfavorable market trends and fearsome competitors like Google, Microsoft is pulling no punches: It wants royalties. If the company gets its way, free software won’t be free anymore.”

For the numbers junkies, the “more than 200” Microsoft patents ostensibly violated in patent referred to above translates as exactly 235. That would be 65 illegal uses of Linux GUI, 45 of Open Office suite, 42 of the Linux kernel, 15 of email, and the final 68 classified under the ever-popular “other.”

Parloff writes a good tale, spinning a yarn featuring the corporate tag team of “dogged” Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and “strawberry-blond Princeton graduate” Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith.

In the opposite corner is “computer visionary with the look and the intransigence of an Old Testament prophet” Richard Matthew Stallman (o boy, did a photo editor at CNN.com do an excellent job in selecting the accompanying picture) and open source’s master legal strategist Eben Moglen, “longtime counsel to the Free Software Foundation,” head of legal counselors the Software Freedom Law Center, Columbia Law School professor and general badass.

Indeed, it is Moglen who seems to come off best in Parloff’s piece; this dude would be one unflappable MF in the courtroom. Writes Parloff: “Moglen contends that software is a mathematical algorithm and, as such, not patentable” and “the fact that Microsoft might possess many relevant patents doesn’t impress him.” Further, “Patents can be invalidated in court on numerous grounds, [Moglen] observes.”

Meanwhile, Ballmer is quoted with the audaciousness and blessed assurance of a no. 1 holding enough power to threaten 235 lawsuits. Ballmer states that “We live in a world where we honor, and support the honoring of, intellectual property” and that FOSS patrons must “play by the same rules as the rest of the business” and finally "What’s fair is fair.” (Giggle.)

Check out “Microsoft takes on the free world” by Roger Parloff. It’s a good one.