question for the blue monster crowd: "who owns the soul of microsoft?"

The little green monster? (jealous of innovative computing)

read the slashdot story about this, MS aren’t going to sue- its just FUD to hamper linux growth in the face of poor Vista sales

If the patent violations are legitimate, I’d say that FOSS would be the jealous party, not Microsoft.
Me personally, I can’t see this going to court. I think it’s posturing on Microsoft’s part to keep the FOSS developers honest in their “innovation” they’re so quick to claim as theirs. I could be wrong and Microsoft wages all out patent war on FOSS developers, but I just don’t see them getting into something that will just turn out bad for the industry as a whole. I’d wager patents held by both sides that claim infringement by the other side would get nullified (not all, of course), so this can’t turn out well for either side.
What do you claim a patent on anyway? The end result or the code used to achieve that end result? It’s an honest question, as I’m fairly clueless on patent rights.

James: “What do you claim a patent on anyway? The end result or the code used to achieve that end result? It’s an honest question, as I’m fairly clueless on patent rights.”
IANAL.
That’s one of the defining quirks in software patents. Patents were originally intended for inventions where there is basically “one way to do it right” and so the patent applied to the entire system… how it’s constructed and what it does. This is why reverse engineering could sometimes be legal (prior to the DMCA) because if you could legitimately find some smarter new way to do it you could produce that. (That’s why we have so many “PC-compatible” machines today… it was relatively easy to reverse engineer without hitting patent issues, and the primary software companies on the platform smartly recognized the benefit in supporting all of the clones…)
Software patents just cover basically the end result (“what it does”) and it does seem genuinely against the original spirit of the thing, but things are complicated (there are many ways to do the same thing in software, for instance).

Thank you WorldMaker. I could understand the specific code being patented, but not the end result. Like you said, there’s probably many ways to achieve the end result and if someone could find a way around the patented code, then it should be alright imho.
Thank god I’m not a coder. Seems like a mess.

It would be hypocrisy to anything but inconsistent. There’s that whole Innocent drinks being piloted by McDonalds debate in the UK, and it’s not so far off Hugh working for Microsoft (although Hugh is far from innoncent). I’ve gone on record as saying that change can only be done by getting outsiders in. I hope MSFT are listening to people like HM for the right reasons and not the wrong ones. Personally I just want an operating system that boots up in under 5 seconds. I guess this makes me really demanding.

Hugh,
thanks for the link.
You’ve summed it up perfectly. In my own dealings with Microsoft I have also observed that there are two very different and often competing agenda’s at play.
One is the “We really are nice guys, please like us” agenda and the other is the “Microsoft is our God, nothing comes before the Microsoft Way. We will prevail!”
If ever there were a company suffering from Multiple Personality Disorder…

Microsoft has no soul. They are evil.

But I must admit I was surprised when I entered MSFT to sign the contract with my blood and to sacrifice virgins every friday 🙂

On Joe Schmoe level, which means all my computer books and software manuals are still in the original shrink wrap. (Thank you, Microsoft for knowing that I hate reading instructions, but making programs easy enough for me to learn.)
I have no real like or dislike regarding Microsoft. I find that for the most part, many (if not all) business seems to have a balance of “good and evil” as they struggle to be successful and keep up with competition.
Not that Microsoft is the devil (or even a monster), you got to give them their due. Right or wrong, good or bad, Microsoft is still a force and definitely in the game that it created.
Microsoft was “good” when they were smaller and younger; now that the company is a bit older and still successful, the public tends to take thehir presence for granted and ignore them. Yes, Mac is shooting for the hip crowd. But, ten years ago, if computers were being traded like school lunches, not too many people would trade for Apple.
It may suit Microsoft show the public that “age and experience is very sexy”…
Why am I getting a mental picture of the cartoon Microsoft Monster with a nice rack? 😉

Ouch!
You’re right. Not helping. Please allow me to try again without ranting.
I’m having a hard time separating the wonderful things the people of Microsoft can achieve (and yes, I believe they can) from the, uh, how shall put it, somewhat not so nice things the corporation Microsoft does with it.
So I fail to see how the Blue Monster thing is going to change the way Microsoft behaves and is perceived, if what I consider fundamental questions about how to use this wonderful potential are brushed aside with a “whatever”. I feel it contradicts big words like “change the world”.
Am I making any sense?

Hugh, no worries, I’ve rarely been enjoying a ‘world changing’ move from a Microsoftie as much as Ballmer’s declaration of total war on Microsoft’s customers, and the reaction that followed it.
I’ve even seen the first lawyers publicly make their rounds to find clients & funding, so it seems that a lot of people right now are realizing that the time for making Microsoft history has come. 😉

Hugh, you say “there are some seriously smart, good people working there who yes, can still change the world for the better”
you may well be right. But the question that the recent court action poses, and the question that the comments on this thread suggests, and the question that even you appear defensive on, is this:
can these people change Microsoft for the better?
Now it might be that Microsoft is great, and people don’t realise it – then ‘all’ MS needs is a good and consistent marketing exercise. But it is a big corporation, and its intended audience (um, almost everyone?) will have perceptions with significant inertia. And thats assuming MSFT can stay on-message all the time – can they aspire to match the impact and values of Apple’s marketing for instance?
Or it might be that Microsoft as a corporation is possessed by a corporate culture that generates external behavior that is jealous of others, patronising to its clients and bullying to those smaller. In which case the external audience’s perceptions are rooted in reality, and the Blue Monster crowd have a problem on their hands.
I spent 15 years working in investment banking (derivatives trading) – full of hugely intelligent, focussed people. Some were great, and really did want to effect positive change from within. What I found fascinating, and somewhat depressing, was the longevity and all-pervasiveness of the corporate culture – different at each of the 3 institutions I worked for, but persistent at each one.
One example I can give : I too tried to change organisations from within, and was a major sponsor of the ‘new’ communication tools of wikis, chat and blogs at the most recent bank that employed me. Huge amounts of my management time and effort went into this, and yet each time I took my foot off the gas, the use of these tools would evaporate. There was a rather obvious lack of overt senior management support for the use and distribution of these tools, and that company is still stuck in the email age.
The way corporate life works is that change needs to come from the top down, as well as the bottom up. Feverish activity in the middle is at risk of being wasted. I think it is a pleasant diversion to dream of a better, fairer worlds, with corporate charters drawn up as a response to Cluetrain manifestoes, but my experience and observation is that it’s just not how it works. Am more than happy to be proved or persuaded otherwise.
sorry for the rant,
Z

“I think you mean to say that the question is moot….”
Yes, yes I did.

I’d say the money-making owns the ‘soul’ of MS and of its leaders. And this pressure comes from those who own the ‘money’. But first you also have to understand what ‘money’ is and who produces it and who has control over its value.

The ‘multiple personality disorder’ theory is interesting because a similar issue is being played out in another company I know very well.
What I’ve discovered is that those who are in power making the big decisions are the ones who set the tone for public perception.
In this sense, whomever thought this was a good idea has blown away a lot of goodwill that MSFT was building among the OSS community. The sad fact is that the good work being done by Hugh, Steve and a ton of other people has evaporated in a moment of lunacy.
What about Ballmer’s ‘developers, developers, developers’ mantra? Sounded good then, sounds lame now.
Couple that to the *threat* of litigation and you have a bully in the park. I don’t know anyone who likes a bully.
Mini-Microsoft will, I’m sure, have something to say about this.
To @ Zakmundo – yep – right on. Needs top down tacit sponsorship but needs to be seen as low risk.
To Hugh – so Blue Monster is open source in your eyes? Nah. It’s perceived as ‘owned’ by MSFT. And as we all know…perception IS reality.
Bottom line – regardless of the merits of either side’s ‘case’ this is a BIG issue that I’m actually glad to see out in the open. Maybe for once we’ll get the question of whether it is possible to defend patented algorithms sorted out once and for all. The industry needs that. And in that sense at least, MSFT has done the industry a HUGE favour. Provided of course it gets litigated.
But if MSFT is using the *threat* as a way of beating up on competitors then shame on the company. Bullying is an absolute no-no in my book.