MESSAGE
| DATE | 2017-02-09 |
| FROM | Paul Robert Marino
|
| SUBJECT | Re: [Hangout-NYLXS] Microsofts new stratergy to beat linux | | I
|
Well on the surface it doesn't sound like a threat. it initially
sounds like they are just offering the same kind of indemnification as
Red Hat and SuSE on their Enterprise editions. the problem is this
"Microsoft will make available to Azure clients10,000 patents that it
owns with a view towards warding off patent lawsuits for software
which runs on Azure" I would need to look at the original terms to be
about this but it it was written in legal terms like that it means
that their is a potential for open source software to develop things
against these patents and any one not running the software in Azure
may be subject to lawsuits from Microsoft, with out the developer
realizing it.
That said I did read the original press release and what I could off
the site about it. The reports have it way wrong
here is the original press release
https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2017/02/08/protecting-innovation-cloud/#sm.001yvvhrg705epi11112m02z3v3jt
It turns out what they are actually doing is
1) their layers will handle any law suite pertaining to any SAS, PAS,
etc services they offer
2) make it so that your lawyers can see and search their patents in
case you are sued for patent violations involving anything you running
in Azure to defend your self against frivolous patent claims.
You might be asking why the ability to see and searching the patents
is important, well its because it surprisingly very hard to do unless
the company who owns the patent tells you what to look for. You can
not get a copy of a patent from the government without knowing the
exact number of the patent first, you can not request a list of patent
numbers owned by a company from the federal government, and you can
not ask the government for copies of all patents owned by a company
either. The reason why its so hard to see patents is simple but not
necessarily obvious to every one. If someone could easily request all
of the patents owned by General Electric and sell them all in bulk to
a company in China or the North Korean government there by allowing
them to copy all of technology GE has developed or acquired over the
history of the company, it would be a very very very bad thing!!! So
the laws around requesting copies of patents make it purposely
difficult to look them up even though they are public records which
every US citizen technically has the right to see..
By the way this isn't as big a threat as anyone might think the last
big indecent of this kind of thing involved SCO, this is more of a
marketing thing against AWS than any thing else.
Also there is mention of Openstack in this article as a potential
risk. That is also bad reporting Microsoft uses components of
Openstack in Azure and has contributed code to it specifically in
relation to supporting windows Hypervisor hosts. also NASA is pretty
good (and paranoid) about patent coverage essentially you would have a
very hard time suing any one for running Openstack unless you want the
federal government to be a co-defendant. Most people forget that NASA
was the original writer of Openstack and Obama forced them to
opensource it along with all other software developed by the US
government (unless the release of the code had national security
implications so the CIA was mostly excluded as well as things like
targeting software developed by the military) because they were
"developed using taxes and should there for be made available to the
tax payers".
On Thu, Feb 9, 2017 at 10:39 AM, Mancini, Sabin (DFS)
wrote:
> I don't understand how this is a threat to Linux. If possible please explain in layman's terms ?
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: hangout [mailto:hangout-bounces-at-nylxs.com] On Behalf Of Ruben Safir
> Sent: Wednesday, February 08, 2017 8:48 PM
> To: Hangout
> Subject: [Hangout-NYLXS] Microsofts new stratergy to beat linux
>
> Microsoft Azure now offers patent troll IP protection
>
> Cloud
> Microsoft Azure now offers patent troll IP protection
>
> Martin Anderson Wed 8 Feb 2017 4.47pm
> gollum-troll-microsoft-azure
> +11
> Tweet5
> Vote
> Share6
> Share7
> Reddit
> Shares 19
>
> Microsoft Azure will now offer customers protection against patent
> trolling, via Redmond’s considerable collection of 10,000 legal patents.
>
> The practice of patent trolling has become an industry hazard for
> startups in the last fifteen years, with companies forming solely for
> the purpose of exploiting obscure or difficult-to-research patents which
> may overlap with the IP of startups.
>
> As of today, Azure is offering ‘uncapped indemnification coverage’,
> including coverage against open-source implementations of entities such
> as Hadoop, which forms the basis of Azure’s HD Insight product.
>
> According to the release, Microsoft will make available to Azure clients
> 10,000 patents that it owns with a view towards warding off patent
> lawsuits for software which runs on Azure. It is also promising that
> future transfer patents will never result in action against clients who
> take advantage of the scheme.
>
> Microsoft quotes a report from Boston consulting group which estimates a
> 22% rise in IP lawsuits relating to cloud products over the last five
> years in the U.S. alone. It also observes that non-practicing entities
> have increased their spending on cloud patents by 35% over the same
> period of time.
>
> The facility is intended primarily to help technology exponents who may
> have relevant patent cover in their own field of work (such as
> autonomous vehicles) but who could become vulnerable by extending their
> reach into cloud and app-based products.
>
> Microsoft corporate vice president Julia White commented in an
> interview: “They haven’t had years to build up that patent portfolio,”
> and continued, “Cloud innovation is far too important to be stifled by
> lawsuits.”
>
> Compliance website Inside Counsel suggested in 2014 that the
> labyrinthine nursery of academic and research patents which lead to
> cloud innovations has made it easier for trolling companies to pick up
> easy patent properties from cash-strapped universities with a view to
> future exploitation, and that the widespread diffusion of popular
> high-level open-source projects such as OpenStack have left enough
> potential actionable IP vulnerabilities to make speculative litigation
> worthwhile as a new industry standard.
>
> --
> So many immigrant groups have swept through our town
> that Brooklyn, like Atlantis, reaches mythological
> proportions in the mind of the world - RI Safir 1998
> http://www.mrbrklyn.com
>
> DRM is THEFT - We are the STAKEHOLDERS - RI Safir 2002
> http://www.nylxs.com - Leadership Development in Free Software
> http://www2.mrbrklyn.com/resources - Unpublished Archive
> http://www.coinhangout.com - coins!
> http://www.brooklyn-living.com
>
> Being so tracked is for FARM ANIMALS and and extermination camps,
> but incompatible with living as a free human being. -RI Safir 2013
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