Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer hints at possibility of Microsoft litigating against Linux

The only obligation Microsoft has is too earn money to there shareholders. I don't anyone wan't another SCO reprise. Well go ahaed then and see your share fall like a rock. Then your shareholders will be sooooo happy (not)

Yeah SCO2 (but 100 times as big) seems a possibility. Vista appears to be in trouble and soon Wall Street will be on their backs. Monopolies always run into strife sooner or later. The bigger they are the harder they fall.

Not to be paranoid but I wonder whether this is why they have been targetting IBM lately?

The strange thing is that IBM is making good money doing software/hardware support. Microsoft could get into that same business. They, like Apple, could admit that the OS has become a commodity, and spend their time writing Office for Linux and providing support contracts.

Just as Maggrand points out, the officers of Microsoft have no duty other than maximizing shareholder value. I consider those officers negligent exactly because they are clinging to a failed business model and they are going to take the shareholders value with them.

The officers of Microsoft also have a duty to abide by law and ethics. I see absolutely no evidence that they consider those duties of any importance. They violate law and ethics, as evidenced over and over in courts and reports around the world. Their ethics resemble those of gangsters and thugs, using terror tactics to dissuade customers from choosing anything except Microsoft. They use extortion in that they deliberately increase the costs of choosing anything but Microsoft by holding customers' data hostage to secret file formats.

Corporations, at very least the large ones (some say that includes Government) are simply big gangs, groups of thugs as it were. To mention 'Obligation' is only describing what they can get away with.

Quoting:The officers of Microsoft also have a duty to abide by law and ethics.

maggrand:use your head for something other than a hat rack.

A quote I once read about Microsoft:

"You can make millions without exploiting, but not billions."

They thought that by buying off Caldera and naming it SCO, they could mess with the heads of everyone. They did. But then, who has the better legal staff IBM or SCO, I mean Caldera.

So, they're playing Paper Machines and Phantom Computers - Section 23 Control Data Corporations vs International Business machines Corporation (IBM). We'll see.

As we all know, SCO has shown nothing, and has done nothing to slow linux. If Microsoft gos forward with patent litigation at this date and time, its going to be money needed, spent on lawsuit(s), at a time when Microsoft is not able to bring a product to market on time, security issues and the overall growing fellings about Microsoft's monopoly and cost, that have many changing to linux even now in post SCO threats, will only damage Microsoft more; Ballmer knows this.

The USTPO is working with the open source community, many big players today, along with the creation of the patent commons, growing membership of the OSDL, and more; Microsoft unlike SCO of three years ago, will have a larger fight on their hands no matter how much money they have. Money counts, but Eolas did show one thing, that a mega-billon dollar monopoly, (Microsoft) does not take millions to win, fighting against. Lets see it for what it is, Microsoft needs time, litigation is the sign, the sign that a corporation is out of options to stay in the maketplace fair and equal.

Microsoft is using the same slimey tactic as always: FUD.

The purpose is the same as it has always been -- to terrorize. They cannot compete so they try to keep corporations and individuals too scared to switch to anything better. This is the only way they can keep people waiting for Microsoft damaged (and damaging) future goods.