Microsoft, patents and the open source community

Dear Open Source Community,

You have been had.

We hadn't been doing too well lately. Vista sales aren't up to our previously over-inflated figures, we are still loosing money on that whole Xbox thing, and Dell, normally our favourite lapdog, is going to go and sell Linux on a home PC! Not good. So, we came up with an ingenious idea. Let us use these patents we spent so much money on getting, despite the fact everyone knows they are worthless and frivolous, and take on the open source community with them!

However, we couldn't sue anyone. At the very best, we would remove some competitors, and awaken that sleeping giant called IBM. At the worst case scenario, our claims would be thrown out of court, some counter claims get thrown against us, and we get a ton of bad publicity. As well as that, we would give the open source community a big public win. That couldn't work.

So we decided to “give” those patents to the open source. Say that, while we could sue, we won't. Say that, while open source is stealing from us, let us throw down the barriers and work together. Of course, anyone that knows anything about how all this works, is that we work together, use their technology in ours, then, once we have an “open system”, close it back up again. Suddenly, we add some new features, and the opposition can't implement them and we are back on top again. End users don't care if their technology works with everyone, just with what they have to deal with. If all their friends are using the new Microsoft picture format by default, then if they can't open it, its a fault with their computer, not that standard.

Many may scoff at this idea, say its stupid and no-one will fall for it. To them, I tell them to stop worrying about the headlines at “ilovepenguins.com” and worry more about what Google News is saying, worry about what the majority of the people will see. They won't see “Frivolous lawsuit claims” or “Microsoft bullies software industry again”, they see “Microsoft won't sue over patents” and “Microsoft aims to work with Open Source”. They see us as the good guys, and you are the snobby hippies that don't want to play together. If you guys want to get serious about fighting us, you had better learn to how to get some positive PR. Apple knows how to do it with their iPod, iMacs and whatever else they do, Sony knew how to do it with their PlayStations, but you guys have no idea. They only people that hear about Linux achievements are Linux users themselves.

So, if you are seriously worried about the lawsuits, relax. It's not going to happen. But remember, we have won this battle, and look forward to the next.

Regards,

Microsoft PR team*

*please note, not really from Microsoft, I have no affiliation with them, nor do I even like them