Posted on May 24, 2007
Filed Under Miscellaneous | 6 Comments
Given Microsoft’s recent claims that the free and open-source software movement is violating 235 of it’s patents, the following statement* made by an Ubuntu spokesman is ironic (emphasis mine):
Microsoft has stated that Silverlight is a cross-platform plug-in. ‘Cross-platform’ does not mean ‘two-platform,’ and if the Microsoft team needs help getting this to work on Ubuntu, we would be delighted to help them accelerate that. If it’s open source—who knows? There might finally be some Microsoft code in a Linux distribution.
(* The context of the above statement is around Microsoft’s Silverlight product which runs on Windows and Mac.)
To be fair, I don’t know if any of the 235 alleged patent violations are source code related because Microsoft isn’t making the specifics of their claims public at this point.