Piss off, MS (A heavily scare-quoted rant)

I’m really thinking that my mention of buying Microsoft products ever again – even for gaming – was just squashed. Microsoft – if you haven’t heard the Digg buzz – is claiming that Linux violates 230-some patents “held” by Microsoft.

I’ll start with the snide comment that if “Microsoft” really believes that, they’d stop violating their “own” patents by using Linux servers for some of their infrastructure. In all fairness, though, I’m not sure if MS still uses Linux for server infrastructure, but it has been true in the past.

I’m content to leave Windows users their beloved (shitty) operating systems. It really does me no personal injury that my neighbor spends his computing time hunting spyware, dealing with viruses, and in general dealing with an unstable operating system. It similarly does nobody else any injury for me to use Linux (and no, Microsoft’s profit margin is not a person).

I do have a problem with “Microsoft” threatening to use patent to put Linux distros out of business and threatening me – personally – with infringement of “their” “intellectual property” for chosing by my own free volition to use a good operating system.

Quoting Wendy McElroy quoting James Walker:

Tak Kak maintained: “If any person wishes to live by imparting his ideas in exchange for labor, I have nothing to say against his doing so and getting cooperative protection without invading the persons and property of myself and my allies… Mr. Spencer [Herbert Spencer] is welcome to all the property in ideas that he can erect and maintain without government. No one can speak or write, and yet have the same advantage as if he were silent…But whatever he can do by contract, cooperation, and boycotting… let him do so at his pleasure.” Tak Kak restated his theme in different terms, “As long as Spencer has an idea in his brain, it is his, and it is not mine until it is in my brain.”

Note two key points in Tak Kak’s position. The first is a restatement of the self-ownership principle: that is, every human being simply by being human has jurisdiction over his own body. By logical extension, self-ownership protected any idea within his mind. The second point is that ‘communicated’ ideas — ideas that ceased to be solely within his mind and assumed a public status — no longer enjoyed the automatic protection of self-ownership. Any ownership of public ideas did not derive from natural rights, but from a contract or from what Tak Kak called ‘cooperative protection.’

Apropos to Charles Johnson’s great post on the problem with pronouns like ‘we,’ witness this jackassed gem:

Microsoft counters that it is a matter of principle. “We live in a world where we honor, and support the honoring of, intellectual property,” says Ballmer in an interview. FOSS patrons are going to have to “play by the same rules as the rest of the business,” he insists. “What’s fair is fair.”

Hmm. Actually it seems more like we live in a world where gangs of thugs calling themselves governments honor the “intellectual property” of people who have bought the favors of said thugs.

What was really meant by that aforementioned shill was that computer-using people in “our” society “honor” “Microsoft’s” alleged “intellectual property” only insofar as 1) most computer users are not aware of alternatives, and, if this patent bull pans out, Linux will not be used by as many people because 2) lots of computer users will be scared shitless of getting sued by Microsoft.

Again, “our” honoring of these “patents” is really a large “corporation’s” use of some thugs calling themselves the government to enforce “honoring” bogus claims of property.

My use of Linux does no injury to anybody. My neighbor’s use of Windows does me no injury.

Microsoft’s use of the state to forcibly prevent me from using Linux if I so choose – which is what these patent threats seem to amount to – coerces me. It prevents me from doing something that otherwise harms nobody.

“Fair is fair,” says the Microsoft shill. That’s in oddly ironic way to describe the grotesque statist patent racket. If fair really is fair, and an unmolested market in software existed, Microsoft would actually have to make good software to keep on top!

From a left-libertarian perspective, what would this mean? Well, first of all, if you use computers, this probably applies to you in some way. The infrastructure of many e-commerce sites is largely Linux-based. Wikipedia resides largely on Linux systems. Google’s infrastructure tells a similar story.

If using Linux suddenly became illegal, Microsoft’s statutory monopoly would be pretty set.

In real, counter-economic terms, fat chance. Linux might well just be driven underground. Downloads of Linux installation .iso’s, for instance, would probably come from servers residing overseas in “legal” jurisdictions that don’t acknowledge “Microsoft’s” “patents.” Same story with repositories. Use of torrent clients and similar peer to peer software would skyrocket as a means to transferring software from person to person, and Linux would be traded over darknets and proxied transfers.

I think what a Digg commenter said sums it up:

“Linux Violates 235 Patents” – Says Microsoft to Linux users

“Fuck off, ya donkey raping shit-eaters.” – Says Digg to Microsoft

Indeed.

UPDATE: with the above, I may have made it sound as if I’m actually taking this seriously. Maybe as a knee-jerk reaction, I might have at first. But the more I think about it, it’s ludicrous – MSFT is not going to sue millions of Linux users. It’s a marketing ploy, or FUD as everybody is saying. Microsoft – perhaps in an act of partial desperation – wants to make use of FOSS look dangerous.

Saber-rattling.

It does get a bit frustrating when you read about things like this, though.

See also: Linus talks about it.