[PLUG] Microsoft says 235 of its patents were violated by F/OSS

[Santosh Dawara]

Dear Aditya,

Aditya Godbole wrote:
> On 5/15/07, Santosh Dawara <sdawara at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> I agree, we (Indians) cannot ignore it. Microsoft sponsored lawsuits
>> could make it untenable to write F/OSS code in the United States.
>
> So tough luck for the Americans right? Or are you scared because a lot
> of the FOSS contributions come from the US and Indians (as a
> generalisation) are too wrapped up with themselves to contribute to
> FOSS? Its time we stopped believing that free (as in beer) software is
> our birthright.
>
yes, its true I am scared because a lot of the FOSS contributions come 
from the US. We don't build FOSS ourselves, but we do consume it. Which 
also makes it possible for companies like MySQL and JBoss to be profitable.

When I was at RIM, the lawsuits that NTP hit RIM with scared us too. But 
RIM was a Canadian company, and RIM, Canada had done nothing wrong! But 
wait, RIM's largest mature market was the US. So we had to be scared. 
RIM never went about telling Canadians that they ought to consume RIM 
products.

That is the nature of the global marketplace. We consume FOSS to produce 
elsewhere. That doesn't mean we are not productive as a nation.

- Santosh