They’re Bluffing, Linus Taunts
Linus Torvalds believes that users of Linux have nothing to fear. M$ is bluffing. According to Linus:
“They have been sued for patents by other people, but I don’t think they’ve — not that I’ve gone through any huge amount of law cases — but I don’t think they’ve generally used patents as a weapon,” Torvalds said. “But they’re perfectly happy to use anything at all as fear, uncertainty and doubt in the marketplace, and patents is just one thing where they say, ‘Hey, isn’t this convenient? We can use this as a PR force.’”
Boy, one thing that I’ve always said, and it’s truer now than ever, is that M$ is a marketing company, not a software company. They understand people and how they respond and react to things. They will push the very bounds of what’s legal in order to intimidate and influence people. What’s funny is that your average person wants someone else to tell them what to do. Many people like to give away their power to choose. They don’t want the responsibility of thinking for themselves, and it’s too much effort anyway.
Anyway, it’s nice to see people starting to break out of that and turn their back on M$. Many governments are doing that around the world. By now you’ve likely heard that the French Police dumped Windows on 70,000 machines for Ubuntu Linux. I think that’s the biggest migration I’ve ever heard of.
Think outside the box. Learn something. Don’t be afraid of the Big Bad Wolf. Go Linux.
