Microsoft's new policy for licensing its patents has supporters of open-source software worried that the company will use a broken government system for protecting intellectual property to beat back gains Linux and other competing software have made in the marketplace.
“We are very worried,” said Eric Raymond, president of the Open Source Initiative, a nonprofit group that certifies open-source licenses. “This is aimed directly at us. It's a classic Microsoft attempt to crush the competition.”
Large Linux distributors, such as IBM, have the legal resources to handle patent disputes, Ravicher said, but far smaller organizations building open-source applications wouldn't have the money to fight Microsoft in court.
“I don't think IBM is worried, but the Apache Software Foundation and the Free Software Foundation are,” Ravicher said, naming the latter two organizations as examples.