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Over the last few years, with the SCO lawsuits, and also with Microsoft’s spokespersons, there has been an attempt at inserting a catchphrase into business and internet nomenclature;
Intellectual Property
People like Steve Ballmer of Microsoft, Darl McBride of SCO, for example, have been repeatedly pushing this catchphrase at the world for a long time now, usually within the context that there are patents, copyrights, ideas, and innovations which they own, and usually implying that Linux and Open Source programs in general infringe on their “Intellectual Property rights”.
The most recent of these attempts at creating FUD was perpetrated by Steve Ballmer at a company event in the UK last week, in which he states
“People who use Red Hat, at least with respect to our intellectual property, in a sense have an obligation to compensate us”
Other choice quotes from Mr Ballmer;
“There are plenty of other people who may also have intellectual property. And every time an Eolas comes to Microsoft and says, “Pay us,” I suspect they also would like to eventually go to the open source world. So getting what I’ll call an intellectual property interoperability framework between the two worlds I think is important.”
Two mentions of “intellectual property” in that one quote!
So, what does this catchphrase actually mean, and why are these companies pushing it so strongly, with threats of lawsuits, enforcement of their “rights”, and the rest?
