Microsoft outlines some ground rules to prevent it from nicking your IP Big-hearted Microsoft has tried to make reassuring noises to calm the nerves of others who might be thinking of getting between the Intellectual Property (IP) sheets with the Seattle software giant. Going into a tech tie-up can be a risky business for any IP owner. Fears that key IP and knowledge might be stolen and even used …
Original MS Basic ported over a weekend from Dartmouth Basic.
Original MS-DOS simply bought from a company the supposedly "Reverse Engineered it" from CP/M (Or CP/M 86, not sure as the 1st prototype version of CP/M 86 was created by running an Intel translation tool on the 8080 Assembler source of CP/M, later called CP/M 80).
They did at least buy in Sybase, (MS SQL) and Visio. If they bought Powerpoint, they paid too much.
USA publishers ripped off Dickens, Conan Doyle and Tolkien.
USA Radio last time I looked still only paying part of royalties.
USPTO since Victorian era been handing out Patents (and Design-Patents later= UK Rg. Design) that are invalid as they get much more revenue from issuing a patent than rejecting an application.
Once again, Ballmer was not calling Linux itself "cancer," although his choice of words could have been better. It was the GNU GPL (general public license) under which Linux operates that Ballmer was criticizing when he said that "Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches (emphasis added)." If there is any doubt that he's talking about the GNU GPL, just read what Ballmer said immediately after that.
The GNU GPL has long been a source of consternation for proprietary software vendors, and Microsoft is by no means the only one. To some degree, that's by design, since GNU GPL's author, Richard Stallman, is on record stating that closed software is itself unethical in concept. That's like sunlight to a vampire in the classic movies (not the terrible ones in which vampires sparkle); the very idea of having to release the source to any given product is anathema to a tightly closed software house like MS.
The GNU GPL, which states that all derivative works that contain any GNU GPL code must also be released, source included, under the GPL, was not meant to empower or encourage closed-source vendors, but Stallman himself explains that it wasn't meant to shut them down cold either with regard to Linux (or as he prefers, GNU/Linux). Microsoft is free to release any proprietary software they want for Linux, under any license they wish, so long as they do not include any GNU GPL code in the project, even in separate libraries, if they are distributed along with the proprietary code.
Ballmer wasn't completely wrong when he spoke of the metastatic nature of the GPL in that case, but he wasn't completely right either, and he goes further off the rails when he derides the concept of open-source in general and paints closed-source software as morally superior and "available to everyone," which is such a stretch that I have to wonder if he didn't have to suppress a chuckle.
It is not only Mobile Tech that they've bled many companies dry before jettisoning them and leaving them to die.
Think back to the days of Dos and Windows 95. One who's name escapes me now sold file compression tools. Didn't MS 'fix' Dos 6.2.2 so that it would not run? {or something like that}
Basically any company that got into 'bed' with MS would be doomed from then on.
You are thinking of "Stacker" by Stac Electronics. In 1993/94 after negotiating with Stac to license their code for inclusion in DOS, Microsoft basically just ripped them off instead with their "DoubleSpace" program. This resulted in several lawsuits with around US$200 million in damages and payments awarded to Stac in the end.
"doesn't include Nokia"
Well, unlike Sidekick/Danger etc, MS essentially paid Nokia $11B for something Nokia no longer wanted. MS didn't get the name (just a short term licence) and got none of the IP.
Nokia didn't get such a deal when going out of welly boots, paper, TVs, setboxes etc.
Nokia is still alive and well and has eaten Siemens Networks, Motorola Networks, Lucent Alcatel and others. TCL pays Nokia for badge* on their Alcatel phones, though they had been Alcatel Mobile's partner since 2004. Curiously TCL also now does the Blackberry paying licence to former RIM for the badge etc.
So shouldn't include Nokia. Stephen Elop obviously wasn't a Trojan, unless a double agent.
[* Nokia may also own remains of RCA and French Thomson too. The once mighty RCA that bought the New Jersey company that created HMV,(EMI since 1928) and JVC died in 1986. Marconi was forced out of RCA predecessor by US Government as he was an "alien".]
Well Elop went with Windows Phone, tried to get MS to buy the the mobile division but they didn't bite, the mobile division sank due to WP, then the board divised a Plan B which consisted of locking Elop up, releasing Nokia X, and MS finally bit.
So Nokia gets honorable mention for MS technologies sinking a brand, even if Nokia managed to save themselves in the end.
MS's rip off of TADAG has cost Redmond circa $400bn to date. Sometimes, the little guys anticipate the big guy's move and only share a component of their overall design. That said, the TADAG report makes interesting reading, evidencing key MS personnel battling with their own company's lawyers in trying to maintain a degree of decency in their business negotiations.The lawyers' emails include instructions to senior employees to 'forget' face to face meetings held under NDA.
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