Microsoft won't stop forcing companies to pay for its bogus Android patents • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft won't stop forcing companies to pay for its bogus Android patents

#131

Post by beagle3 » Mon, Mar 21, 2016, 9:32 PM UTC

dogma1138 wrote: post #19

mtgx wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if that was the case, which I don't think it is, Microsoft shouldn't be asking for stuff like FAT32 royalties. Think about it. Microsoft is asking for royalties for making devices that work with Windows . How crazy is that? Imagine if Google charged accessory makers for hooking into Android devices. I don't care if others do this sort of thing, too. It's just wrong. It should be an anti-trust issue, especially w…

Why shouldn't MSFT claim patents for FAT? They've developed it and it was adopted by everyone and their mother for being good and cheap FS. You don't need to support FAT to allow transfer of files between your your Windows PC and the phone standards that abstract the file system like MTP and PTP exist for this very own reason. If you are as a phone maker want to enable users to mount their local phone storage as a fu…

FAT is actually a CPM disk format, from before the time Microsoft was even in the operating system business.

The patents are for the LFN extension, and they are completely trivial and bogus.

Re: Microsoft won't stop forcing companies to pay for its bogus Android patents

#132

Post by lagadu » Mon, Mar 21, 2016, 10:02 PM UTC

abiox wrote: post #128

lagadu wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I find Windows (and Outlook and let's not talk about Sharepoint) not a good product and thus not worth the money This is exactly what I mean. Them opening up the patents wouldn't change your bias against their products (justified or otherwise isn't relevant) like you just described, making it a business decision with very, very limited gains and billions in losses.

you seem to say that windows is objectively good and worth the money, irrespective of their circumstance. otherwise, what could "wouldn't change your bias" mean?

I'm not saying anything objective about its worth. Under some circumstances it has a certain value, under other circumstances it has a different one.

By bias I meant that you flat out said that Windows and a few other MS products aren't worth the money and don't understand why anybody would use it. Now sure, it's possible that after careful consideration you decided in a completely unbiased manner that the products you listed aren't worth their cost under any circumstances but I'm sure you'll agree how that might sound incredibly biased to a casual observer.

edit: well except sharepoint like you said. That thing is just bad and I've no problem admitting to a bias against it.

Re: Microsoft won't stop forcing companies to pay for its bogus Android patents

#133

Post by tluyben2 » Wed, Mar 23, 2016, 7:56 AM UTC

lagadu wrote: post #123

tluyben2 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, people were giving them another chance already. I for one don't 'hate' them, I find Windows (and Outlook and let's not talk about Sharepoint) not a good product and thus not worth the money and with them 'being evil', I did not really understand why anyone would use it. With all the open source and other good strategy decisions by Nadella I was changing my opinion some what. It seems they should take that all th…

> I find Windows (and Outlook and let's not talk about Sharepoint) not a good product and thus not worth the money This is exactly what I mean. Them opening up the patents wouldn't change your bias against their products (justified or otherwise isn't relevant) like you just described, making it a business decision with very, very limited gains and billions in losses.

Well you were talking about 'hate' which would make me say I don't like the products because I don't like the company. That's not the case; I actually try Windows at every new version because I have to make sure my products run on it, but it's just annoying for me compared to Linux (and Mac OS X); the productivity is just very low. Objectively I have seen that our employees get more productive when they switch to a unix but that's just anecdotal and not interesting here, but it's not because of hate for MS. I would really want to work for MSR and especially on things like [1]. It would not change my bias because they are, to me again, not good products, however there are products they make which I do like and I would be more inclined to pay money for them if they were less evil. And to me (and I believe a lot of programmers) that means software patents. I find patents in general a wrong concept but you need them (especially in the US) to defend yourself against other companies using them or trolls suing you.

[1] http://www.rise4fun.com/