Microsoft challenged to either put up or shut up

CEO of OIN Jerry Rosenthal believes that Microsoft's statements are empty threats. He says the Vole should either disclose exactly which patents its talking about or cut out slandering Linux and drop its claims.

OIN and many open sauce developers suspect that, if Microsoft actually has any software patents to back up its bluster, those could either be invalidated by finding prior art or easily worked around with programming changes.

The president of the Open Source Consortium, Mark Taylor, was even more direct in denouncing Microsoft's patent claims about Linux. He said, "We say show us the patents. This has been the strategy against open source all along. It's precisely the same tactics as SCO used: implied threats and mafia techniques. This is just FUD. It's smoke and mirrors."

It's doubtful that Microsoft really wants to get into a software patent war with OIN, which has millions of dollars in a patent litigation war chest. In addition, OIN's members include Google, IBM, NEC, Novell, Philips, Red Hat and Sony.