Many comments I see about lawyers not wanting to fight about legal points, are terribly flawed. When you consider that a lawyer's income derives from contesting law, and that so long as they are not working on contingency, it is truly in their best interest to fight / contest about anything and everything. Most lawyers - to a point - don't give a crap one way or the other about winning or losing, right or wrong, because they get paid either way.

Let them sue all the Linux and BSD users then!

It worked so well for the RIAA.

Their closed source spyware, I mean OS is past it's prime.

PS - As far as I know, Microsoft has been the patent infringer in every case that went to trial. It really does sound like SCO 2.0!

"I think that most Microsoft lawyers would say, 'You know, let's not do that; that sounds insane.'"
Too bad their lawyers didn't say that about MEII. 

I appreciate Linus and the work he's done for open source.

However, the timing of this statement, especially with his second comment about the convicted monopolist does seem to coincide nicely w/ Microsoft/Yahoo. If that deal weren't going on, I wonder if he'd stick it out there like that.

The arguments are logical. I just think the timing is quaint.

If Microsoft were seriously to attempt to bring patent claims against Linux, it would open itself to the risk of counter-claims. Could MS absolutely, with complete confidence, assert that there is not one line of open/free/... code in their humungous code base?

That's not a mindless challenge. On the "infinite monkeys" principle, with that much code, and such a long history, there must be lines in there that are identical to open code. It would be difficult for MS to defend against accusations of copying, if dates can be proven. It doesn't even need to have been deliberate.

Torvalds is right. The lawyers would run a mile from trying to make a legal attack on Linux's IPR. The stakes would be far too high.