One of these days is none of these days - English proverb
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Bill Gates and Steve Jobs wanted to sue Sun
FORMER CEO of Sun, Jonathan Schwartz has been telling the world plus dog how he told Bill Gates and Steve Jobs to stuff it when they threatened the company with patent lawsuits.
Writing in his blog, Schwartz said that he had a phone chat with Steve Jobs, who tried to claim he invented some of the graphical effects in the prototype Linux desktop called Project Looking Glass.
Jobs said that the graphical effects were "stepping all over Apple's IP" and if Sun commercialized it he would sue.
Schwartz pointed out that he'd attended Jobs' last rally and noticed that Apple's Keynote was the spitting image of Concurrence. Concurrence was a presentation product built by Lighthouse Design, a company Schwartz had helped to found and which Sun acquired in 1996.
Lighthouse also built applications for Nextstep, the Unix based operating system whose core would become the foundation for all Mac products after Apple acquired Next in 1996.
In other words, Jobs had been using Concurrence for so long he thought he had invented it. When Apple built its own presentation tool, it was obvious where it had found inspiration.
Schwartz added that if Steve wanted to go around claiming he invented everything then he might like to look at Apple's Mac OS, which was built on Unix, and said that Sun had a few OS patents in that area. Jobs didn't say anything further.
Schwartz also faced down Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer. They'd flown in over a weekend to meet with Sun's then CEO Scott McNealy, apparently.
Gates claimed right off that Microsoft "owned the office productivity market" and Openoffice needed to pay the Vole lots of cash in royalties.
Bill told Schwartz that he was happy to "get you under license" so Sun would have to pay Microsoft for every download of Openoffice.
However Schwartz was apparently ready for this and pointed out that .NET was clearly trampling all over a lot of Java patents.
He replied, "So, what will you pay us for every copy of Windows?" It became a very short meeting after that.
Schwartz mentions that patents are needed for both offensive and defensive purposes. "Sun had a treasure trove of some of the Internet's most valuable patents - ranging from search to microelectronics - so no one in the technology industry could come after us without fearing an expensive counter assault. And there's no defence like an obvious offense," he said. µ
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Like any patent, they will only last 20 years. Think of everything that has been done up until 1991 - it's no longer enforceable under any patent.
There are enough good ideas that have been patented - and have already expired. Things like JPEG, for example. Next year, there will be a new tranche of patents that expire. Even MP3 is due to have its day, soon enough.
Look at it another way: In ten years or so, nobody will be able to point at Ogg Vorbis and say "We've got IP on that", because any such IP would have expired.
If I were Microsoft, Apple, et al, I would be terrified - because the possibility that someone will come along and usurp their market share with a new product is getting bigger and bigger every year.
SCHWARZ LOOKS LIKE AN IDIOT. SUN HAS ALL THESE PATENTS YET BY SCHWARZ'S INCOMPETENCE IS NOT ENFORCING THEM, COSTING THE COMPANY MILLION$. SCHWARZ SHOULD BE TURFED OUT AND REPLACED WITH SOMEONE READY TO MAKE SUN SOME MONEY. FINGER POINTED SQUARELY AT BOARD OF DIRECTORS ON THIS ONE.
This shows why we need to get rid of software patents ASAP.
These days you can not write any functional app without infringing on a few dozen patents at least. Sun might have had enough patents to defend itself against MS and Apple but what if it was not Sun but a small startup or you or me who developed some truly interesting software? MS and Apple will give you a call, extort license fees or kill you in court.
Software patents kill innovation!
I can't stop laughing. Jonathan I salute you for handling them that easy...
On a side note, thought that both Steve and Bill would always use lawyers for assaults like these, not really do it in person. Hell ... I am still laughing....
I can't stop loving Sun. This guy is a genius strategist. I have heard about that Microsoft meeting before but didn't know the details. Nice to see how it played out.
Sounds like a chess game. You take my piece and I'll take yours... That can start a chain reaction, and you better hope that you're at least one pawn up when it's all over with. Well played Sun, well played.
Sun do not charge us a cent for the software as their greedy company do. M$ want to license for Openoffice is amazing stupid because it is complete different. M$ wanna make way to collect the money, greedy bastard so Apple too.
CEO + Ponytail = Delisted Stock
Pay MS to download Open Office, LOL, MS, you can shove that ridiculous thought right up your greedy arse.
Apple is now afraid of Linux?
I always knew MS would love to crush Open Office.
I say screw Apple and MS, go open software go. I'm on Suns side.
Those vultures try to get as much money as they can before the rise of open source software !.
It is not enough to be the richest guys on the planet.
Talking about paying to have the right to use an os or a word processing software.
Not saying that the MS-DOS source code clearly indicates borrowed Sun Microsystems code, but it did.