Do you think Microsoft will make Linux illegal?

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Microsoft doesn't make laws, only money.

If decency prevails, software patents won't survive and M$ won't either.

MS dont need software patents. They got a sect of followers called "Business users".

The day there is a Linux Distro:
1. That is easy to use for the end user
2. Has everything Windows and the Office software suit has.
3. Is easy to use for an MS trained tech
4. Integrates fully with AD and similar technologies
5. Gets good gaming support

On that day, MS stock will drop over time and diminish into nothingness.

You can talk about "Linux superiority" all you want, but the fact of the matter is that Linux have been superior for years just as the Amiga was superior to the DOS PC in a GIGANTIC way (Multitasking, HAM, several DMA channels and the Intuition technologies), but technological superiority in computing changed nothing - nothing.

You got to affect the userbase, then things will happen.

I like the one about TCO. For years, Microsoft has been claiming that Linux has a higher TCO than Windows, but internally they have admitted that it doesn't. That's just outright dishonesty there.

Yes, open source software, or free software as the Free Software Foundation like to call it, is actually copyrighted even though the software developers give up some of their rights in this case. The GPL is a software licence that allows you to change and modify the source code, including using it in your own programs, but under certain conditions. One of those conditions is to release any GPL derived software under the same license and release the source code as well. If GPL licensed code is used in proprietary software, it is actually a copyright violation.

To the original poster:

Projects like WINE have been around for 18 years (In fact shy 3 days of 18), and they tread much further into the territory of MS than linux. And yet, in all this time MS has not made a murmur. When wine split into cedega, crossover and other projects, again they seem to have said nothing.

Now for the past few years someone has been rebuilding windows NT from the ground up using wines open source material. Its called reactOS.

In fact, the wine project has caused some head aches to microsoft. When they released directx10 on windows(available to only vista), it was the wine data that allowed hackers to modify directx9 in windows xp to allow directx10 games to run. This certainly cost them sales of vista.

Now these projects are very small compared to linux, and very very small compared to windows. But they tread much more closely on windows patents and that fact that windows hasnt said anything suggests a few points:

MS is not actually interested in suing. They are hoping to scare investors in these linux companies or for a pre-emptive legal attack from the linux community.

They would have to reveal what the patents are. They choose not to because either these dont exist, or nothing actually infringes. They get more from baseless allegations than an actual law suit. They would also have to open the books and reveal their code. This is the basis of a patent: your design is an open book allowing the patent office to compare it to the competition.

They would look like complete asses after all this time. There is a time period in which you must defend your patent or its enforceability vanishes.

So it seems most likely that they are playing smoke and mirrors. It is unlike them to reveal core parts of their system through patenting. Security through obscurity is very much favoured at MS.

Why should the Linux community launch a pre-emptive legal attack? For example Mark Shuttleworth, who's the CEO of Canonical and who started the Ubuntu distribution, has already said that since you have to release patents in order to sue for infringement, there simply no reason to do anything until Microsoft decides to release the patents that they claim Linux infringes upon.

They shouldnt, and likely wont. But there is a pressure to fight back at defamation of character. If MS could cause losses to Canonical or redhat, it is possible.

Whats this, a conspiracy theory I'm shocked at you

I told him not to drink the diluted conspiracist bath water. But no....

Thats odd, that type of water should be the antidote to conspiracy theories. A dilute solution of new scientist on the other hand ......

Huh? No, just if MS ever tried to take Linux to court there would be way too much of a backlash. I mean, the entire Internet would disappear overnight if Linux were outlawed. That would piss off too many people, and they would fight Microsoft. Plus, they would have to take on Google on the way to banning Linux, and I would bet heavily on Google in that fight.

Homeopathic quack.

Not someone, but something of a community effort rather. As they say on their FAQ at http://www.reactos.org/en/about_userfaq.html#whynotnix

ReactOS is cool, but it desperately need NTFS, USB and network support. And i haven't even tried running games in it so how well DX9(or above) works is unknown to me...

However, in time, it could become a nice alternative.

If WINE is anything to go by, it'll be a 20 year effort.

You have to remember that ReactOS is still in its apha stage. It was not until recently that enough professional programmers began working on it to bring it to a stage of near completion. The problem with Windows compatibility is that Windows keeps changing, so any OS or software that intends to be compatible with it or with Windows software (e.g. Wine and ReactOS) is constantly having to play catch-up. Micro$oft may not be the omnipotent behemoth that it was in the late 90s, but it is still very powerful and pretty much dictates what happens in the software world.