Last night I watched the video of the shoot out at the open source summit last week. I highly recommend watching the debate portion, it's about a half-hour, and if you think patents aren't going to be a big part of the landscape of the future of software, you owe it to yourself to hear from the Microsoft spokesperson, Craig Mundie, that you're wrong. If you believe patents are protecting little guys from the BigCo's, think again. Please, to the O'Reilly people, let's get the transcript of this discussion on the Web asap.
In the Q&A section, Mundie said you can always challenge a patent in court. A developer in the audience said that costs a lot of money. Mundie said “Get your money.” Great, so it's about money and lawyers now. When you hear Microsoft talk about innovation, complaining about judges running the software industry, remember that. I had not heard this line of reasoning before. I thought there were some levels that Microsoft would not stoop to. Apparently there was room to go even lower. [Scripting News]