Patent armageddon

This came in through Slashdot.

It looks like Microsoft is moving closer to using US patent law as the last way to silence competition from FOSS. I do not know enough about US patent law to really understand if they have a legal leg to stand on but it certainly makes sense from a competition point-of-view (people are *really* switching to Ubuntu over here in Europe, particularly in France) and from a historical perspective (what with the Novell deal, Barmer’s threats and so on). Just a few thoughts:

• I saw Eben Moglen at a conference in Boston a few months back and the guy is amazing. I have rarely been held so much in thrall at a conference by any speaker and he was talking about the GPL v3.0, fercrissakes. He does not look like the sort of guy I would try to get into a legal fight with (I know he stepped down, BTW) so good luck to MSFT.
• Europe is starting to look like some sort of FOSS safe haven. Could we end up with a situation where FOSS is free here and “banned” in the US?
• How can Microsoft hope to benefit from this? From a marketing and perception perspective, this is unwinnable. Think Viet-nam.
• Finall, couldn’t the FOSS community just rewrite stuff and work around MSFT’s patents. If they have to, how long would it take? 5 years? More?

Looks like the few next months are going to be a lot of fun!