Once again I will speak about the Microsoft patents matter, which has lately made Internet detour. This time I am backed up by the lead developer of the Linux kernel, Mr. Linus Tovarlds. Mr. Tovarlds has finally decided that this paranoia, which flamed Microsoft so harsh lately, reached its climax and tries to cool it down by giving an astringent response to all calumnies brought lately related to the patent violation tossup.

"It's certainly a lot more likely that Microsoft violates patents than Linux does. If the source code for Windows could be subjected to the same critical review that Linux has been, Microsoft would find itself in violation of patents held by other companies ", stated Torvalds.

Linus Tovarlds tried then to find a possible ground on which Microsoft's accusation might stand. He went back to the '60s when IBM owned "thousands of really fundamental' patents", but these ones have definitely lost any protection so far. Therefore, he nicely asks Microsoft's officials to name the supposed violated patents so they could be tested in court and eventually rewritten by the open source developers in order to avoid the infringement.

"Don't you think that if Microsoft actually had some really foolproof patent, they'd just tell us and go, 'nyaah, nyaah, nyaah!'...They'd have to name the patents then, and they're probably happier with the FUD [Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt] than with any lawsuit" added Linus, alluding to Microsoft's weird decision of not filling any complaints regarding this matter. In spite of the impressive number of the patent violations claimed by Microsoft (235 more exactly from which 42 only in the Linux kernel structure), its officials stated that they do not intend to sue any user of the open source operating system:

"We're not litigating. If we wanted to we would have done so years ago." stated Horacio Gutierrez, Microsoft's vice president for IP and licensing, during an interview.