Over at ZDNet, Ed Burnette asks an interesting question. He wonders if Microsoft has just as many troubles with patents as everyone thinks Linux does. His answer is that they must be in the same boat, but he’s missing a key distinction that stems from the fact that Linux is open source and MS’s code is (for the most part) proprietary.
Proprietary firms like Microsoft have strong incentives to make sure their code actually belongs to them and this includes hiring lots of attorneys. Indeed, MS is known to seek out patent deals to protect its customers and the company also provides indemnification to its customers (unlike Linux). This is in contrast to the open source community where sharing is the norm and the incentives to protect the code are not quite as strong. This is not to say that there are no incentives, but just think of how many lone coders you’ve known who’ve said they would really like to copy from here or there.