Microsoft tries to "roll over" BlueJ

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Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

A time comes when silence is betrayal. Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak out with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak.

Microsoft tries to "roll over" BlueJ

Mon, 01/29/2007 - 18:37 — charlie.collins

Microsoft has filed some "key interactions" patents for Visual Studio that are apparently ripped from concepts BlueJ. And, it gets better, this comes after Microsoft had discussions with academics about what they liked in terms of BlueJ.

Microsoft files to Patent Key BlueJ Interactions

Microsoft is now saying that the patent application was a mistake, and even apologizing to the BlueJ folks. For this I have to give them credit, but at the same time I have to ask - how in the hell did we get here in the first place?

I love this quote: "However, we are not the type of people who tolerate hypocrisy. If our product was a port of someone else’s idea (which it looks like we’ve already said publicly), we’re not going to pursue this", by Chris Worland at Microsoft.

What if there wasn't an uproar, it was a smaller project, and maybe there was no "public admission" of the prior art?

Remind me again why I cannot stand Microsoft?