[ale] Segue from MS threatening the community

[meuon at geeklabs.com (Mike Harrison)]

> of a lawyer, but I'll ask it here. How do you show patent  
> infringement by software without the source code?

They'll attack the ephemeral outside of the issue
about what constitutes intellectual property. 

It's not the code, it's what it does. 

ie: Linux/Samba accessing the SMB File System via TCPIP
    could be constituted to violate M$-IP as the protocols
    that it emulates and enables communications are M$-IP. 

But then, I believe (no factoids involved)  
M$ has inherited far more from the *nix and FOSS
community than the other way around. 

Remember when M$-products didn't have TCPIP? 
Or E-Mail/Telnet/FTP/DNS/..