[luciusdomitius]

Well. Cold reality is that even 5-year old kids know what sort of company MSFT is and what sort of people work for them. He acted like an useful fool, got treated like one. I even smirked a bit at his misery, even though I am normally not that kind of person.

Had he instead reacted to the phone call with some extremely aggressive licensing, maybe even a software patent, now he would be discussing the terms of the out of court settlement and choosing a color for individual seats in his new 7-series.

[jjoonathan]

Yes, that's an important takeaway, but

> I even smirked a bit at his misery

smirking at someone for getting rolled is low.

[bacchusracine]

>smirking at someone for getting rolled is low.

Is it still low when it is self-inflicted? That old fable with the finisher at the end about 'you knew me for what I was when you picked me up' comes to mind. This ending was clear from the beginning.

Microsoft is the same company who licensed Mosaic from Spyglass with the promise of a quarterly fee plus royalties and then released their version of the browser as Internet Explorer for free resulting in no royalties. Never mind the history of companies who got in bed with Microsoft and never quite recovered afterwards. Or the history of blatant ripoffs. DoubleSpace anyone?

Anyone choosing to get in bed with Microsoft at this point gets what they deserve. There was a reason why they were literally paying companies to write apps for Windows Phone.

[Shared404]

> Cold reality is that even 5-year old kids know what sort of company MSFT is and what sort of people work for them.

Mate, 80% of college students don't know that.

Source: Work at a computer repair shop and see shocked faces.

[CRConrad]

Then again most five-year-olds seem smarter than most college students.

[Shared404]

I dunno.

They're both larval stages, just different ones.

As far as knowing about the workings of a company, I'd definitely bet on the college student. The observation in my other comment applies to general adults as well.

Ok I'll stop taking the joke too seriously now :P .

[CRConrad]

College students have spent much longer being indoctrinated that corporations are good, and the bigger the better, than have five-year-olds. In that sense the joke actually was -- at least to some small part -- serious.

[jmcgough]

How is he going to take out a patent for or aggressively license OSS? The code is already out for anyone to use at that point.