Groklaw on Microsoft's latest assault on open source software

The recently announced Microsoft patent action against TomTom has brought the Groklaw blog out of its semi-retirement.  Groklaw made it's name by documenting, often in surprising detail, the SCO vs Linux debacle, which is still continuing with SCO in bankruptcy protection (actually the case was a series of legal actions involving SCO, IBM, Novell, Red Hat to name a few).  Since the SCO vs Novell case, upon which much of the rest of this legal fiasco depends, is essentially over, with SCO sitting in the bankruptcy courts, Groklaw has been in semi-retirement with its prime author, PJ, taking time out to consolidated the library of posts and documents she has acquired over the last few years.

Over the years, Groklaw has followed a variety of cases where Open Source Software (OSS), and in particular software released under the GPL, and in many cases the shadowy presence of Microsoft has been inferred by contributors.  Now it seems that Microsoft has finally decided to direct the big guns of the broken US software patent system at the GPS manufacturer TomTom.  This is a complex action, including the use of the FAT file system.

As is typical of these cases, Microsoft shills around the internet have come out of the woodwork to try and promote the Microsoft worldview.  I strongly recommend you read Groklaw's ongoing coverage of this story - begin with  Enderle on TomTom - Here We Go Again - I think that this will run and run, and with TomTom refusing to lie down and be part of Microsoft's scheme aimed at destroying OSS competition, the discovery phase of the legal action will be very revealing.