Steve Ballmer has fired off another warning shot across the bow of the Linux users and open source vendors in general by repeating his threats to sue companies that do not respect Microsoft’s intellectual property.

Microsoft has argued in the past that Linux infringes on their IP, but when called upon for specifics has failed to name the patents in question.

Ballmer, in an obvious threat towards open source users, has told c|net that “open source is not free, and open source will have to respect the intellectual-property rights of others, just as any other competitor will”.

For those that aren’t fluent in the language of Bullshit, that is loosely translated as “play by our rules, or else”.

One interesting quote in the interview, however, is a possible admission that Windows is in fact more expensive than Linux. After a huge campaign against Linux specifically aimed at proving that Windows has a lower total cost of ownership than it’s open source alternative, Ballmer has this little cherry:

“We are higher-priced, but we bring greater value.”

Higher priced you say? What happened to all of that “Linux is more expensive that Windows” rhetoric?

Linux users respoded to Ballmer’s accusations with the following message:

You can keep your higher prices and intellectual property. We are going to play on our own, and you’re not invited.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 21st, 2007 at 5:49 pm and is filed under Linux, That Other OS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.