10 ms·
40 Busy Years Later, Paul Allen, a Microsoft Founder, Considers His Creation
- nostromo 11y agoI liked Paul Allen more before he decided to become a patent troll. http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703294904575385241453119382 http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240527487032949045753852...
- higherpurpose 11y agoThe upside is that he became one only after Microsoft itself turned into one.
- WalterGR 11y agoWith the recent many posts about Microsoft I've seen several people accuse MS of this. I don't remember patent trolling being in the laundry list from my days reading Slashdot. Can anyone shed some light on what these comments may be referring to?
- danieldk 11y agoI think what they are probably referring to is the patent tax that is paid for every Android phone: https://gigaom.com/2014/06/16/patents-that-fuel-microsofts-android-tax-revealed-in-chinese-blog-post/ https://gigaom.com/2014/06/16/patents-that-fuel-microsofts-a... But that does not make Microsoft is not a patent troll[1], since it also produces hardware/software that it is covered by the same patents. Whether patents are any good is a different discussion. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_troll https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_troll
- WalterGR 11y agoInteresting. I hadn't heard about that. How much is known overall about the 'taxes' that the mobile players pay each other? The lawsuit timeline is pretty crazy: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartphone_patent_wars http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartphone_patent_wars
- anonbanker 11y agoJonathan Schwartz of Sun has many blog posts about Microsoft using patent trolling as a licensing negotiation tactic. Also, SCO vs. IBM (which Microsoft helped bankroll).
- pilsetnieks 11y agoAren't you confusing Paul Allen with Nathan Myhrvold? It seems that Allen's company actually developed the concepts it holds the patents for; Myhrvolds' Intellectual Ventures is the one buying up patents and making a business of licensing them under threat of lawsuit. Just because a company is suing someone for patent violation doesn't make them a patent troll.
- joslin01 11y agoI'm confused about this distinction between Paul & Nathan? >Mr. Allen's lawsuit comes amid high-profile successes of firms such as NTP Inc., which enforce patents without making products and have been called "patent trolls" by critics. What is this distinction supposed to serve? I see "Mr. Allen's lawsuit" and I also see that he purposefully kept Amazon & Microsoft out, which means he must be involved somehow personally. > Another Microsoft veteran, former chief technology officer Nathan Myhrvold, has amassed thousands of patents and secured hundreds of millions of dollars in patent-licensing deals from telecommunications companies and others. Mr. Myhrvold's Seattle-based firm Intellectual Ventures patents some of its inventions but also acquires patents to license. Ok... yes Nathan is doing that separately. This is about Paul.
- jfuhrman 11y agoHe also gave at least $100 million to Ebola, $500 million to charity, and funded several health science and general science initiatives. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Allen#Paul_G._Allen_Family_Foundation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Allen#Paul_G._Allen_Family... >Paul Allen has given more than $1.8 billion towards the advancement of science, technology, education, wildlife conservation, the arts and community services in his lifetime.[28] In 2010, Allen became a signatory of The Giving Pledge, promising to give at least half of his fortune to philanthropic causes.[29] In December 2014, Inside Philanthropy named Allen as their "Philanthropist of the Year;"[27] Allen's direct giving in 2013 totaled $206 million.[30] People are not one dimensional creatures.
- jestinjoy1 11y agoWhy not he release Microsoft products for free! Instead of doing like US govt (Killing people on one side and doing charity on another side), he could do something best he could do in his field.
- dpark 11y agoWhat does that even mean? Like, Paul Allen should just pay for all the expenses Microsoft incurs to develop its products and then Microsoft can give them all away for free instead? That will work out great. Paul Allen can pay for everything for a few months and then he can run out of money and Microsoft can shut down and lay off 110K employees, 200K with contractors factored in.
- jestinjoy1 11y agoJust like GNU/Linux he could release the whole thing is a community developed software
- dpark 11y agoSure, he could do that if he had any kind of legal right to do so, which he does not. If all of Paul Allen's net worth were in Microsoft stock (and it certainly is not), he'd own less than 5% of the company at this point. Paul Allen couldn't release all of Microsoft's code any more than I could. And of course, even if it were possible, Microsoft would need to come up with a new way to generate the 87 billion dollars in revenue it just lost, or else lay off 200 thousand people.
- chambo622 11y agoOdd puff-piece with little substance.
- yitchelle 11y agoI agree, and I am also amused why it got so many upvotes? edit: grammar
- adventured 11y agoPaul Allen - correctly so in my opinion - gets a lot of respect from hackers.
- mattmanser 11y agoNot on HN. Because he's a patent troll. I am also surprised at the upvotes.
- WorldWideWayne 11y agoMy guess is that it's part of the campaign to make developers love Microsoft by reminding them that Microsoft was once a startup too and like Apple, it has it's own folk heroes. I guess they overlooked the fact that people on HN apparently don't like this guy.
- jacquesm 11y agohttp://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20100829012006847 http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20100829012006...
- M8 11y agoIs it his creation still? What makes it so - several thousand lines of legacy code or the name of the product?
- joslin01 11y agoYou might be wondering why you got down-voted. I'll help you out. To create something is to give birth to it kinda like how I imagine you have parents who birthed you. I imagine with all your success and hard work, you don't really feel like your parents "own" you but you wouldn't say to them, "you didn't create me" because that would be illogical. Same thing for Paul. He created Microsoft with Bill Gates. You can't take that from him.
- hsnewman 11y agoAnybody else have an issue with Microsoft starting out using Harvard's computer to develop their first product (for free)? Theft of services to me...
- joslin01 11y agoYea, seriously! Harvard should sue. If it wasn't for Harvard providing that computer (FOR FREE!!), Microsoft wouldn't even exist. These guys man. They just show no respect. Harvard deserves at least 10% -- maybe even 20% -- of M$ for their seed investment of a (FREE!!) computer to hack on. And if you tell Harvard this and they go ahead and sue and get 20% I'm gonna sue the shit out of you if you don't somehow get Harvard to give me some of that percentage because they wouldn't have even thought to do it if it wasn't for this (FREE!!) comment.
- bruceb 11y agoHarvard's endowment is $36billion. I think they are doing ok.
- morganvachon 11y agoNo, because a computer is a tool, and if you lend your tools to someone who then makes money from their own creations, they don't owe you a dime. Now, if you rent your tools to them and they don't pay rent you can probably sue them for it, but it still doesn't entitle you to ownership of their IP. That's simply not how the world works.