Gruber on Google on Patents and Products

Gruber on Google on Patents and Products

It’s OK for Google to undermine Microsoft’s for-pay OS licensing business by giving Android away for free, but it’s not OK for Microsoft to undermine Google’s attempts to give away for free an OS that violates patents belonging to Microsoft?

Yes.

The first thing is OK, the second thing is not OK. Again: Yes.

These two things are not at all comparable, but Gruber sets them apart as though it were a foregone conclusion. I don’t even see what the argument here is supposed to be.

The ‘free’ gripe apparently annoys him so much that he even reiterates it as the last sentence:

And, let’s not forget, give Android away for free.

What exactly is the problem with this?

Are we still bitter about the IE vs Netscape days? Speaking of which, let’s not have any sympathy for Microsoft on this topic, shall we?

Should all open-source software be banned, because it’s free? I’ve never heard Gruber argue this. His usual problem with open-source software is that it’s just not any good. Does that mean the problem with Android is that it is good? Good or free is OK, but good and free is not? Why?

Fine, for the sake of argument, let’s suppose Google shouldn’t be allowed to give Android away for free. How much–or rather, how little–are they allowed to charge for it? The same price as their competitors? Half the price? A quarter of the price? Where do you draw the line, and how do you draw a line that is anything but completely arbitrary?

How little is too little? How little do you have to charge before you’re being unfair (or whatever the problem is, since it’s never stated) to your competition?

I have no love for Android. (I’ve never even used it for any meaningful period of time.) But I don’t see what the argument is against it being free, especially since the argument is apparently so obvious that Gruber hasn’t bothered to write it.

Maybe his real problem here is the patents. But that being the case, even if you accept that patents are a positive for the industry (which I don’t), I still don’t see what the product being free has to do with it. And let’s not forget, Microsoft already profits handsomely from licensing parents to Android phone manufacturers - five times as much as they make from selling their own phones! Are we to believe this isn’t enough?

That is the true absurdity: that it’s more profitable to write up a patent and do nothing but demand the earnings of others, than it is to go to the work of bringing a product to market.

Edit: Removed an unfair, unsupported statement I made about Android.