For a while Linux fans have been waiting to Microsoft to launch an ill advised attack on their favourite open source operating system. Among the pile of quotes from the Apple verus HTC court case where Redmond is backing HTC was a strange one from Horacio Gutierrez, “Corporate Vice President and Deputy General Counsel” who is the software giant's intellectual monopoly supremo.

He said that the smartphone market is still in a nascent state; much innovation still lies ahead in this field and that this is a period early where IP rights will be sorted out. This is particularly true in a market, such as smartphones, in which a number of different technologies previously offered on a standalone basis now converge into a single device. Gutierrez said that smartphones are a product of the ‘open innovation’ paradigm device manufacturers do not do all of their development in-house, but add their own innovations to those of others to create a product that users want.

Then he said that open innovation is only possible through the licensing of third party IP rights, which ensures that those who develop the building blocks that make a new technology possible are properly compensated for their investments in research and development. The comments are being seen by the tin foil hat brigade in the open source industry that Redmond wants open sourcers to pay for licences as part of the building blocks of any software they create.

Or at the very least, it has not given up on its idea that it owns part of Linux and will one day come to collect.