Use Linux, get sued. Micro$oft warned Asian governments that they may face patent lawsuits if they use Linux instead of Windows.

At Microsoft’s Asian Government Leaders Forum, Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, said that Linux violates more than 228 patents. He declined to provide specifics. Quoth Ballmer:

Someday, for all countries that are entering the WTO (World Trade Organization), somebody will come and look for money owing to the rights for that intellectual property.

SCO group claims that Linux violates its copyrights for Unix. They have sued various companies, and have threatened to sue others, including Linus Torvalds. SCO refuses to allow access to the samples of code containing the alleged violations except under an NDA that would require signers to hold confidential even information that they knew before signing the agreement or seeing the code. The open source community refutes SCO’s claims.

SCO has been bankrolled by Micro$oft.

Singapore last month switched 20,000 PCs to run Linux instead of Windows. China, Japan and South Korea have agreed to jointly develop Linux applications.

The Chinese government considers Microsoft a potential threat due to conpiracy theorys that claim back doors in Windows code would give the US Government access to Chinese networks. Again, quoth Ballmer:

We think our software is far more secure than open-source software. It is more secure because we stand behind it, we fixed it, because we built it. Nobody ever knows who built open-source software.

Uh… sure, Steve… whatever you say…