What I care about is being called a thief for using gasoline purchased from another company because that company uses the same or similar process to refine the gasoline.
Effectively that's what Microsoft is doing. They are calling me a thief for using Linux on my computer because Linux may have used some of the same processes as Microsoft did. By the way, those same processes were probably copied by Microsoft some years ago (or as recent court rulings have been showing--stolen). Now they are trying to extort those companies they are accusing into giving them IP in exchange, which, by the way, will only indemnify the customers of the company they entered into the IP cross license. So they can just pick up the bat again and swing at another.
Think about this in real life terms. The car uses gasoline (the computer an operating system) so the car is just a pile of metal and plastic without gasoline (computer as well without an OS). So, some dominant Oil company (OS vendor) then decides to call *everyone* that doesn't use their gasoline a thief because you are using the gasoline (for computers an operating system) from another company because that other company may have copied some elements of the refinery process (in the OS some of it's IP), then tries to extort all major companies that use the cars (computers) into giving them some of their profits and some other valuable property (in computers other IP developed by the company). Then they won't even tell you what part of the refinery process was copied so the major companies can determine if there really is a fault or to let the other gas companies change their refinery process to not copy.
I mean, come on, you can't miss that point.
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