Torvalds on Microsoft's patent bluff

I have argued a few times with my friend (who is an MVP for Microsoft) over the position/perception of Microsoft, is it a monopoly? a big friendly giant? or what? He is more exposed to the technical folks who (mainly) talk about technologies and so on, and he has failed to see the legal, and business side of the games Microsoft plays.

I told him that yes, there may be nice, friendly peeps there at MS, but there are also people who has nothing to do but spread FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) and people who play games on both sides.

In this article published by Linuxworld, Torvalds remarked that

"I think there are people inside Microsoft who really want to improve interoperability and I also think there are people inside Microsoft who would much rather just try to stab their competition in the back," he said. "I think the latter class of people have usually been the one[s] who won out in the end, but -- so I wouldn't exactly trust them."

Me neither. Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer :P