Microsoft has some precedent for these claims, however. Merkey added that a Microsoft product manager had accused him of conspiring with Linux creator Linus Torvalds and of participating in other nefarious dealings.
Instead, the company provided tools to help Linux users fix NTFS partitions under Linux. Merkey claimed that TRG has never provided the Linux community with any NTFS source code. Therefore, TRG's work with Linux must remain separate from its work with NTFS. Such companies can use source code only in projects that Microsoft approves. A Merkey post quoted a story by Pat Christian of the Orem Daily Herald, in which Christian explained that TRG's development involved Microsoft intellectual property and that like a lot of software companies, Timpanogas was also working with other operating-system developers that Microsoft considers competitors, developing Timpanogas network products that would run with Linux.Ĭompanies that license Microsoft's source code must meet stringent security requirements regarding use of the code and disclosure of its contents. Merkey noted that Microsoft's biggest concern was that TRG would use the NTFS source code to develop a product (i.e., full NTFS support in Linux) that Microsoft hadn't approved. "Microsoft demanded that we delete any and all NTFS tools we had been providing to customers based on \ intellectual property." "Microsoft has threatened us with litigation due to our support of Linux NTFS development, and we have dissolved our NTFS licensing agreements with Microsoft in response to \ demands that \ cease to support Linux development," Merkey wrote in a posting to Kernel Traffic, a Linux kernel resource. TRG CEO Jeff Merkey-who was involved in a similar spat with Novell-said that Microsoft threatened to sue TRG for violating its intellectual property rights involving NTFS. TRG was using the source code for a variety of projects, including a port of NTFS to Linux. The brouhaha began in September, when tiny Timpanogas Research Group (TRG), a software firm in Orem, Utah, announced that it had given up its NTFS source-code license because of threatening messages from Microsoft. The battle between open-source advocates and the world's most powerful software company veered into "he said, she said" territory during the fall of 2000.
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