Though not as "feisty" as Microsoft's Steve Ballmer, Linus Torvalds is known to speak his mind when necessary. He's responded with a rather sharp retort to Microsoft's claim of Linux distributions violating hundreds of Microsoft patents, that amounts to throwing down a gauntlet and asking Microsoft to simply prove it in court. InformationWeek reports...

"Basic operating system theory was pretty much done by the end of the 1960s. IBM probably owned thousands of really 'fundamental' patents," Torvalds said in a response to questions submitted by InformationWeek. But he doesn't like any form of patent saber rattling. "The fundamental stuff was done about half a century ago and has long, long since lost any patent protection," he wrote.

Microsoft should name the patents that it claims have been violated so the claims can be tested in court or so open-source developers can rewrite code to avoid the violation, Torvalds wrote. 

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Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved.