In Mac Matters™ we scour the Web for news that matters to Mac professionals, short-term and long-term. Here are two key stories from the past week:

Microsoft says it may sue end users in Linux cases

Analysis: Let me play this one on you. What would you think if I told you company 'A' just made a deal with company 'B' that prevents you, the end user, from being sued by either company 'A' or company 'B' so long as you don't use products from company 'C'. What would you think?

Exactly!

Clearly they don't want you to use products from company 'C'.

But what if you already uses products from company 'C' and more importantly use products from either company 'A' or company 'B'?

If you are like me you'd probably be pretty darn pissed off by the notion that a company, such as company 'A', would sue you after you have been a loyal customer for years just because you want to use a product from company 'C'. After all, if company 'A' had a legal problem with company 'C' then just sue the company, not me, your loyal customer of company 'A'.

But that is exactly what Microsoft (company 'A') is threatening to do.

"Today, Novell is the only company in our industry that is able to provide the customer not only with the code to run Linux, but also with a patent covenant from Microsoft," Brad Smith, Microsoft's general counsel, in a C/net report.

Clearly the goal here was to put the squeeze on Red Hat and other Linux providers and to encourage potential Linux buyers to work with Microsoft and Novell in their new partnership. While there are some nice benefits planned from this agreement between the two companies, the important take-home point from the entire deal is the one implicated above in the quote: if you don't go through us, we may sue you.

To further amplify Microsoft's real intension of doing just that, the company surprised and upset Novell only a few weeks later with a claim that Linux infringes Microsoft's patents. As if you didn't see this coming, right?

What does all of this mean to you Mac pros? Firstly, it likely means Microsoft is hedging its bets with rise of Linux while cautiously keeping its eye on Apple and Google. The impact on the Mac user is nothing at the moment. Apple and Microsoft have patent-sharing agreements dating back to 1997. And we all know who is copying and possibly infringing on patents these days (and it isn't Apple). Reference.

Autodesk files suit with Open Design Alliance over DWG

Analysis: When Autodesk changed the DWG file format for AutoCAD 2007 and began licensing a DWG kit (API) of its own to compete directly with the Open Design Alliance, the writing was really on the wall. This was a company that was setting up for possible law suits against its competitors for reverse-engineering its proprietary file format DWG. There is really nothing astonishing about this story. Especially when placed into the current context of "digital rights management" and the protectionism of digital content brought about by the MP3 and online film industries.

Autodesk created the TrustedDWG™ technology because the company claims that in ongoing testing, support calls and error reporting, Autodesk was dealing with DWG files that had been edited or "saved" by non-AutoCAD or non-RealDWG™ applications. Allow me to illustrate the problem Autodesk had and is having:

Company 'K' uses AutoCAD 2007 to create a file 'F'. They send this file 'F' to company 'X' who reads it into a non-Autodesk application, edits it and saves the data back to DWG. Company 'K' may now have data integrity problems, according to Autodesk. Hence the company initiated the TrustedDWG functionality in AutoCAD 2007. With that product an 'incoming' DWG file that was produced by or last saved by a non-Autodesk product, would be identified and a warning would alert the AutoCAD 2007 user that they may be opening a file that may cause instability issues.

But is this really a problem Autodesk is having or a tactic to scare users into thinking that any DWG from an Autodesk competitor is somehow a threat to their data's integrity?

According to the Open Design Alliance "TrustedDWG" is nothing more than a marketing name for a "series of secret codes used by AutoCAD to detect DWG files that were written by applications from companies other than Autodesk." The latest version of the ODA code libraries for software developers can write files that are "transparently accepted" by AutoCAD as 'trusted'."

Thus the lawsuit. Autodesk is terribly unhappy that the Open Design Alliance (ODA) has figured out a way to thwart their attempts to malign what is essentially the rest of the industry's 'DWG production' in products that compete with Autodesk products.

How does this affect the Mac Pro? Mac CAD and 3D professionals are users of many products that contain DWG libraries from the ODA. Not just Mac but other PC-based professionals need to reliably share and collaborate on DWG files using applications other than those created by Autodesk. The bigger immediate question here is how the ODA is going to fight this lawsuit, a suit against a company that is the giant in the CAD world. Randall Newton at AECNews.com has the full reports.