I was just reading Alec’s assessment of Microsoft’s angling about alleged infringements of its intellectual property by Linux, and I was inspired to write the following list of things that would happen if Microsoft were actually awarded an injunction against Linux:

- Half the web sites on the Net would have to be shut down

- Half the information appliances, firewalls, and routers we all own would have to be retired

- Red Hat’s share price would plummet

- Novell would become a Microsoft takeover target vis a vis damages

- BSD would be immediately at risk of attack, putting Apple on the hot seat

- All those Linux-based gsm/wifi devices I’ve been drooling over would be in question

- Steve Ballmer would enrage the hacker community to no end

- Half of all the O’Reilly books sold would now be obsolete

- Every Asterisk phone system I’ve ever put in would become a liability

- Google would be in trouble

- Yahoo would be in trouble

- IBM would countersue

- Eric Allman and the rest of the free software crowd would probably march on Redmond, pitchforks and torches in hand

- The GPL would get a really serious re-write, which is in progress now anyway (v3)