[Gllug] Re: MS goes IBM patent type business

[Rob Crowther]

I just found this on the Microsoft website:

"Report: Microsoft XML Reference Schema Patent Licensing Encourages 
Software Development

Eric Stasik, a former director of patents and licensing at Ericsson, 
discusses why the Microsoft XML Reference Schema Patent license promotes 
industry-wide acceptance and fosters software development. In his 
report, Stasik explains why the Microsoft XML Reference Schema Patent 
license is more attractive to developers than those offered by Apache 
and others—and how free software may cost small developers more than 
they think. Purchase the full report from Althos Publishing."

http://www.microsoft.com/office/xml/default.mspx

Though when you get to the page selling the 'report' it seems it's more 
about generating revenue from patents than anything else.  There is 
apparently a comparison between Microsoft's Schema license and the 
Apache license, the M$ bit has 14 subsections whereas the Apache bit 
only warrants 5 sections, three of which seem to be more about M$ than 
Apache...

Obviously a 'funded by M$' report then, but I wondered if anyone had 
looked at this Office 2003 XML Reference Schema Patent License?  It 
seems they are explicitly granting you permission to work with Office 
2003 file formats, providing you insert the legal notice in your code, 
which indicates you've 'accepted the terms and conditions of this 
license.'  So their angle is presumeably that they've made Office have 
an open file format and they only reason they've been able to do that is 
because of software patents?

Rob
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