[Gllug] Microsoft announces deals with Lynux !

[Adrian McMenamin]

On Sat, 2006-11-04 at 11:22 +0000, Richard Jones wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 04, 2006 at 11:12:03AM +0000, Alain Williams wrote:
> > On Sat, Nov 04, 2006 at 11:08:05AM +0000, Richard Jones wrote:
> > 
> > > I say again, what are the patents?  Patent numbers please.  Until then
> > > this is all FUD.
> >
> > The trouble is that it makes sense for many companies to pay the 10K
> > ''protection money'' that the patent racketeers demand - since this
> > will be cheaper than paying barristers to argue for you.
> 
> For companies perhaps, but for individual developers paying 10K (or
> even 1K) is most often not an option.  That is why this is all FUD
> until we know what patents they're talking about.  Everyone's going
> around saying that Microsoft "own" OpenXML yet there is surprisingly
> no analysis whatsoever involving actual patent numbers.  I think this
> is classic (and brilliant) FUD on Microsoft's part.  You've got to
> hand it to them.  Read Microsoft's "Convenant not to sue"
> [http://www.microsoft.com/office/xml/covenant.mspx].
> 

I still don't see how any of this is an issue on this side of the
Atlantic. If the US wants to turn its back on the potential of FOSS then
that is Europe's opportunity (cf stem cell research).

And, if the GPL cannot protect us from any of the bad stuff then what
was the point of it anyway? I think we *will* be protected. Not that
anybody is likely to be using my Dreamcast device drivers in any
commercial distribution anyway :)

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