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Microsoft's Patent Pledge "Worse Than Useless"
munchola writes "The Software Freedom Law Center has declared that Microsoft's patent pledge to open source developers is 'worse than useless'. SFLC chief technology officer, Bradley Kuhn, has written to FOSS developers warning them that 'developers are no safer from Microsoft patents now than they were before'. According to Kuhn: 'The patent covenant only applies to software that you develop at home and keep for yourself; the promises don't extend to others when you distribute. You cannot pass the rights to your downstream recipients, even to the maintainers of larger projects on which your contribution is built.'"
This is getting worse than Zune news.
No one writing about this knows any more of the details than what was released to the press. At best all of this is blind supposition and wasted mental bandwidth.
If all of the effort that went into these various prognostications of impending doom had been spent on coding we'd all be a lot better off.
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
Haven't the fanbois here continually told us that MS would never sue anybody for patents and that they patents were for defensive purposes only? Where are those shills and astro turfers now?
evil is as evil does