Microsoft Gives Xandros Users Patent Protection

DigDuality writes "Microsoft, shrugging off licensing moves to prevent it from repeating its controversial patent deal with Novell, has signed a set of broad collaboration agreements with Linux provider Xandros that include an intellectual property assurance under which Microsoft will provide patent covenants for Xandros customers."

Comments

Re:I don't, and I'll tell you why

[ClosedSource]

"All the people who've been saying "MS has something else up it's sleeve; just wait for it..." have just been vindicated, I believe."

It appears that MS had the same thing up its sleeve. I didn't see many people predicting that MS was going to make further agreements with other Linux distributors.

The fact is that if you develop FOSS software as a volunteer, somebody else is profiting from your work and it's only going to get worse. If you're OK with that, fine. If not, welcome to the big, bad, greedy world.

Re:How much were they paid?

[denobug]

Do they really? Which version should we standardize on, then?

The cheapest one they found. Before office 2007 the small changes in Word and Excel are not too visible to the end users. Other word processing Suites can claim that they are similar, but again to a lot of people, they are not the same. (Unless the software "copies" MS's navigation style. And in this case, they are liable of being sued of the content, as the copyright law today would dictate).