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An Empty Promise Home
I was reading about some new "promise" that Microsoft supposedly made, but in Linux-libre
reading the details I see it as much ado about nothing. Here are the points they made:
• Microsoft will always adhere to the promises it has made to standards
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organizations to make its standard essential patents available on fair,
reasonable and nondiscriminatory terms. How To
Well, duh. This isn't anything more than saying they'll respect the commitment they Articles
made in order to participate in the standard-setting process to begin with. The world
should expect nothing less, so this isn't anything special. Moving on.
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• This means that Microsoft will not seek an injunction or exclusion order
against any firm on the basis of those essential patents. About Me
But that doesn't mean they won't use other patents to do exactly that. Sounds nice, Contact Me
but means nothing if you think about it.
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• This also means that Microsoft will make those essential patents available for
license to other firms without requiring that those firms license their patents
back to Microsoft, except for any patents they have that are essential to the If you appreciate any of the things I
same industry standard. am doing you can make a donation.
Well, of course. With these so called "RAND" licenses (which is really a misnomer),
they're already required to offer the license to anyone anyway so just like the first
bullet, this doesn't mean anything beyond following their previously-made
commitment.
• Microsoft will not transfer those standard essential patents to any other firm
unless that firm agrees to adhere to the points outlined above.
More of the same: They're continuing to follow the commitment they made to
partiticpate in the standard-setting process to begin with.
In closing, the whole thing is an empty promise, and nothing in their announcement
has changed anything. If Microsoft truly wanted to change things they'd be in favor of
eliminating software patents entirely, but they haven't said that. So we should expect
nothing less than for Microsoft to continue their patent attacks against the free
software community.
Copyright © 2012 Jason Self. See license.shtml for license conditions. Please copy and share.