“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…“It’s worse than useless, as this empty promise can create a
false sense of security. Don’t be confused by the illusion of a
truce; developers are no safer from Microsoft patents now than they
were before. Instead, Microsoft has used this patent pledge to
indicate that, in their view, the only good Free Software developer
is an isolated, uncompensated, unimportant Free Software
developer…”
Web Webster has more than 20 years of writing and editorial experience in the tech sector. He’s written and edited news, demand generation, user-focused, and thought leadership content for business software solutions, consumer tech, and Linux Today, he edits and writes for a portfolio of tech industry news and analysis websites including webopedia.com, and DatabaseJournal.com.
LinuxToday is a trusted, contributor-driven news resource supporting all types of Linux users. Our thriving international community engages with us through social media and frequent content contributions aimed at solving problems ranging from personal computing to enterprise-level IT operations. LinuxToday serves as a home for a community that struggles to find comparable information elsewhere on the web.
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