[ Thanks to Grigor Gatchev for this
link. ]
“There is a lot of discussion around the new Microsoft premise
to offer freely documentation about its protocols and interfaces,
and to not sue developers who use it to create code for
non-commercial goals, even if they violate Microsoft patents. Some
people think that this is done to avoid further pressure from the
European Commission. It could be so–but there could be also a
different rationale for it.“The former approach of Microsoft–threatening to crush the top
FOSS projects by litigation–was stillborn. It was clear that the
total weight of the IT powerhouses behind The Linux
Foundation–IBM, Sun, Oracle, Google etc–is greater than that of
Microsoft, and that they will fight for it, knowing that this could
be their last opportunity to defend themselves. So, Bill Gates
didn’t even try it…”