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.'"

Not the Novell Deal

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Note, this article is not talking about the deal with Novell as almost every post thus far has assumed. It mentions that deal, as something still being researched. This is about MS's recent promise/contract to not sue hobbyists for patent violations.

There's already a (correct) way to open a patent.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called 'dedicating' it. No restrictions.

It shows people people that your patent was only filed to prevent other people from patenting the idea and causing trouble. People tend to look very favorably on dedications.

For isolated, uncompensated, unimportant developer

[Anonymous Coward]

From the Bradley M. Kuhn's Letter [softwarefreedom.org]:

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.

Groklaw also raised questions about Novell's deal [groklaw.net]:

Novell here is stepping outside the line of fire and agreeing with Microsoft that *end users* are the ones that you must go after in any patent infringement dispute. Shades of SCOsource. Thanks for nothing, Novell. More questions: When were Novell SUSE customers asked if they wished Novell to negotiate a agreement with Microsoft on their behalf? When were Novell SUSE customers asked about the terms of said agreement? What consideration does Microsoft get from Novell's customers? Does negotiating this agreement on Novell's customers' behalf indicate that Novell assumed Power of Attorney for their customers in this matter? Did Novell truly represent the best interest of their customers using Power of Attorney? Can Novell legally assume Power of Attorney for their customers without a written grant? Do Novell customers have the ability to "opt-out" of this agreement? Is this agreement binding on customers?

Re:Surprised?

[ClickOnThis]

Unfortunately, a whole lot of people have been writing code and assigning copyright over to Novell, which is now basically no better than writing and assigning copyright over to Microsoft...

But if Novell released said code under the GPL, then the genie is out of the bottle. Stick with the code that pre-dates the agreement between MS and Novell, and I think you're okay.

Oh, and stop contributing code to Novell.

Actually, it IS part of the Novell deal

[SpammersAreScum]

In this case, R(ing)TFA may have been a mistake, as I can see where you could get your misunderstanding from it. If you go to the source [softwarefreedom.org], though, you'll see this is part of the Novell deal. The actual letter starts:

Last Thursday, Novell and Microsoft announced a new collaborative effort involving both licensing and technology. The Software Freedom Law Center has been following the situation, and as its CTO, I've held a particular interest in how it will impact Free Software developers. One result of the agreement, Microsoft's patent pledge to developers, has received significant interest from the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) development community. A careful examination of Microsoft's Patent Pledge for Non-Compensated Developers reveals that it has little value.

(Emphasis mine)

Re:No Suit Promised where No Suit Possible

[Miseph]

The point is that whether it has ever been successfully prosecuted or not is unimportant. Technically, you can be sued for infringing patents even if you never distribute the infringing item(s).

From Wikipedia: "In United States law, an infringement may occur where the defendant has made, used, sold, offered to sell, or imported an infringing invention or its equivalent." Making and/or using an infringing product is infringement. It may be unlikely that you will ever be sued for it (since it is so unlikely that any relevant patent holders would ever find out), but you COULD be.

I'm sure that there is some case of this happening. Look into patents on esoteric manufacturing equipment, or on early "instant" communication devices (Wikipedia's article on patent infringement [wikipedia.org] specifically mentions Morse and the telegraph). I'm sure that somewhere is a case where a patent was infringed upon by somebody who had no intention of ever selling it, but just wanted to make their own.