[Discuss] MS's patent pledge + commentary

[Manfred Moser]

Hi!

It has been very interesting following you discussions and the 
discussions on growlaw, slashdot and a lot of other places.
 
Just some remarks.

On Thursday November 9 2006 23:49, Thor Heinrichs-Wolpert wrote:
> So let me understand the logic.
>
> Yesterday you would get your butt sued off if you violated a M$
> patent.  Possibly tomorrow you can still get your butt sued off if
> you use a M$ patent.
>
> You feel cheated that in essence ... nothing has changed.

Arguably things have changed. There is a safety net setup for 
individual developers in isolation bla bla bla.. so there is more 
smoke and mirror around than there was before. As long as you 
understand that it is that and nothing else all is good.

> Now II could start to argue that the Apache license is more open
> than the GPL which has been co-opted by dual-license schemes like
> mySQL uses, 

I underdstand that. 

> or leveraged to keep non-certified jBoss users from 
> profiting ...

but not that. What do you mean? All jboss stuff is LGPL licenced (not 
apache). What do you mean by non-certified users .. 

As far as I know JBoss is somehow weirdly leveraging the trademark 
ownership.. so you can not advertise being a JBoss consultant unless 
you are certified by them because they own the trademark.

And in terms of licencing the LGPL allows you do use it pretty much 
any way including commercially. All you have to do is give back any 
modifications of JBoss stuff... but you are not forced to LGPL or GPL 
licences your stuff leveraging the libraries. In my understanding 
ideal and what Apache says happens because of user wisdom (sort 
of... ).

> So educate and elucidate, but its hard for me to get so negatively
> excited when nothing really has changed for me, since I already
> have to avoid patents of M$ and others in my code, which becomes
> harder every day.

I agree. Lets just see and wait how it pans out. The questions mostly 
is... will M$ start to sue its users like SCO did ;-) 

-- 
Manfred Moser
Vancouver Island Java User Group
http://www.mosabuam.com/vijug
skype: mosabua
http://www.linkedin.com/in/manfredmoser