"Microsoft will covenant not to sue open source developers for development and non-commercial distribution of implementations of these Open Protocols."
Once again, Microsoft do their very best to undermine the GPL by discriminating between 'commercial' and 'non-commercial' distribution.
If you ascribe value to software patents, then it seems fair to say "If you are going to use this commercially, you can license our patents under RAND terms: a free card is given to non-commercial use." I guess the "WHO PAYS?" question is, does the author have to pay, or does the distributor? If I write some software (OK, lets be more realistic here. If Perry writes some software) using these specs, release it non-commercially, and Red Hat/Canonical/whoever want to include it in their commercially supported distribution, do they each have to pay the license? Does that grant the right for continued use down the line? I'm not sure how this could be resolved while still working within patent law. Craig