On Thu, Feb 21, 2008 at 03:37:09PM -0500, Craig Box wrote:
"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."
The GNU GPL does not allow you to distribute software (licensed under the GPL of course) if you can't give it to everyone on the same terms that you got it. This means if the software is covered by a patent, even if you're covered for the patent you can't give it to anyone unless everyone is also covered for it. John