According to Bill Hilf, general manager of platform strategy, Microsoft is not planning to litigate against open source after all. In an interview for Infoworld he says:
Our strategy from everyone in the company — from [Steve] Ballmer to Brad Smith to me and everyone in between — has always been to license and not litigate as it relates to our intellectual property. So we have no plans to litigate. You can never say we’ll never do anything in the future, but that’s not our strategy.
I am not surprised – for the reasons I stated earlier. Of course, the other side of the coin is that if Microsoft doesn’t intend to enforce its patents, then all this patent waving is little more than bluster. It is shadow-boxing. We will see plenty more of it on both sides.
Did you read the quote you posted here? He doesn’t say we won’t enforce patents. He says we won’t sue you if you pay.
He also says they might sue in the future.
MS is run by the most unethical sleazy business people on the planet.
Of course. And the quote I used for the title of the post is an exact quote from Hilf.
If you think about it, no company can come out and say “we won’t ever enforce our patents”. That would make them of no value. That’s why I call it shadow boxing.
Tim
“MS is run by the most unethical sleazy business people on the planet.”
Ahem. I think you’ll find that the people who originally lifted the lid on the Pandora’s Box of software patents were in fact Apple. And when it comes to sleaze, try asking Enron’s employees if they give a damn about software patents.