Microsoft Settlement Compliance Criticized. Jeremy Allison – Samba Team writes “A report on the Microsoft “release” of … [Slashdot]
Maybe the mythological Microsoft Brain Implant is working overtime, but I just can’t see what the fuss is about. This part of the settlement was to balance two things: one, allow market competition to have wire compatibility for their products and two, continue to have incentives for Microsoft to build new useful protocols. The compromise was RAND licensing, meaning (for what I can understand) that Microsoft can not discriminate among the different companies that licensing the protocol and to have reasonable terms for said licence. (For a feel what reasonable terms means see this zdnet article about a seperate RAND licence issue.) If Red Hat wants to use the protocols, they are free to license them, and release a product with that knowledge, but I don’t see why it should have to be completely free. Microsoft often gives away a ton of IP and work when it makes sense, but there are times when it’s better to try to license it. I guess it sucks for RedHat that they can’t incorporate Free Software into a product that uses the licenced tech, but then that’s a limitation of thier using the GPL (and why Microsoft continues to avoid it like the plague). I’ll worry more when a party like Sun or IBM says that they have issues.