14 DAY TRIAL // After it seemed that Microsoft made the first move against the free and open source ecosystem, following public allegations of patent infringement, the Redmond Company revealed that the situation is not exactly how it seems. Bill Hilf, Microsoft's General Manager of Platform Strategy explained that the company is not gunning after free and open source software, but that instead "it's about commercial companies working together around IP issues - it's business as usual."
The past week, Microsoft announced that no less than 235 open source solutions were violating patents on various of its products. But this is nothing more than business as usual for Microsoft, just as Bill Hilf and Sam Ramji stated on port 25: "It's not us versus the free world," contradicting the initial intellectual property violation allegations made by Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith and Vice President of Intellectual Property and Licensing Horacio Gutierrez.
"Gartner believes that Microsoft will not seek to litigate patent claims against users. Instead, we think the company will attempt to pressure technology providers to come to the table and negotiate an equitable licensing or royalty arrangement in instances where Microsoft can prove its claims of infringement. Microsoft thinks it can best deal with the issue of open-source patent infringement by creating partnerships (such as the agreement it entered into with Novell). However, the Free Software Foundation (FSF) has strenuously objected to these efforts and has attempted to foreclose on future agreements with its proposed addition to the GNU General Public License v.3," stated a group of Gartner analysts.
Microsoft informed that the company's approach to intellectual property issues has not changed in any way and that the strategy certainly does not involve "frivolous litigation or fear." Instead Microsoft is looking to extend an IP bridge to work around lawsuits, by offering licensing agreements to commercial distribution software companies.
"Microsoft was created by developers, for developers and is only successful through developers and customers. Developers who write Open Source software are participating in a worldwide community of practice and a spirit of collaboration. These are noble characteristics and Microsoft both applauds and supports this work. We will work with commercial and non-commercial developers to increase the availability and quality of open source on Windows and interoperability with Windows. Where we have unique and valuable intellectual property (as indicated by our high scores on the science strength of our patents) we will seek to license it to commercial entities (such as Samsung and Fuji Xerox)," Hilf added.