Microsoft interviews its friend from the Linux world...
Open Source Evolutionary
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| Some people say the drawback to Mono is the saber rattling from Microsoft
| about patent, and that it doesn't support the latest versions of .NET. What
| is your relationship like with Microsoft these days?
|
| [Miguel:] So, I have two positions, and one is speaking as the person
| managing the Mono team, and then there is another answer speaking as a Novell
| vice president. So from the position of the open source community -- a
| position not attached to Novell -- we as any other software project are aware
| that software patents are a problem. We don't like them. We think they're bad
| for the industry, but we know that we need to abide by that system. So we
| have a very strict policy, that we'll not knowingly introduce patented code
| into the Mono code base. If somebody raises an issue with us about a patent,
| or that we're infringing on their code base, we'll be more than happy to
| either do an investigation to see if there's prior art that will invalidate a
| patent claim, or basically re-implement the same functionality using a
| different approach. Or, if worse comes to worse, removing the code from Mono.
| And I think that's pretty much the same rule that every open source project
| has to use.
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http://reddevnews.com/qandas/article.aspx?editorialsid=115
Another classic patent troll (cited in Groklaw)...
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| The present invention relates to an information system, comprising an input
| device, a presentation device, a processing unit and a database with an
| address register for storing address information, such as name, address,
| telephone and telefax numbers, for legal and/or natural persons, said system
| providing structured access to said address information.
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http://v3.espacenet.com/textdes?DB=EPODOC&IDX=SE521093&F=0&QPN=SE521093
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