The Microsoft-TomTom patent case is evidence that Microsoft;s patent-licensing policies are untenable for open-source software program vendors.That;s the conclusion my ZDNet blogging colleague Jason Perlow arrived to in his must-read post this week on theTomTom case.Perlow along with a growing number of other bloggers and reporters have looked much more deeply in to the particulars with the eight Microsoft patents on which Redmond claimed final week (through two lawsuits) TomTom;s GPS method infringes. Three of those patents entail Linux and Body fat,
Microsoft Office 2007 Standard Key, the file-allocation table technologies for which Microsoft holds a patent.Lots of several consumer-electronics vendors have incorporated Fat in to the running programs that energy their devices and SD cards. Microsoft has managed to obtain a handful of them — including other GPS-system makers Alpine,
Windows 7 Home Premium Product Key, Kenwood and Pioneer — to sign (and pay for) Fat patent licenses. But TomTom has declined so far to follow suit.Perlow surfaced a blog comment by open-source champion and Samba principal Jeremy Allison in which Allison noted the damned if they do/damned if they don;t choice that companies like TomTom are facing:“It isn’t a case of cross-license and everything is ok. If Tom Tom or any other company cross licenses patents then by section 7 of GPLv2 (for the Linux kernel) they lose the rights to redistribute the kernel *at all*.“Microsoft has been going around and doing these patent cross licensing deals with companies under NDA’s so they never come to light for *years*.”Indeed,
Office 2007 Professional Key, Microsoft and its patent cross-licensing partners — of which there are hundreds of companies of all sizes and in both customer and business segments — seldom call out which patents are involved,
office 2010 professional, the dollar-size or particulars of those deals. But it;s looking more and much more like the open sourcers are right and TomTom is the canary in the Linux-patent coal mine.What;s your prediction as to what will happen next in the Microsoft-TomTom case?