It's like a war situation, a country may prefer to buy arms than to struggle for a peace compromise even knowing that it will certainly loose more than gain with the war. The key issue is to see a possibility of gathering forces to struggle for peace: in the social trap situation, countries don't see this possibility. In our case maybe companies like Red Hat and Google don't see how they could strive for something they see so remotely possible (or rather independent of their actions) like software patent abolition. In addition I believe that for these companies — as well as for the countries mentioned — there is a fear that an anti-software patent action could reduce the chances of having their software applications accepted, which they need — as they say — for defense (in the proposed analogy it would be as if an arm dealer would refuse to sell weapons to countries which appear to be willing to stop the war).

If we accept this view, here is what can be done. A some entities like FFII, FSF, EFF can act as a grouping catalyst breaking this social trap, showing objectively that there is a way to collectively fight against what is bad for most actors: software patents in our case. In my opinion, instead of blaming these companies it is perhaps more likely to have their collaboration by proposing a double game. Yes, you can continue to apply for patents and use them defensively if you consider that so important. But at the same time do not abandon the most important battle which is to join forces abolish the madness of this system (which will abolish even the patents you are today applying for…)

So though I am very happy to read your blaming, I believe that it is easier to get an effective action plan by suggesting a double (cynical?) strategy of these companies. That is what I tell to the diplomats I meet.

Remember that IBM is making a substansial amount of money via direct licensing of their software patents.

Furthermore, patenting offers a competitive advantage for firms who wants to offer Linux support, as clients could see "patent protection" as an interesting protection compared to firms that do not offer that. Novell thought Linux customers were asking for that.

And compared to Ubuntu, Novell patent protection can be seen as a competitive difference by certain CIOs/CTOs.

Do you think patenting is profitable? I doubt so.

http://www.patent-commons.org/commons/patentsearch.php?searchSubmit=Find&formType=results

Everyone understands why Microsoft seeks patents and invests richly to keep the system going. Everyone understands the motives of patent lawyers, of patent trolls. Everyone understands that people who's business depends on patents would be bitterly opposed to abolition.

In 2003 I wrote that the software industry was splitting into those who understood the future, and those stuck in the past. The rift between these two sides seems huge today.

Yet why are firms like IBM, Sun, Google, and Red Hat investing in software and business method patents, when the ethical and economic arguments clearly show that such patents can help the owner only at a cost to all society.

More to the point, why are these firms, which depend on the goodwill of the FOSS community, silent on the subject. Silent on the patents they own. Silent on the real threats to Linux and FOSS applications¹

For me, the greatest threat to the Abolitionist movement is not the "bad guys" who wear black hats and do stupid things like suing RIM, or TomTom. It is the "good guys", who silently collect patents, allow the Community to be scared into accepting that these "defensive" patents are necessary, and who keep a blanket of silence over the public discussion of software patent abolition.

And those who allow this, from the best motives, are part of the conspiracy. Those who invest in projects like Peer-to-Patent are part of the conspiracy. Those who write how OIN is a great achievement, how various "promises not to sue" are sufficient to waive all concern… it is these good willed people who are the problem.

The work - and greatest success - of the FFII has been to bring the issue of software patents into the public mind but it is an uphill struggle. Everywhere, people prefer not to confront this. They see Abolition as an overtly political issue. An extremist, uncomfortable issue that is bad for business at best, and suicidally stupid at worst.

In 2009, despite wide-spread understanding of the problems software patents cause, Abolition is still not on the political agenda. The large FOSS firms continue to invest in software patents and ignore opportunities for political reform. When opportunities do present themselves, these firms try to stop "business method patents" but not software patents.

Why is this? I think it is because these firms are deeply tied into the software patent system: they profit from it, and they enjoy the silence that allows them to build large "defensive" patent portfolios. There is also an element of elitism. The large firms, with their portfolios, can dominate the market and define the rules. They can absorb the pain of trolls. Mosquitoes. They can develop the patents into profitable licensing models. We are seeing the emergence of a new kind of open source, properly patented for its own protection. It may be Open, but it is not Free.

It is time to end the conspiracy of silence and force the discussion on the ethics of patenting software and business methods. No matter if this hurts firms who have invested in FOSS. No matter if this creates division and no matter if it is "bad for business".

What is patented by Microsoft is still software, in the same sense that what patented by BASF is chemistry.

Um, yes, that's a tautology. But there are several big differences:

1. Chemistry is limited by the laws of physics, software is not, it is limited by the limits of Turing machines and, because of this, are mathematics and pure thought.
2. Software does not have a specific form, can be represented in an uncountable number of ways and generally can be applied to infinite domains. The chemistry example you have has two parts, a process for synthesis and a final product. You may be able to avoid a patent on a particular chemical synthesis but you will not be able to avoid the design patent on the final product because is has a specific, well-defined form since it is made up of the same units: atoms. The same cannot be said about software. Take for example the "backing store" patent, the algorithm can be expressed in an uncountable number of ways and the final products take no particular form. Although you are not supposed to be able to patent "total concept" this is exactly what software patents grant.
3. Software patents serve as a benefit to only two parties: patent lawyers and wealthy patent portfolio holders. Otherwise they are a needless drain on society because they consume financial resources that has to be eventually be paid for by the market without actually benefiting society. They are black holes: monies pour in and nothing comes out. If you're about to counter this by saying that "something comes out: we got the software", no, we would have gotten the software anyway. The problems that the software solves would have existed anyway, somebody, or more accurately, somebodies would have created one or more variants of the software that solves the problem. Society gets no benefit, software patents should be voided and all patents that smell of software patents rejected as a matter of procedure.

Also, I thought it was illegal to patent things that are OBVIOUS "inventions"

It's not "illegal" per-se, it is just that a patent application for something somehow deemed obvious should be rejected.

what if someone once decided to patent the wheel, or the book?

An Australian patent lawyer in fact did patent the wheel a few years ago to point out that the Australian patent system is broken to the core (he's never claimed anything on his patent). This is known in the "the biz" as "total concept" and is part of the litmus test for patentability. But it is EXACTLY this (total concept) that is being patented in the case of software patents.

FSF should acknowledge that these are free software licenses

It appears from this that these licenses actually conform to all the definitions of both "open source" and "free software". You could say they create a separate pool of "franchiseware" much in the same way as existing licenses create GNU franchiseware or later licenses like those of Netscape and Sun tried to create their respective franchiseware universes.

Btw why do I have to post anonymously although I'm logged in?
And why don't I get any preview when clicking that button?

On June 5 1869, The Economist wrote, "It is probable enough that the patent laws will be abolished ere long."

The patent debate in the 19th century

In 1872, after thirty years of investigation into the patent system by the UK government, and demands for its abolition from senior politicians and economists, a patent reform bill was passed that reduced patent protection to seven years, forced stricter examination of patents, caused patents to be forfeited if not worked after two years, and forced compulsory licensing of all patents.

Switzerland was, at this time, the only industrial country in Europe that had not adopted a patent system. In 1863, after rejecting four proposals for a patent system, the legislature declared that the principle of patent protection was "pernicious and indefensible".

In the Netherlands, in July 1869 the debate around the workability of the patent laws and the difficulties of reforming them, while keeping all parties happy, ended in the complete repeal of the patent law and the end - for many decades - of the patent system in that country.

In 1873, with a severe depression in Europe and the weakening of the free trade movement, patent advocates were able, with a strong propaganda campaign, to silence their opponents.

The UK withdrew its patent bill in 1874. Germany passed a patent law in 1877. Switzerland held out until 1887¹, after pressure from other countries who branded Switzerland a "pirate nation" and threatened trade sanctions. The Netherlands finally adopted a new patent law only in 1912².

The four arguments for patents

In the nineteenth century, the defenders of the patent system developed four main arguments to justify the creation of patent rights. These have been used for one hundred and fifty years and are still used today by patent attorneys:

1. Calling on natural law. Inventors have a natural right to their ideas and inventions, which like all property must be exclusive. Society must recognize and protect this right.
2. Appealing to fairness. Exclusive rights to an invention are the most appropriate way to reward inventors for their work.
3. Inducement to innovate. Inventors will not invent and capitalists will not invest in new inventions, unless they are given exclusive rights to their inventors.
4. Inducement to disclose. Inventors will not publish their secrets, and thus ideas would be lost to society, unless they are granted exclusive rights to their inventors.

It was the French who first decided that ideas were naturally property³. The French patent law of 1791 said, "that every novel idea whose realization or development can become useful to society belongs primarily to him who conceived it, and that it would be a violation of the rights of man in their very essence if an industrial invention were not regarded as the property of its creator."

While the French raised ideas to the status of private property, and called for them to be granted for ever, and hereditary, in 1863 the Germans dismissed intellectual property as an untenable political fabrication.

The first argument depends on accepting the notion of natural law. Prince-Smith, the leading German free-trade economist said, "Any claim for protection of private property is a demand for the intervention of the power of the state, which should follow exclusively the dictate of common welfare. With regard to property in things the dictate of common welfare is firmly established. How is it with regard to the so-called intellectual property, and above all, patents of invention?"

The use of the word "property" to cover ideas was part of the propaganda war to establish patent laws in France in 1791 and again in 1843. The previous, more accurate term was "exclusive privilege", perhaps not the best thing to discuss after the French Revolution.

By the late 1800's the notion that patents derived from natural property rights in ideas was being heavily attacked, especially in Germany, and we saw the second argument evolve.

The Swiss, stubbornly, did not agree that society had a moral obligation to reward inventors. Others pointed out to theory of social origins of inventions to explain why individual inventors did not deserve rewards. Others argued that real inventors had a head start that should give them enough profits to reward their work.

Even those who agreed that inventors needed rewarding, and that competition might wipe-out any head-start advantage too quickly, did not necessarily support patent privileges. The Economist wrote, "…what the community requires is that inventors be rewarded; that skillful men who contribute to the progress of society be well paid for their exertions. The Patent Laws are supported because it is erroneously supposed that they are the means to this end."

The favorite proposed alternative to patents were bonuses paid to inventors by the state, by industry associations, by intergovernmental agencies, or by international industry associations. The bonus system was dismissed as corruptible and arbitrary, and patents - exclusive privilege - was promoted as the best method of delivering fair rewards to inventors.

Others pointed out that with patents it was impossible to ensure the reward went to the real inventor, that rewards were proportional, and impossible to prevent great damage being done to others by the exclusive privilege.

The visible injustices of the patent system meant that the "society's moral obligation to reward inventors" argument was fairly weak. So, the patent advocates formed the argument that exclusive privilege, fair or unfair, was the best way to stimulate invention.

In the mid-1800's, writers claimed that the industrial progress of England and the United States was due to their patent system. Other writers claimed that the progress of Germany and Switzerland was due to their lack of any patent system. In fact any causal relationship is very hard to prove, or disprove. So the argument that patents promote innovation is mainly a thought exercise and works as follows:

1. Industrial progress is desirable;
2. Invention is a necessary part of industrial progress;
3. Not enough invention will happen unless effective incentives are used;
4. Patents are the cheapest and most effective form of incentive.

There are two straight-forward counter arguments to the last two points. First, that invention will occur with or without legislative interference. Second, that patents are not the best and cheapest form of incentive - that prizes, for example, would work better. Either of these two counter-arguments breaks the whole thesis that patents are necessary to industrial progress.

Economists thus began to debate the costs and benefits of the patent system. Some argued that the costs were zero, and the benefits infinite. Others argued that a heavy social cost was unavoidable and the net benefits were negative.

The costs of the patent system are as follows: first, the cost of diverting one's activity away from patented areas towards other domains; second the bureaucratic cost of administering the patent system; third, the economic cost of monopolies sustained by patents; and last, the cost to those unable to use the most efficient processes.

Thus in 1851 the Economist wrote,

The privileges granted to inventors by patent law are prohibitions on other men, and the history of inventions accordingly teems with accounts of trifling improvements patented, that have put a stop, for a long period, to other similar and much greater improvements… Every patent is a prohibition against improvements in a particular direction, except by the patentee, for a certain number of years; and, however beneficial that may be to him who receives the privilege, the community cannot be benefited by it.

For a while, patent advocates argued that the patent system cost nothing. This argument was shown to be wrong: the patent deprived others of the opportunity to evolve and use the same idea that the patentee had, no matter how much they had already invested in it. Exclusive privilege also derived society of the benefits of wider use of the idea.

Another nail in the "incentive to inventors" argument's coffin was the fact that many inventors were employees, or too poor to exploit their inventions without financial help. Thus the "inventor" was often the financier or patent attorney. So the "incentive to invent" theory also has a variant, which is the "incentive to invest", and these two arguments remain the strongest ones used today.

Modern criticism of the patent system thus focuses on its costs and benefits, and economists are now starting to have the tools to actually measure this empirically, with results that match the logical analyses of the mid-19th century.

One last argument of the patent advocates remains: that exclusive privilege is the best incentive to disclose valuable secrets. Even if inventors worked without other incentives or rewards, without strong incentives for disclosure, said patent advocates, inventors might take valuable secrets to the grave and thus rob society of its general fund of technological knowledge.

The post-revolutionary French patent advocates used this explanation to avoid having to defend patents as privileges. Patents, rather than being a privilege, were the result of an fair bargain between inventors and society.

There were (and still are) four objections to this argument. First, since most ideas develop simultaneously and independently in different places, no single disclosure is worth very much. Second, technological secret are very hard to keep for long in any case. Third, when inventors think they can keep their techniques secret, they will not claim patents at all since competitors will be unable to duplicate the technique. Lastly, the patent system creates a disincentive for inventors to publish their ideas early on, since premature publication can ruin the chances of getting patents. So, rather than promote disclosure, the patent system actually hurts it.

Each of these four counter-arguments was used in the 19th century. The Economist wrote that useful inventions depended not on individuals but on general social progress. Many writers argued that most inventions could not be kept secret for long, so the bargain with society was decidedly unfair. The notion that only a few inventions could be kept secret made the third objection all the stronger - the patent system now protected the otherwise unprotected ideas, and did nothing to prompt disclosure of those which could be kept secret. Prince-Smith wrote if the patent system was abolished then "secret and isolated work on inventions would cease and its place would be taken by a cooperation of all qualified talent" and predicted a meritocracy that looks more or less like today's open source software communities.

Historical perspective

Who won the patent arguments of the 19th century? The patent advocates got their patent laws, with a few exceptions. Protectionism, patents and tariffs beat free trade and competition. By the end of the 19th century, the debate over the patent system had ended. Economists turned to other subjects and what had been conjecture and propaganda became dogma and accepted political fact.

Over the last hundred and fifty years, patent lawyers became the "experts" on the patent system, and the sole guardians of its political basis, its economic rationale, its social reason. Independent economic analysis was largely absent, and discouraged. When the patent system moved into the software world, in the last decades of the twentieth century, the four arguments had become almost uncontroversial. Patents were equated, by politicians, with innovation and economic success.

Some even argued that since patents reflect economic activity, it was important to encourage firms to patent more. The argument that patent numbers demonstrate economic muscle underpins political support for the patent system, which has strongly encouraged this way of thinking.

Since the start of the 21st century, as the patent system expands into areas that were as free of patents as were Switzerland or the Netherlands in the late 19th century, the controversy has once again opened.

Initially, opponents of patents have restricted their focus to the software field, where the effects of patents, as a new phenomenon, create a visible contrast.

However, as software patent proponents bring forward their 19th century arguments once more, this time to defend the expansion of the patent system into the field of software, they may find that this time the arguments do not work against software, and thus start to fail for other areas as well.

Commentary

It may be worth while to spend a few words on the status of the authors. Machlup is famous for the report he wrote in 1958, eight years after this widely-referenced article, to advise the US government on patent policy. It contains the famous phrase: "if we did not have a patent system, it would be irresponsible, on the basis of our present knowledge of its economic consequences, to recommend instituting one. But since we have had a patent system for a long time, it would be irresponsible, on the basis of our present knowledge, to recommend abolishing it."

To a large extent this is the FFII position: the patent system, as it exists in pharmaceutical and other industries, is a fact of life, for good or for bad. But the patent system, as it exists in the software world, is a work in progress, a deliberate and patient construction of the patent industry, and this work is, in the words of Machlup, irresponsible. Up until recently, most of the software world was blissfully ignorant of the patent system, and was remarkable for the speed with which it built private legal systems, communities, and markets, and the efficiency with which it lowered transaction costs, showing how a perfect market in services and knowledge could work.

I'd argue that we owe our current global prosperity to the patent-free efficiency of the software world and the bounty of open and free technologies it produced over the last twenty-five years.

Software patents are often claimed, by patent advocates, to be a fact of life. Live with them, we are told. When we question the legitimacy of this view, we are answered with mystical incantations. Here is a quote from a blog comment by an anonymous patent advocate, discussing UK software patents yesterday: "The invention must lie in the effect, not the computer program, for it to be patentable."

This is of course nonsense. It is the language of a shaman intent on control through confusion. Today's economists, mostly nice people who don't look for fights, seem unable to regain the strength of spirit that let them conduct a thirty-year war against the patent advocates during the 19th century. In 1950 there was a great lack of knowledge of the economics of the patent system, and today there still is. The data is there, but research is actively discouraged. We regularly see economists produce remarkable research on the patent system one year, only to be tamed and silenced the next year. The few independent studies stand out in a mostly empty field.

For 150 years the patent industry has, like an advancing glacier, crushed logic and sense under a massive weight of argumentation built on theory built on assumption built on easy self-interest.

Yet in Europe, at least, the debate is not over, and in the US there is a growing movement that is determined to re-open it. The software world is unlike any other that the patent advocates ever entered. It lives and dies on the purest of economic truths. Patents do not co-exist with open standards or with free and open source software.⁴

As software, especially friction-free FOSS technology based on royalty-free open standards, becomes more and more of an essential resource in modern societies, the impact of the patent system on this new technological domain will become intolerable. The patent system is a political construction, and while it has obviously been tenable for a century and a half, we believe that era is coming to a close.

These are short and sweet and cover the use, not the distribution, of Microsoft's source code. They are not compatible with the GPL, indeed they are designed to give the appearance of open source without the substance of free software.

I think, right there, you summed up the rest of your case. Free Software advocates have long been urging people to use the term "Free Software" rather than "Open Source" to describe software that you're free to use. Those who reject the term "Free Software" and then scoff when freedom isn't protected only have their own lexicon to blame.

It comes as NO surprise to me that when Microsoft released an "Open Source" license it still was horribly incompatible with Free Software - they applied for an Open Source license, not a Free Software license. They got what they asked, and the users are still as confined as before.

Viva Libre!

Now we have a similar situation where MS is using underhand tricks to counter Linux which offers an even better level of cost effective interoperability and scalability.

Even though IBM had better functionality, UNIX still won the battle, and mostly through word of mouth and IBM FUD advertising.

Linux is in the same position, and MS should really understand that people don't like winners to be so arrogant, otherwise this author's prediction will come true.

In fact the choice of targets seems to work very well, if you think like Microsoft for a second. Here is what I think we are going to see:

1. Microsoft will, spontaneously, or on request of Novell, come to help the Linux distributor in its suit.
2. After bitter negotiations that involve several games of golf, and more than one nice Kroesian meal, Acacia will settle.
3. Microsoft will pay Acacia a handsome sum, providing Acacia with its war-chest for the Red Hat fight.
4. Acacia's patent claims will now be strengthened, since one party has accepted them.

It's a neat structure. Pump money into Acacia so it can attack Red Hat, and at the same time prove to the world how strong the Microsoft patent shield really is against those naughty, naughty trolls.

If this works with Acacia, perhaps we can expect a scaled-up attack by Intellectual Ventures on Linux users like Google and IBM.

We are, in my opinion, watching the opening battle in what is going to become a global patent war of epic proportions.

The EU Commission steps down in 2009, and any appeal would have taken three years at least, damning Kroes and her department to eternal infamy as the anti-trust team who could not get Microsoft to back down.

Now Kroes can retire with glory, and Microsoft has to start behaving. But as the Las Vegas saying goes, every game has a patsy, and if you don't know who the patsy is, chances are it's you.

Microsoft pays the EU its fine, plus additional costs. It's perhaps a month or two of net profit for the vendor. The EU gets its paper victory. And what about open source?

Let's understand one thing. Microsoft has decided to redefine itself as a friend of open source. It has asked for, and gotten, two OSI-approved licenses. These are short and sweet and cover the use, not the distribution, of Microsoft's source code. They are not compatible with the GPL, indeed they are designed to give the appearance of open source without the substance of free software. I call this "franchiseware", because it's open source you can only use if you are part of Microsoft's global franchise.

So when Microsoft assures the EU that it will be nice to open source, we can understand this to mean, be nice to its franchiseware.

Backing Microsoft's franchiseware are of course its patents. Like a good poker player, Microsoft does not tell us what cards it holds. Probably a large number it does not hold at all, but has given to Intellectual Ventures to sit on. What we do know is that Microsoft's patent promise explicitly excludes GPL'd software.

So, when Kroes said,

Open source software developers use various 'open source' licences to distribute their software. Some of these licences are incompatible with the patent licence offered by Microsoft. It is up to the commercial open source distributors to ensure that their software products do not infringe upon Microsoft's patents. If they consider that one or more of Microsoft's patents would apply to their software product, they can either design around these patents, challenge their validity or take a patent licence from Microsoft.

Then we see a direct attack on the GPL taking shape. I'd not be surprised if Microsoft actually wrote the above words, which appear in a FAQ answer to the question, "Can open source software developers implement patented interoperability information?"

Let's break down this plausible-sounding answer and see what it really says:

1. Microsoft's patent licenses exclude some open source licenses, as we already knew.
2. Microsoft is targetting "commercial open source distributors". What does this mean? Firms like Red Hat don't sell software, but support licenses. So, any firm that sells services backed by open source is liable?
3. The options, if a firm infringes on Microsoft's patents, are the classic ones - design around, go to court, or take a license.

Design around, when we're talking about interoperability? That is surely pure nonsense. Go to court? Yes, that really makes sense. It took the EU Commission almost a decade to lose against Microsoft. So the chances for an ordinary business seem… low. Take a license? Yes, this is the obvious and desirable - for Microsoft - alternative. Kroes tells us how easy and painless this is:

That percentage royalty has become a nominal, one-off payment of Euro 10,000. This is all that has to be paid by companies that dispute the validity or relevance of Microsoft's patents.

Uhm… so if we don't agree with Microsoft's patents - which are illegal under the EPC, no matter how the EPO twists and invents its ludicrous 'interpretations' - we can pay and shut up?

Let's be clear here. Microsoft only has one real, uncompromising enemy. It's not the EU, and not Apple (in which it has a nice stake), nor IBM (both firms actually agree on the need to turn their patents into a tool to tax the FOSS economy), nor Ebay, Amazon, and not even Google. The real enemy of Microsoft is not a company at all, it's a license, the GPLv3.

GPLv3 is the wooden stake aimed directly at Microsoft's vampire heart. It enables a community of software developers and users who are completely protected from the vicious monopoly practices that have destroyed so many businesses over the years. A huge market that Microsoft cannot penetrate. Zero percent penetration. Worse, this economy is rapidly becoming the world's software factory, Linux is becoming the TCP/IP of operating systems, and it's carrying a tidal wave of free and aggressively competitive software that makes Microsoft's old, slow, expensive products look fat and slow, and stupid.

So, Microsoft has decided to bleed the GPL economy dry by:

1. Fragmenting the Linux economy by making patent deals with Linux vendors - TurboLinux, Xandros, and of course, Novell.
2. Starting a proxy-troll patent attack on Red Hat, the leading Linux distributor (it has also attacked Novell but that is probably so that it can ride to Novell's defense). Red Hat refused to make a deal, now it will pay the price.
3. Splitting the open source community away from the free software community, by re-branding itself as an "open source" firm.
4. Announcing that it wants to buy open source firms. Money is the greatest divider ever.
5. Bringing open source projects into its franchise, where they will get protection from Microsoft's patents, in return for using Microsoft's open source licenses.

It's a desperate scheme, because it's guaranteed to backfire in the worst possible way, and surely Microsoft cannot be naive enough to think it'll work.

Here is how Microsoft's plan to kill the GPLv3 is going to backfire.

1. It's going to bring large numbers of people into the "no software patents" camp. Up to now, it's not been clear to most people just how damaging the EPO's practice of allowing software patents has been. The FFII has been saying for a while, "software patents trump anti-trust" but few have understood, until now.
2. It's going to end the license wars. Microsoft have set the stage for a mass migration to, not away from, the GPLv3. Why? Because open source projects that get too close to the beast will shrivel and die like grapes on hot coals.
3. It's going to focus the wrath of an entire community against Microsoft. For the last decade or so, Redmond have not really messed with the FOSS world and the FOSS world has mostly ignored Redmond, apart from a lot of taunting and name-calling. Now, that has changed.

The future of open source and free software will look like this: first, Microsoft will pump money into its franchiseware economy and get very little back. Second, IBM will do the same with its own franchiseware economy (the Apache Foundation) and get a lot more back, because IBM actually understand how this works. Last, all remaining projects will move to the GPL, with a few exceptions. And it's that economy, the one based on formal copyleft licenses, and backed by increasing determination to litigate and defend against litigation, that will prevail.

Like every actor that thinks it's conducting the orchestra, Microsoft is as much a puppet of circumstance as any one of us.