Linux.com

Whether this specific or other future related MS XML patent claims are legally valid or not, the ISB is still having people sign onto this Microsoft drafted "patent" license that does restrict ones ability to use and/or later reclaim legal rights regardless of the patent validity. Since there were no patent applications filed at the time, I had considered this action in part an effort to try and claim it is somehow 'normal industry practice' to license XML formats, and therefore using those that agreed to this license in advance as 'proof' of this industry acceptance and a foundation for later efforts such as their very recent patent filings. One might even draw a comparison to SCO trying to get people to sign licenses based on claims they have neither established, nor are likely ever to successfully do so. I think in general the danger of patent on content and access to content in potentially mandated government standards is very clear, even before looking at the specific situation of why this particular case is uniquely bad.

I am not Danish or even from Europe, and I think there is some confusion on this based on yours and anothers comment. After reading what they added to the end of my article, "David Sugar is a GNU maintainer and frequent conference speaker on free software issues based in Europe." I understand this confusion. This probably could have been more correctly stated as "David Sugar is a GNU maintainer and a frequent speaker on free software issues at conferences based in Europe." or something similar. Perhaps the editorial staff could fix that.

David Sugar

dyfet at gnu.org

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