This is interesting, and perhaps a new watershed moment for Microsoft’s handling of Open Source.
Up until now,
The various patents underlying various technologies Microsoft open sourced and publicly licensed were placed in a holding company Microsoft created.
Many people wondered whether that truly conveyed “open sourced and publicly licensed” because although Microsoft no longer owned the patents directly, Microsoft still controlled the entity that owned the patents.
Joining OIN is a substantial step because there is no question that patent ownership and control has been fully relinquished, the patents are controlled by an entity Microsoft has no real control over (that I know of). And, I’d expect that based on what Microsoft has open sourced up until now, I’d expect that a great many of these patents are very valuable.
Now, I wonder what other company is willing to take the same step,
Microsoft has already become a powerhouse in contributing to open source for several years…
A couple examples are that it’s Microsoft’s contributions that finally pushed SAMBA 4 across the line to reality, and has made made major contributions to the world’s most used web framework, jQuery. I’ve heard that major pieces of dotNET will soon be open source and publicly licensed as well.
Could Microsoft also eventually become the prime public example of open source?
TSU
Woww staggering stuff i have not seen this before was sitting in my condominiumwhen i came accross this so had to delve in and see what i could find after a bit of searching i managed to find what i was looking for so appreciated for bringing this to my attention