Don't ask me who this dude is or how this piece below makes any sense -- I surely don't get it. But hey it's on the Internet, so it must be true. He says that because of patent deals Free Software won't be free anymore. Great news!
ITC594 Research Blog:
Microsoft the software giant has highly patented its software products. Up until 2005, Microsoft has filed around 3,500 and registered over 1,500 patents (Microsoft cited in Parloff 2007, p.51) . As I myself works at a legal firm, I know that patents are very costly and not many sole proprietors can afford to patent their inventions. Many software developers has more or less included Microsoft's patented components in their products. Microsoft demanded them to pay the licence fees. For example, the Microsoft-Novell deal, Microsoft and Novell not only agreed to jointly develop and market products that allow Windows and Linux to work together more smoothly but also, Microsoft agreed to indemnify Novell Suse Linux Enterprise users from patent claims (Lemon 2007). This is definitely not a good news to the users. As a result, free software will not be free anymore. Probably, this is even a bad news to corporate users like AIG, Wal-Mart, AIG, and Goldman Sachs.
