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Comment by mm321 | Hacker News Reader

How does Microsoft benefit from this step?

Definitely a lot of goodwill between patent non-aggression, all of their work in the developer community (VSCode), listening to user feedback (most of the time anyways). Also they gain access to other patents in the OIN. Plus most of their revenue seems to be from cloud and licensing, I'm sure they are making a mint on Office, Windows, and Azure without needing any patent aggression.

I keep asking myself "is this a trojan horse" and the more time goes on, the less I think it is. Maybe they have actually changed for the better.

Yes, this Microsoft does seem to have left much of the Gates and especially Ballmer machinations behind - at least as regards its openness and collaboration.

Microsoft's cash cow is Azure which means the target market are developers so anything that generates good will among devs and puts Microsoft's past further in the back of their minds benefits them.

It encourages people to use Microsoft technologies without having to worry about patents or licensing issues. Ultimately Microsoft probably thinks that the extra Windows licenses will generate more revenue than their patent licenses.

Now that Microsoft is offering a packaging of Linux inside Windows (Linux subsystem), by continuing to charge for their old file systems use on phones with Linux, it was basically saying they can access all of Linux for free but to use a small old part of their operating system costs money. In other words it was very unfair. And possibly asking for legal action.

Now it's slightly less unfair although it's still questionable that Windows isn't providing _any_ monetary support for Linux that they embed.

> In other words it was very unfair.

How? Linux is intentionally released under an open source license. As far as I know, MS follows that license to the letter. How is that unfair? Things don't have to be perfectly symmetric to be fair.

I do think using the FAT patent was wrong on its own, because it was about interoperability when using the one filesystem that can be used everywhere. But I don't think fairness has anything to do with that.

> And possibly asking for legal action.

What kind of legal action?

I am guessing they see Cloud Services as their main cash cow so they get a ton of good will and I am guessing more contributors to projects they care about?

Linux is king of the server room and Azure is a huge cash cow for them.

By changing their attitude towards open source software, they hope to bring more developers towards their cloud.

access to OIN patents, presumably

But only for their work on "the Linux System", no?

The cynic in me thinks they found a patent in the portfolio that they value at more than 3.4 bn and they can now use it royalty-free.

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