Should Microsoft get $5 for every HTC Android phone because of their patents?

Craig, Is there a reason you went with an external poll rather than a news.yc one?

Unless your passing the link elsewhere or promoting a site you have a stake in (both of which are perfectly fine to me) I would think you'd get more votes with a regular HN poll.

P.S. However I am having fun going through the polls on the right side of the page.

Putting aside the fact that I don't agree with software patents in general I still don't like what Microsoft is doing. I think that it's not right for Microsoft to force companies using linux into these licensing agreements without making it entirely clear what patents are being infringed on. If they shared this information then the infringing code could potentially be removed and replaced with code that doesn't infringe. What they're doing basically amounts to extortion in my mind.

This is my opinion but I didn't vote in your poll because the wording for "no" is too specific for me. I want to say no without simultaneously expressing an opinion on the quality of any products that Microsoft has produced.

kgermino,

I use Wepolls too. The benefit of the social polling on Wepolls is they can be shared anywhere, and also people on their network vote on them.

But I voted yes.

No.