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Microsoft's Empty Promise

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23 pointstjr19 comments

This is a significantly better explanation of the FSF's concerns than Stallman. His post reeked of FUD, but this post actually makes sense to me.

I quite like C#, especially 3.0, as a language. I am equally saddened that it is encumbered by hate as it is by fear. I honestly don't think Microsoft would start a mutually assured destruction war, but I've been wrong in the past. That said, I still wouldn't use it for an open source project because it is a political death sentence for any community-driven project :-( can't we all just get along?

> I honestly don't think Microsoft would start a mutually assured destruction war

I don't think they would, at the moment. I do think they might at some point in the future.

> can't we all just get along?

Sadly, Microsoft's business model and future profits depend on limiting our freedom when we use computers, so no, we can't just get along.

I think Microsoft would be most likely to start firing patent lawsuits at a time where Mono started to gain real traction in the free software community. So, if the community did start adopting Mono as a major platform and developed a lot of good software for it, that is when Microsoft would pull the trigger. So, either way, Microsoft gets what it wants. They limit adoption by holding patents that could be later used against the community, and if it does get adopted they can start suing.

I say this as someone who really likes the .NET platform and think it could add a lot of value to the free software community. But I have to agree with the FSF on this one.

> I think Microsoft would be most likely to start firing patent lawsuits at a time where Mono started to gain real traction in the free software community. So, if the community did start adopting Mono as a major platform and developed a lot of good software for it, that is when Microsoft would pull the trigger.

You know, it is possible that Microsoft has some grand master plan here. But I have to invoke Occam's razor here: it's more likely that MS is ok with Mono.

After all, they don't make money off of .Net directly. They give it away. They make their money by selling Visual Studio. If you were on the fence, wouldn't you be more willing to buy Visual Studio if you knew you could use it to write programs for Windows, Linux, and OS X? And of course, if you have to buy Visual Studio, you have to buy Windows too.

They don't need to have a master plan. Just leaving ammo lying around when a future Microsoft could have any of a million reasons to use it is the problem.

They really don't make their money selling Visual Studio either. They make their money selling Windows, which Visual Studio (and their .NET implementation) is 100% geared towards.

I disagree.

Microsoft has had to make these community-oriented changes because they have been losing the community. It is, and has been, necessary for that bottom line for these changes to come about. They are finally come to realize, at a more fundamental level, that they need us more than we need them. And we need them less and less, every day.

As long as OSS keeps pushing the envelope, both technically and in mind-share, Microsoft will keep their promises, expressed and implied.

FUD is still FUD, and with MS, that's all the FSF is good at.

Lawyers who do primarily ideologically-driven work have difficulty understanding transactional law. And transactional law is pretty damn clear on this point -- by actively encouraging the use of Mono, MS is estopped from ever suing for patent violations for the use of Mono (estopped means that b/c they have induced others to reasonably rely on statements that they will not sue for using Mono, they cannot later go back on their word b/c this would be unjust -- the court will not allow them to "trap" others). It's been settled law for decades.

This is fascinating. Can you cite cases or reference material? I'd be interested in hearing this side of the story.

Look up "promissory estoppel" in Google. That will provide all the necessary examples...if you need specific patent examples, you will need access to LexisNexis or Westlaw (legal databases), both of which are too expensive for me to use for this.

Estoppel is a long-established legal doctrine (centuries old, in fact). One party cannot mislead another to its detriment through promises expressly made and later retracted. In such cases, the courts will use their equitable powers (i.e., doctrines such as that of promissory estoppel) to ensure that an unjust result does not occur, even if the party might otherwise have the legal right to enforce its claim.

The devil here lies in the details. The Microsoft Community Promise is indeed very explicit and says that it is. In effect, it says, "don’t rely on anything other than a literal reading of our promise." And it specifically says that no rights of Microsoft are being waived by estoppel, among other things.

Therefore, unless someone is covered by the literal terms of its promise, Microsoft has reserved lines of attack for itself should it choose to exercise them.

Estoppel might still work but it would take a costly litigation to determine the outcome. Who wants to put themselves through that?

One thought that got stuck in my mind after reading the article: use Mono and you risk being sued like TomTom was sued for using VFAT.

The FSF has a problem understanding the word "necessary". A court will determine that any method/code/algorithm necessary to fully implement the specs is "necessary", and thus covered by MS's promise.

In contrast, MS never released the FAT family of patents under an open license, as it has with Mono. Bringing up the spectre of TomTom (in the article) is FUD -- it's irrelevant and displays a ridiculous lack of understanding of the law. (And since the FSF is a legal organization, that means their legal opinions can't be trusted to be accurate.)

Microsoft is the FSF's arch-nemesis. It doesn't matter what they do: it must always be wrong, as it is their very existence that defines the FSF. The hate must survive.

Off the top of my head I would suspect the FSF was established well before MS's rise to dominate the desktop.

The FSF was indeed created in 1985, a bit before the first version of Windows,

The FSF can't very well target IBM anymore though.

Well if they can shift from IBM to Microsoft, I'm sure they can shift again if Microsoft actually embraces FLOSS to any great extent. Which further undermines the original point claiming that FSF just parrot the opposite of whatever Microsoft say.

Maybe it's just me, but if the FSF's existence depends on Microsoft being evil, then it deserves to die.

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