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Comment by fatdog789 | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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?

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.

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