[BozemanLUG] Microsoft & OIN

[Scott Dowdle]

Greetings,

Tom (spot) Callaway, who is Red Hat employee paid to work on Fedora... sent the following to the fedora-legal mailing list (which I subscribe to) regarding the recent joining of Microsoft to the Open Innovation Network (OIN) group... which has 200+ members who freely provide royalty free use of their patents to members of the organization.  There are some limits, so Tom's comments and links below.

TYL,
-- 
Scott Dowdle
704 Church Street
Belgrade, MT 59714
(406)388-0827 [home]
(406)994-3931 [work]

----- Forwarded Message -----
Just to swing back on this thread:
 
While Microsoft joining OIN is a very good thing for Linux and FOSS, it does not have any immediate impact to the packages (or configurations of packages) which are currently acceptable or included in Fedora.  Fedora is hopeful that future revisions of the Linux Environment Components > lists [A] (that define the Linux System Definition covered by OIN) > will include newer (e.g. Freetype after 2.5.0) and additional components (e.g. exfat FUSE userspace utilities, WMV codecs, EAS support) to enable unencumbered use of open source implementations of Microsoft standards and technologies. If/when those the Linux Environment Components list is amended for new Tables, Fedora will revisit the acceptability of packages (or configurations of packages) as a result. [B]

Additionally, I would personally love to see Microsoft take two additional actions:

1. Adopt its own version of Red Hat's Patent Promise [C], specifically such that it explicitly agrees not to enforce its patents against Free and Open Source Software. This action would show a true commitment to Open Source on Microsoft's part, beyond the limited (but useful) scope of OIN.

2. Commit driver support for the exFAT filesystem directly into the Linux kernel, with a corresponding patent grant. This would not only close a long-standing compatibility limitation for external media use on
> Linux, but it would provide a concrete example that Microsoft is an active and ingenuous member of the FOSS community, outside of open-sourcing its own previously proprietary efforts.

****

That said, I have no influence (nor direct connection) to Microsoft (either personally or via my employer), so I'm mostly wishing into the void. :)

~tom

[A] https://www.openinventionnetwork.com/joining-oin/linux-system/
[B] To be crystal clear, we do this already as new Tables are updated.
[C] https://www.redhat.com/en/about/patent-promise
_______________________________________________
legal mailing list -- legal at lists.fedoraproject.org
To unsubscribe send an email to legal-leave at lists.fedoraproject.org
Fedora Code of Conduct: https://getfedora.org/code-of-conduct.html
List Guidelines:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines
List Archives:
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/legal@lists.fedoraproject.org