What do you think Microsoft is up to?

It does seem odd. The optimist in me says maybe they're stimulating the software industry? To sell more private githubs, Azure cloud usage and visual studio licences.

what about windows?

kek, what's funny is that the article is only relevant for the 90s, 95% of the time Microshit has tried to take over a techsegment it's been a monumental failure
see:
Zune
Windows Mobile
Windows 8.1
Windows 10
Github
Feel free to add to the list

They're trying to undermine Android.

Nokia. For the biggest loser
Skype

seriously though, fuck Microshit for what they did to Nokia, because of them Symbian and Meego were killed

Their patenting activities seem to have reached a plateau:
Pub Date
Date No
1993 43
1994 98
1995 152
1996 150
1997 266
1998 501
1999 571
2000 775
2001 1,045
2002 1,535
2003 2,122
2004 4,419
2005 7,428
2006 9,029
2007 5,676
2008 7,058
2009 6,970
2010 5,232
2011 5,112
2012 3,980
2013 4,941
2014 5,584
2015 4,490
2016 7,463
2017 8,106
2018 4,691

I guess they foresee the desktop patent wars have mostly ended just like the mobile phone patent wars have mostly ended.

the linux cancer got them RIP.

are there any useful patents that they open sourced?

I think they just do stuff like this to build goodwill among tech nerds, in the hopes that the same tech nerds will turn a blind eye to things like the forced telemetry in Windows 10 and their scummy marketing strategies for products like OneDrive, Edge, Bing and Azure. There are a lot of influential tech people out there who read articles like this and post something along the lines of "Oh, Microsoft is good now," which is great for their brand.

I think it's also a survival thing. Steve Ballmer drove Microsoft's reputation into the ground. He was also well known for hating free and open source software. Microsoft is noticing that there is a trend towards open source software development stacks in the industry, especially for the web, so they're trying to get developers back on side by doing things like releasing a bunch of open source software on GitHub, buying GitHub, adding Linux VMs to Azure, adding WSL to Windows, and now joining this patent agreement.

The VFAT and exFAT patents are used by most Android phones. If Microsoft are opening all of their patents, that should include those ones.

I still miss my Zune.

Thanks for the link faggot.
Here, I did your job for you: live.engadget.com/2018/10/10/microsoft-open-sources-60000-patents-to-help-linux

Journos are complete retards too! You cannot fucking "open source" a patent; it's already open. What they did is that they removed restrictions for certain users to use their patented technology.

you can't open source hardware either but look at how that phrase is throw around

I work for a company that lives and breathes patents.
There's two reasons to patent anything:
1. nobody can sue you for it after the patent is approved; you can drop it a year later if it costs too much to renew
2. nobody knows what patents the other guy has (even though it's all public record), so to avoid costly legal battles, we settle by bartering patent pools--selling or trading patent licenses, resulting in immunity.

They use open source to make their already established software better (by outsourcing it). Kinda win/win. Jow Forums is probably going to hate it either way.

Nothing good. That's a hell of a giveaway.

p.s. there's literally no reason to "open source" or drop your patents except that they would cost too much to renew.
Dropping patents like this can only be dumping or goodwill, you have little to gain from it other than maybe PR, and as the article says, "a more open developer environment"

companies have learned its more profitable to open source their directionless patents and then acquire desperate start ups that follow through with them

Personally, i think they want some specific features in kernel for azure and those features are locked behind some of those patents that appeared during win server development, so they opened because it's less hassle for them due to licensing. Other patents supposed to expire soon anyway.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish

EMBRACE, EXTEND, EXTINGUISH (EEE)

BEWARE THE REDMOND BEARING GIFTS

Windows core is fucked they are switching to linux

Bears repeating.

E,E & E.

lolno

They're on their redemption arc. Honestly the only interesting thing about this lacklustre season.

E3

yeah.

E3

>Step 1: embrace open source, get open source community to lower their guard and think better of Microsoft
>Step 2: Occupy the open source world, most preferred open source applications are made by Microsoft, everyone accepts it because it works, is industry and world standard, it's free, and everyone thinks Microsoft has good intentions
>Step 3: Close source all software and add licenses and price tags to all of them. Majority of businesses all around the world will have to start paying monthly to continue using the software, it becomes a sink or swim situation.

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Does anyone in this thread actually know what patents do?

yeah but the GNU licence protects against this, right?
RIGHT??

It works both ways. They also won't sue Microsoft for certain patents.

BSD does

>add to a BSD program
>make it closed source
>sell it for $$$

BSD license protects against nothing. PS4 and Switch (iirc) are running a modified FreeBSD and giving little or nothing back to the community. Even macOS is using a lot of BSD utilities without giving much back to the community (besides the clang pipeline)

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>Used by most of the desktop market
>Windows 10 a failure

Licenses aren't retroactive

If you own the copyright to the entire program you can relicense it at will.

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Was exFAT included in this? I seriously doubt it. This isn't some show of good-will, these were most likely patents on failed technology and shit that isn't widely used or isn't important, so Microsoft let them go and tried to spin it as positive PR instead of continuing to pay patent maintenance fees on things that are worthless. Patents have three maintenance fees: $1,600 (at 3.5 years), $3,600 (at 7.5 years), and $7,400 (at 11.5 years). So depending on where each patent was in its life cycle, Microsoft was probably just trying to save the upcoming $96 million to $444 million it would take to maintain having sixty fucking thousand patents. That means this is a cost saving measure, and one that I would take to indicate Microsoft isn't doing so well.

It doesn't change the program released a day before the license was charged

you're really using $PROGRAM$ 2.0 when 3.1 is out?

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I consider layoffs to indicate a company is struggling. This seems like a no brainer
> paying for... literally nothing.

I'd be more inclined to believe that dropping their patents was a measure to avoid layoffs. Entities like Microsoft usually don't give up patents because you never really know if they'll come in handy in the future, which means they're giving up future leverage.

if other options were offered, it woukd be a massive failure, but since Microshit forces it down the PC market's throat most have no option but to get it

Found the Zoomer who has no knowledge on who bill gates was

>What do you think Microsoft is up to?
They want pajeets to shit freely in the street

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>lackluster
What about Ada vs Linus battle? It was kinosakuga.

Has any open source project ever went proprietary?

Microsoft makes money from Linux these days, they think that trend will continue, so they're protecting themselves by making Linux better for everyone as it will attract more people. Not too hard to figure out. They're a corp. Just follow the money.

>Used by most of the desktop market
The desktop market is a useless market. Webshit and mobile is all that matters.

Hei nyymit, normi täällä taas

Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.

And you're white and embarrassing. Also he hasn't been CEO for like 15 years now.
I don't see your point.

Azure is their future. Windows is the past.

Huhhuh mikä jurri

How many are useful?

Someone please just make an OS that doesn't suck, doesn't die if you fuck up driver installation (so normies adopt it), and can play a video game.

They probably just realized patent trolling was no longer profitable and it was time to change their business model.

Embrace (Microsoft LOVES Linux)
Extend

60k patent trolls that are worth a shit in modern society because China gives 0 fucks about them.

they gave us two months of linux in our PS console, then they bricked them all