Thanks again, Alex.
On Tue, 4 Nov 2003, Alex Kipman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> The concepts that are undergoing patenting are MSBuild Engine level
> concepts that we feel are really innovative (and most of them you
> haven't seen yet).
That must be the case (the "haven't seen yet" part). ;-)
> I also feel I should explain a little bit how we approach patents at
> Microsoft and why we do it. We file patents not to deter other folks
> (like you) from innovating in the future, but rather as a defensive
> mechanism. This way when people come after us we have patents as
> one potential avenue of defense.
Speaking for Ant here - NAnt is a different beast when it comes to its
goals as can be seen when comparing the licenses.
Ant is under a BSDish license because we want people to be able to
extend Ant and redistribute it in their products in closed source (if
they elect to do so). Because of this, even a graceful "you may use
our patents for free" license for Ant itself wouldn't be acceptable if
it didn't automatically apply to all our downstream users, no matter
what they do with the code.
I know I sound more than a bit defensive and paranoid here. I'm
certain that we won't have to face any legal threats as you all are
able to see in public CVS repos or mailing list archives what has been
there and has been discussed in the past.
Cheers
Stefan
--
http://stefanbodewig.blogger.de/
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