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The company announced that it had joined the Open Invention Network (OIN), a community dedicated to the protection of open source software against patent lawsuits by technology giants such as Google, IBM and even Microsoft. Microsoft's decision is surprising since the company has always had a confrontational relationship with the free software community, said Erich Andersen, executive vice president and assistant legal counsel, in a blog post:
We know that Microsoft's decision to join ISO may seem surprising to some; It is no secret that there has been friction between Microsoft and the open source community on the patent issue. For others who have followed our evolution, we hope that this announcement will be seen as the logical next step for a company that listens to its customers and developers and is firmly committed to Linux and Linux. other open source programs.
But Andersen adds that Microsoft's vision of the open source community has changed:
Membership in ISO reflects Microsoft's patent practice, evolving in parallel with the company's view of Linux and open source more generally. . . At Microsoft, we assume that developers do not want a binary choice between Windows, Linux or .NET and Java. They want cloud platforms to support all technologies. They want to deploy technologies on the periphery, on any device, that meet the needs of customers. We have also learned that collaborative development through the open source process can accelerate innovation.
With Microsoft's contribution of 60,000 patents, ISO has seen its patent library grow by almost 50 times. Previously, ISO had only 1,300 worldwide patents.
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