The Open Invention Network (OIN) learned recently that Microsoft was planning to auction off some of its software patents, which we understand it marketed to trolls and some other non-practicing entities. It also used marketing materials that highlighted offensive uses of the patents against open source software, including a number of the most popular open source packages.
This isn’t some fanboy’s blog, this is a Red Hat press release.
I can't seem to find any basis for this other than "entity x recently learned from anonymous entity Y that Microsoft might do something bad"
That said, the point here is that the patents in question in regards to Mono are the cornerstones of Microsoft's own development efforts. So they aren't going to sell off their ADO.NET related patents because it's the core of data access in their entire development environment.
For the scenario in which a patent affecting Mono was sold to happen Microsoft would have to auction off pieces of the .NET Framework itself and that's just not going to happen.
Besides, doing so would a PR debacle of epic proportions. Microsoft wants developers to use their technologies (duh). Does anyone seriously believe that they are going to stab those developers in the back after publicly promising to do nothing of the sort?
The Open Invention Network (OIN) learned recently that Microsoft was planning to auction off some of its software patents, which we understand it marketed to trolls and some other non-practicing entities. It also used marketing materials that highlighted offensive uses of the patents against open source software, including a number of the most popular open source packages.
This isn’t some fanboy’s blog, this is a Red Hat press release.