In a blog post Mark Shuttleworth, founder of the Ubuntu Project, states his position regarding the recent spate of patent protection agreements with Microsoft. He believes that the allegations regarding unspecified patents carry no merit.
Allegations of “infringement of unspecified patents” carry no weight whatsoever. We don’t think they have any legal merit, and they are no incentive for us to work with Microsoft on any of the wonderful things we could do together. A promise by Microsoft not to sue for infringement of unspecified patents has no value at all and is not worth paying for.
He goes on to discuss Microsoft’s OpenXML formats and his position on future colaboration with Microsoft. An interesting read as this guy and the Linux distribution he spawned is starting to carry a lot of weight in the Linux world.
No Negotiations with Microsoft in Progress [via Mark Shuttleworth]