Here's food for thought
Has anyone thought this might be less about Microsoft being friendly and more about loosing relevance in the IT world. Some previously low tech countries have matured quite quickly and now provide a real threat to having much much bigger competitors. And these said countries have had little to no respect for IP so even though MS might have been around longer they will get gobbled up by a bigger fish in the not too distant future. By putting all these patents up as open all of the sudden stops the value of stealing IP since anyone can do it and doesn't let the IP cash cow roll in cause you ain't gonna sue anyone for infringement since it is GPL.
Think about it this way, have you ever seen a movie where the "good" guy is trying to escape a pursuit from the "bad" guys and runs over to the fire alarm and pulls it... it all of the sudden causes confusion and everyone gets up so there is less chance of standing out.... It the patent world when you open source it then it all of the sudden allows many competitors to come out and play which causes "big fish" to preoccupied them self by the many fish that lay in front of it.... and will take out the "easy catch" or the "low hanging fruit" first.
This is a long term survival strategy.... and heck if they could just sell a Windows compatible UI that sits on Linux that would be the best thing for everyone I believe... heck I would even pay for it.... as long as their "let's do it for you" crap they have been implementing over the years can be turned off if wanted, you know so you can manually check things out and fix them (if you want, don't have to but if you can you will)
Biting the hand that feeds IT
