How can you name it "free software" then?

How can you name it "free software" then?

Developer could get a permanent patent license for any arbitrary piece of code by simply first using it in some implementation of a covered specification.

Yup. That's the basic idea behind the free software: I can take arbitrary piece of code (like Microsoft did in the past) and use it for any other purpose (for rival OS or for sharks with lasers on their heads!!) as long as I'm complying with what the license say. If I can not do it - it's not a free software anymore.

FOSS community generally frowns upon badgeware licenses exactly because it makes it hard to use for other purposes (small label can be bigger then the whole screen of MP3 player!) and what Microsoft is offering is 100 times worse.

Clever, but it won't happen.

We'll see. So far Microsoft produced only bunch of hot air and nothing else. And so situation is the same as it was yesterday. We should acknowledge it and move on.

The purpose of Microsoft's OSP is to allow free implementations of the covered specifications,
not to fix the problem of software patents.  While it might be nice to hope that Microsoft
would agree to some backdoor means to fix the patent problem for free software in regards to
Microsoft patents, such a hope is not realistic.  The best one can hope for is a license for
code that implements the covered specifications, while it is covering them.

Well, I guess you can hope for anything you like.

The best one can do is to make Microsoft irrelevant through better software. 

The second best one can do is to turn the dismantling of Microsoft into a lucrative business
for legal and financing companies globally, using the interesting quirks of the global
intellectual property market for a concentrated attack on them to DOS their legal defense
capacity, turning Microsoft into a larger copy of SCO. 

They don't perform well in panic mode. ;)