Microsoft seeks input on promise not to sue individuals

Posted Nov 15, 2006 20:11 UTC (Wed) by seanyoung (subscriber, #28711)
Parent article: Microsoft seeks input on promise not to sue individuals

Patents exist to squash a competitor who is using patented methods, correct? An individual is no competitor. Microsoft has nothing to gain from suing them.

An OSS developing individual has no money (so claims of damages is largely pointless) and if source code is released under the GPL, cannot be retracted by the original developer.

I always assumed that a developer could have his project/code destroyed by (treats of) patents suits, but never have to pay up. I've certainly never been scared of being sued, only that something I wrote could be nullified.