Mailing the story:

Matt Asay makes one crucial observation in Microsoft’s dilemma: The importance of the downstream: To work within the open-source community… Microsoft must stop polluting the downstream with patent encumbrances. (Emphasis in original.) This is my problem with Microsoft’s patent pledge, with the Microsoft-Novell deal over codecs for Monopolight, and just about everything coming out of Redmond except for the pretty words of the open source interoperability lab.