A look at unrest caused by Microsoft licensing and FUD which entities close to Microsoft throw at the favoured alternative

Microsoft and Amazon.com have signed a wide-ranging patent cross-licensing agreement that provides each company with access to the other's patent portfolio. Specific terms of the agreement were not disclosed, but it was made clear that Amazon will be paying Microsoft an undisclosed amount of money as part of the arrangement.

How Microsoft's money and unwatchable influence allow it to subvert laws in foreign jurisdictions while projects like Xen and Apache are paid money to keep quiet on the matter and occasionally defend Microsoft

It's a familiar story. Microsoft does a secret deal with a company over patent licences. Almost no details are provided about which patents, how much money has changed hands, or why, except for one vaguely worded press release that talks about how such secret deals benefit the customer through openness and innovation.

The money just keeps on rolling into Redmond and Microsoft's partners, almost faster than ever before!

Etelos, launched in pre-bubble 1999 as a CRM services outfit, has remade itself as a Web 2.0 company with the help of open source software. Today, Etelos offers hosted CRM applications that weave into Google apps, Windows Live, and even iPods. Leaving Microsoft behind, and all the licensing restrictions that came with it, made all the difference, says CTO and founder Danny Kolke.

In the last several days Microsoft has shown that despite claims of acquiring a newly found respect for open principles and technology, developers should be cautious in believing promises made by this “new” Microsoft.

Microsoft Corporation has welcomed the current debate on the proposed global standardization of the Ecma Office Open Extensible Markup Language (Open XML) as positive and good according to Microsoft Corporation.

Microsoft's licensing plans are a twisted knot of complexity that the company is trying to untangle.