Microsoft's current FAT file system licensing program could hobble the development and free distribution of GPL-licensed software, says an open-source legal advocate. However, licensing terms that were once published on Microsoft's website, which have since vanished, would have been compatible with the GPL.

The U.S. District Court in Washington will review on Sept. 11 the state of the Microsoft Communications Protocol Program, which is Microsoft’s program for licensing more than 200 proprietary protocols for server, storage and security services.

Microsoft partners think it's great that the vendor has been aggressively battling software piracy. But some partners say the task of ensuring that their clients are in compliance with Microsoft's Byzantine software licensing structure is steadily growing more difficult.

Proprietary giant is licensing open source to its partners. What is going on?

Microsoft Corp. may be trying to make it easier for delinquent corporate customers to "true up" their volume license contracts. But CIOs who have tangled with Microsoft on licensing issues said this latest program does little to tackle the real issue: the difficulty, short of buying Microsoft's most expensive class of license, of staying compliant.

Microsoft seeks to made money by selling licences to open one's documents

Truth can, indeed, be stranger than fiction — as is evidenced by a May 14 letter on software-licensing policies that was signed by both Microsoft and Linux Foundation officials.

After an interesting free software licensing event in Helsinki, I got thinking about licence complexity. At the conference, people had two types of questions (a) Why didn't GPLv3 additionally solve X problem? and (b) Why is it so long?

"After an interesting free software licensing event in Helsinki yesterday, I got thinking about licence complexity. At the conference, people had two types of questions (a) Why didn't GPLv3 additionally solve X problem? and (b) Why is it so long? ..."