"It's nice to actually feel welcome, because, for many years I was like the boogey man at conferences. People would come and present their software and they'd show what new features they'd coded in the last year, and then I'd come along and say soffftwaaaare paaatents. I'd have to tell everyone to be scared."

Bruce Perens provides an insightful comment about the settlement between Microsoft and TomTom.

Two notices of dismissal have been filed with the courts -- Microsoft's in Washington State, and TomTom's in Virginia, each dismissed without prejudice, ending both patent litigations. "Without prejudice" means that either could ramp it up and do this some more in the future, should circumstances arise that made it necessary. But in most cases, it means the litigation, or whatever, is over.

Intel’s short run as an operating system maker has come to an end.

The Linux Foundation's Jim Zemlin got the same message from the TomTom story that I did: just get rid of Microsoft's FAT filesystem: The technology at the heart of this settlement is the FAT filesystem. As acknowledged by Microsoft in the press release, this file system is easily replaced with multiple technology alternatives.

Leading senators in the battle over patent reform urged stakeholders on Thursday to reach some sort of compromise that would allow a balanced overhaul of the patent system to win approval.

Wednesday, EFF Staff Attorney Corynne McSherry will be testifying at the Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) town hall meeting on digital rights management technologies, or DRM.