[OT] Microsoft filled patent applications for scoped and immutable types

[Joakim via Digitalmars-d]

On Sunday, 31 August 2014 at 22:06:09 UTC, Iain Buclaw via 
Digitalmars-d wrote:
> GPL can be summarised in four simple freedoms.  Nothing 
> complicated there.

The problems come up when you get into the details of how to 
write those "freedoms" into legalese, for example, the whole 
dynamic linking issue.  While they now claim that dynamic linking 
requires full GPL compliance, that's not actually written in the 
GPLv2 license.

> In any case, you do know that there are paid gpl software too, 
> right?
> Ardour is a good example of this.
>
> http://ardour.org/download.html

I had not heard of Ardour using such a paid model, so I just 
looked it up.  Turns out the lead dev of Ardour announced last 
month that he had to shift focus from the project because it 
isn't bringing in much money (http://lwn.net/Articles/604718/), 
which is exactly what I predicted in my article four years ago 
because it has happened countless times already.

I'll note that the one guy who was able to build a sustainable 
business for a GPL software product before dual-licensing was the 
original ghostscript developer, who sold a closed GUI frontend 
along with the open GPL backend, which was apparently legal 
because the two were separate executables.  He started a 
successful software company that made millions off this early 
mixed model decades ago.