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After a brief but very media-hyped period, Microsoft and TomTom have settled their patent dispute – apparently in a way that is not incompatible with the open source GPL license.
Though the two parties have settled their dispute, the overall dispute over Linux patents is far from being settled in my opinion.
Microsoft made a patent deal with TomTom in this case, and it affects TomTom alone. In that way, this deal is similar to Microsoft’s patent deals with Novell, Xandros and others which are fundamental cross-licensing deals with specific vendors.
The cloud of doubt — call it FUD if you want – that still hangs over open source and Linux is that Microsoft still has intellectual property/patent issues with open source software.