[SEJeff]

And yet they still extort companies with their secret Android "patents". Perhaps people will treat them differently when they start acting like it. Nadella is getting there, but still has a lot of work ahead of him before hardcore Linux people (like myself) really trust the motives.

[ocdtrekkie]

There's almost nothing "secret" about how Microsoft handles patents (you know about it, so do I). What'd be really interesting is actually seeing what Google does with patents. While I've got no paper to prove it, Samsung changed directions in Google's favor massively when Samsung agreed to a long-term patent sharing agreement with them. (Previously, Samsung had been looking more and more like they were going to fork or leave Android entirely.)

I suspect some patent hijinks happened there, and you and I just don't know the details.

You want to talk about secret, ask Google for a copy of the secret contracts every Android OEM is bound to.

[SEJeff]

Ummmm the list of patents they assert Android violates are secret, hence the term "secret".

[ocdtrekkie]

The list of 310 patents Microsoft's asserted Android violates has been available for... almost two years now.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/06/chinese-govt-reve...

Hardly secret anymore. Meanwhile, the last copy of one of Google's secret contracts we have is five years old.