Microsoft Joins the Open Invention Network Community, open-sources 60,000 patent portfolio

Microsoft is offering its entire patent portfolio — with the legacy exception of its Windows and desktop application code — to all of the open-source patent consortium’s members.

This is everything Microsoft has, and it covers everything related to older open-source technologies such as Android, the Linux kernel, and OpenStack; newer technologies such as LF Energyand HyperLedger, and their predecessor and successor versions.

We pledge our entire patent portfolio to the Linux system. That’s not just the Linux kernel, but other packages built on it.

Keep in mind, as late as 2014, Microsoft made approximately $3.4 billion from its Android patents. Samsung alone paid Microsoft a billion bucks to license its Android patents. That’s serious cash — even on lucrative Microsoft’s balance books.

See ZDNet for more and the OIN press release.