Today [Jim Miller] had this to say on a Rotor listserv sponsored by the University of Pisa.  "As one of the inventors on that patent as well as the person heading up the standardization efforts for the CLI, I'd like to explain why I've never felt the two are in conflict.  [...]  Microsoft (and our co-sponsors, Intel and Hewlett-Packard) went [beyond RAND] and have agreed that our patents essential to implementing C# and CLI will be available on a 'royalty-free and otherwise RAND' basis."  [Managed Space]

The reaction on Slashdot to the disclosure of these patent filings was downright ravenous.  At the time, I thought there were too many unknowns to justify getting all worked up about it.

Assuming Miller's statement is accurate, an RF patent license for everything "essential to implementing C# and CLI" goes a long way towards easing any anxieties I might have had about the patents.  Granted, the CLI is just a subset of the proprietary .NET Framework.  So people creating a .NET workalike still need to worry about patents.  But there's a lot you can do with a truly open standard C# and CLI. 

Even with the recent patent filings, C#/CLI is still more open than the Java platform.

6:22:04 PM