I understand why Microsoft would issue a "patent promise" rather than a bona fide license (the issuer of a promise can play games with its interpretation, whereas courts get to interpret a license), but why Red Hat?
If the folks at RH are 100% dedicated to Free Software, why not place their patents under something like the Defensive Patent License?
I wonder how the DPL is compared to the MS-PL which is more BSD-like and does mention what happens if someone makes a patent claim against the code, they basically forfeit the right to using any of the authors own patented code / solutions, ie the entire code base probably becomes useless legally speaking.
I always found it silly when some projects with patents dual license as BSD and one other odd license, and depending on usage of code they relicense it when there's already licenses like the MS-PL. That's just my opinion anyway, what do I know, I'm not a lawyer. I just stay away from weirdly licensed projects though.
One difference between the RH patent promise and the DPL is that the patent promise only extends to open source/free software, released under a license recognized by either OSI or the FSF. Would that be possible with a license?
If the folks at RH are 100% dedicated to Free Software, why not place their patents under something like the Defensive Patent License?
https://defensivepatentlicense.org