Microsoft publishes the patent covenant that will cover
third-party distributions of Moonlight, the open-source implementation of
Microsoft’s Silverlight rich Internet application platform that runs on
Linux.

Microsoft has published
the patent covenant that will cover third-party distributions of Moonlight, the
open-source implementation of Microsoft’s Silverlight rich Internet application
platform that runs on Linux.

Novell and the Mono
Project announced the release of Moonlight 2 on Dec. 17. At the same time Microsoft announced
that it would extend the reach of its Patent Covenant to End Users of Moonlight to
include third parties beyond Novell and Mono users.

The patent covenant says:

“Microsoft, on behalf of itself and its Subsidiaries, hereby
covenants not to sue End Users for infringement under Necessary Claims of
Microsoft and its Subsidiaries on account of such End Users’ use of Moonlight
Implementations to the extent originally provided by Novell during the Term and,
if applicable, the Extension or Post-Extension Period, but only to the extent
such Moonlight Implementations are used as Conforming
Runtimes.”