Giant of the technology world, Microsoft has promised that it will not sue or scrutinize end users who are in the process of developing third party distributions of Moonlight, after the firm published the patent covenant.

Post the publishing of the patent covenant, the company has taken an important step that will cover all third party distributions of Moonlight, which is an open-source implementation of Microsoft's Silverlight rich platform of internet application, which runs on Linux.

On December 17, Novell and Mono Project had announced the release of Moonlight 2, and at about the same time, the technology firm had shared that it is looking to extend that reach of its "Patent Covenant to End Users of Moonlight to include third parties beyond Novell and Mono users".

"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", the patent covenant reads.

It is, however, an interesting fact that Microsoft can revoke this covenant anytime.