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The term "reasonable and non-discriminatory licensing" or "RAND" (which may or may not include the "F" for "fair," depending on one's whim) was evidently coined long before any group of people came to a mutual decision upon what constituted "reasonable." At any rate, the debate over what's reasonable and what's "F" has now gone full-throttle, with Google's revelation Wednesday that it perceives prospective partner Motorola Mobility's (MMI) definition as reasonable enough, and that it's 2.25% of retail sale price minus subsidies.

That might not sound like much, but if you compound all the essential patents for which a manufacturer may need to obtain a license just to produce an ordinary smartphone, the sum total may become quite a chunk. That's the argument Apple made to European telecom regulators last November, in a letter revealed only last Tuesday. With Apple and Google now on the record, Microsoft could not afford to be left out of the discussion.

At this week's VMworld conference in Las Vegas, attendees are gearing up for a series of events and breakthrough announcements beginning Tuesday, some of which are expected to come directly from the mouth of VMware CEO Paul Maritz. This while the big news already hitting the floor is Citrix's move to full and free open source for its recently acquired Cloud.com infrastructure management system.

Somewhere in the middle of all this is Microsoft, which is not accustomed to playing the role of also-ran. Yesterday that company announced a revised licensing model, moving back to a per-processor scheme with unlimited virtual machine instances. It's part of the company's effort to attack VMware by going after its "V" word - de-emphasizing virtualization.

Last year, financial analysts took note of the steepening share decline by SAP in the CRM software market, with the other three major players - Salesforce.com, Siebel (Oracle), and Microsoft Dynamics - reaping the benefits. This week's buzz around the Dreamforce 2011 conference in San Francisco (which formally gets under way tomorrow) lends credence to the observation that SAP is no longer the acknowledged market leader, at least among hearts and minds.

One way Microsoft has always competed with hearts and minds when it really needs to is with dollars. This morning, in advance of its competitor's big show, Microsoft announced a rich set of $150 per-seat rebates on new client access licenses (CALs) purchased directly from Microsoft.

Startup conferences - like last week's DEMO Conference in Santa Clara, California - are great opportunities for young companies to not only gain some exposure, but to network with other like-minded entrepreneurs. One company I spoke to at DEMO, Zappli, makes a social shopping app that leverages many existing services through partnerships and APIs - a strategy many young startups could benefit from.

If I see another screencast using the iMovie default songs, I'm going to go nuts. Music sets the tone for how you want others to perceive your company and choosing a generic soundtrack is like branding yourself boring. In the past, videographers were forced to work with lawyers to gain appropriate licenses for samples. Thanks to the Free Music Archive and a number of other services, we're free to use original songs while still maintaining the rights to attribution. This morning's launch of the Free Music Archive's guest curation series further expands on this environment of collaboration.

Five years ago Lee LeFever was an online community manager for a B2B healthcare company called Solucient. Today, his voice has been heard by millions of people around the world, making strange new applications feel easy to use and offering some of the clearest explanations of how the Internet is changing.

LeFever is the founder of Common Craft and his story is an inspiring one.