I was glad to read in a recent article that many companies have made promises not to assert select patents against Open Source Software that uses them. These companies have included IBM, Sun Microsystems, Computer Associates, and now more recently Google as well. I applaud this move and I think it's great that these companies recognize the importance of Open Source projects, and are slightly reducing the amount of worrying they have to do over patents.
However, it turns out that in many cases, this may have just been a publicity stunt. For example, although IBM pledged 500 patents for open use by Open Source software, this represents only about 1% of their patent portfolio. And Google only pledged 10 out of their 17,000+ patents!
Article here: http://www.fosspatents.com/2013/03/googles-promise-not-to-assert-10.html
I think these patent "pledges" are a great step in the right direction, but these companies need to do far more than this to actually make an impact. Nonprofit and Open Source projects should not be victim to the same sort of patent litigation that we have been talking so much about in this class.
I actually wrote about that this article as well. I think one thing to keep in mind is that there are a lot of ways to contribute to the open source community. Google's Android open source platform is one great example of open source contribution without contributing patents.
ReplyDeleteI feel like these companies (Google, IBM, etc.) are trying to protect themselves against each other rather than against the Nonprofit and Open Source projects. One good example is when Oracle sued Google for using Sun's "Open Source" codes after Oracle bought Sun. Google won the case after a long run. But this case demonstrates some danger for open source software. I do agree with Yuval that partially it is definitely for a publicity stunt.
ReplyDeleteYeah I think that with open source software becoming more and more successful (for example Ubuntu), software companies do need to try harder to promote and encourage it. OSS encourages innovation, and that's always a good thing.
ReplyDeleteOpen Source Software does not mean that it can't be profitable. That's why I am not surprise that only a few patents are allowed for "publicity stunt," as you mentioned. But it's a good sign, and I agree that it should be encouraged.
ReplyDeleteI wrote on this as well. Definitely a PR move by Google, but moreso I think it is a harbinger for things to come by Google, they will start to be more aggressive on the litigation end.
ReplyDeleteI feel that, even though a few patents are involved in the Open Source pledge from Google, what matters is not so much the number of patents involved, but the contents the patents. As demonstrated by the large number of silly and useless patents that the USPTO grants, a patent can be granted for a wide variety of products. I find it likely that Google's involved patents contain more meat than the patents that are not related to the open source software involved in its operations, and would not immediately dismiss Google's move as a PR stunt.
ReplyDelete