Perens Looks For Payback for Open Source

A reader writes "Bruce Perens is rounding up luminaries including Brian Behlendorf and Laurence Lessig to meet IBM, HP (where he now works) and other companies that have made money from Open Software. Perens says he wants them to give up patent rights for some of their software. I'd say fat chance, but HP is bankrolling the meeting, which will follow LinuxWorld. See the story here."

Comments

I have a transcript

[Tony Shepps]

Perens: Thank you for coming. Friends, we know that you've used a ton of free software and sold additional hardware because of that. In return, we'd like you to give something back to the community.

IBM Rep: Thank you, Bruce, for giving us the opportunity to reiterate our commitment to Open Source. Last year we gave hundreds of millions of dollars to Linux development, and this year we plan to invest one billion dollars towards it. We've agreed to port Linux to all of our platforms and we've ported DB2 as well as a ton of other software to Linux. Our commitment to Linux is unequalled in the industry.

Perens: Well, that's nice, but that doesn't count. You see, what I'm talking about is --

IBM Rep: Wait a minute, that doesn't count?

Perens: Yes, you see, that's Open Source you're supporting, not Free Software.

IBM Rep: Are we at the right meeting?

H/P Rep: Yeah, Jim, but Bruce wants to talk about patents --

IBM Rep: Bruce, are you talking about Linux?

Perens: Well, GNU/Linux is a part of it, but --

IBM Rep: Guhnew Linux? We work with Red Hat, are they a competitor to Red Hat?

Perens: No, Red Hat sells that software.

IBM Rep: So they're a partner?

HP Rep: Jim, let me explain. You're actually providing free software to sell your hardware.

IBM Rep: How could it be free if we've given them over twice their market cap to develop it?

HP Rep: Well it was the basis of developing Linux.

IBM Rep: So somebody developed this before Linux and now they want paid for it?

Perens: No, they don't want to be paid. They just want you to give up some of your ability to get paid.

IBM Rep: Are they insane?

(pause)

Perens: Well I represent the Free Software community, and I thnk I can speak for them.

IBM Rep: Really. Before IBM committed to doing anything with Linux, I was told that the community would love us for using it. Now we use it more than anyone else.

Perens: Well Free Software was there before you developed it, it just wasn't adapted by business.

IBM Rep: And we helped it get adapted and we're it's strongest advocates.

Perens: I think so.

IBM Rep: So? Does the community love us?

Perens: Well not really. It isn't enough to use the software, to port it to different platforms, to encourage its use and to give an incredible amount of money to develop it further. You also have to give up some of your ability to make money in the future.

(long pause)

IBM Rep: Folks, I've just gotten paged and there's an emergency we have to take care of.

Perens: But I haven't gotten to the patent part yet.

IBM Rep: Sorry, gotta run.

Re:What big profits, Bruce? Are you going to poiso

[johnnyb]

IBM's _are_ from open source, at least a lot of them. They said so themselves. The ability to run Linux on the S/390 has rejuvinated sales of that product. Especially in Japan, now a whole server farm can be run in one small section of floor space, rather than taking up multiple buildings. In addition, the power savings are enormous. It is estimated that replacing a room full of suns with an S/390 running lots of copies of Linux will save you $250,000/year in electricity alone. Not to mention the management costs. Large companies _are_ buying S/390s to run linux on them.

RHAT is doing just fine. VA isn't doing too shabby, they just spread themselves too thin (never trust stock prices. The stock prices for tech companies are always stupid because investors know crap about tech).

Also, you said If you could lose all your patents in unrelated fields becuase you dabbled in Open Source, who's going to risk it?. Where did you come up with a statement like that? How are companies using open source losing patents in unrelated fields?

Easy to see why HP's bankrolling some of this.

[Christopher Thomas]

If I was HP, I'd be overjoyed to fund this meeting. It's a win/win situation.

• If the Open Source community has no claim on the IP in question (as is likely for most of it), then it's good from HP's point of view to have this established as quickly as possible.
  
  
• If the Open Source community _does_ have claim or partial claim to the IP, then HP earns kudos for being good sports about it, and is thus more likely to finagle dual-licensing or cross-licensing for the IP that they're interested in.
  
  

The amount of money involved is negligeable to a large organization, and the PR and potential precedent-setting benefits are substantial. Expect other companies to make backing contributions Really Soon Now.

Don't knee-jerk

[DunkPonch]

First, Bruce Perens no longer claims to be affiliated with "Open Source" software. He removed himself from that splinter group some time ago because he disagreed with the compromises it was making in the name of profitability and corporate acceptance. Bruce is part of the Free Software movement.

Second, the Free Software movement has an agenda. This is not news. The Free Software movement seeks to end the quaint fallacy of "intellectual property".

In a delicious ironic twist, they use the laws of intellectual property to destroy the concept of intellectual property. I know the knee-jerk capitalists who don't understand Marxism will shriek, but this is exactly how more modern collectivist systems will be put in place. They will use the tools of the current pseudo-democracies to gain control. Marx himself said it would never be necessary to force Communism in place of Capitalism, Capitalism would evolve into Communism naturally.

If HP et al thought they could simply take the goodies and ignore the ideology behind it, they were unbelievably naive. In the real world, ALL "charity" comes with strings attached. If you accept government welfare, you have to abide by the laws and values of the government. If you accept clothes from the Salvation Army, expect to receive a pamphlet summary of the New Testament in the same shopping bag.

It's time for these companies to pay the piper. In the end, they'll benefit from releasing their patents just as much as the community at large.

What big profits, Bruce? Are you going to poison

[typical geek]

Open Source

While the companies involved may be making big profits (HP, IBM), who's to say that these big profits are derived from Open Source?

I'd say most of IBM's profits are from selling and servicing their AS/400's and 390's, they're probably making very little from selling Linux on a mainframe.

If Open Source was making such big profits for IBM and HP, don't you think VA Linux and RedHAt would be doing better?

Anyhow, if this goes much further, don't you think companies considerate of there bottom line are going to flee from Open Source? If you could lose all your patents in unrelated fields becuase you dabbled in Open Source, who's going to risk it?

Depends on what has already been agreed

[Zeinfeld]

Asking IBM etc. to give up patent rights is not unheard of. Just read the IETF lists to see racks of IP to which a free open licens has been granted.

Asking for a complete patent license tends to get refused. However I have neogitated what amounts to the same thing - a free license for use in an open standard protocol - which is all that anyone really cares about in any case.

Most patents are filled for defensive purposes. Only a very few companies actually make money from patents as such - TI being the biggest example in the tech sector. IBM does make significant patent royalties but those tend to be manufacturing and processing.

Software patents are not actually terrifically profitable. If an idea is patented then people tend to design arround the patent. The number of ideas so devastatingly original that they can't be evaded is very small.

If the meeting has been set up right then Brian and co have already got some deal with IBM and this is simply an excuse to allow the IBM management to give away property rather than sit on it and watch it be unused.

The biggest lever the open source community has against patents is that in general a patented product is nowhere near as useful as a standards based one. There are exceptions but very few.

Good God NO!!!!

[BillyGoatThree]

I'm a rabid FSFer. I cringe at the term "open source", preferring "free software". But even *I* can see this is a terrible, terrible idea.

Yes, by all means, try to persuade Big Business to play nice. But don't, for the love of God, say that's it's "payback" for benefits they've received from the community. The entire idea of "open source" (which is what the company's bought into, not free software) is that the company doing the releasing gets a benefit. So you can't try to make them "pay twice" by asking for a favor later.

Bruce, you cannot drive a man with a stick, you must lead him with a carrot. Point out the *benefits* of releasing patents, don't try to appeal to some nebulous "gratitude".
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