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Red Hat Makes Patent Promise
colonel writes "In a followup to an earlier story about Red Hat filing for software patents, a "promise" has appeared on RedHat's website stating that they do not intend to pursue patents against software licensed under a specific set of licenses. It's not binding in perpetuity, and some licenses are notably absent in the list of approved licences, like the LGPL. But, at least Red Hat's made their intentions clear now."
I know of lots of other companies that gave promises before and changed their minds when it suited them!
What about the The Apache Software License?? This would be more important to a lot of the work going on at the moment particularly on XML, it is the only real alternative to the proprietry stuff out there from the likes of $microsoft etc..
Does this give them a legal right to pursue patents on foundation software??
I also find that this license is popular within these technolgy areas even for commercial comapanies
ok, so im not sure what red hat wants to do. i mean, if they feel they are protecting these by patenting them themselves, then i think they are making a mistake. my understanding of patent law, is that if you do not aggresively defend your patents, including fighting those who use your patents, then you will lose the rights to them if challenged in court. in my marketing class we covered a case where a company went 5 years before challenging a competitor who was using a patent and then lost the right to the patent because they had not responded sooner and had waited 5 years. im curious in how red hat would plan on retaining ownership of these patents if others will be allowed to use them, presumably for free.
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This is actually pretty good. They will as a practical matter be bound in many cases, because there is a legal rule called "estoppel" which will prevent them from changing their mind on someone after they have acted in reliance on this policy. The permission given here should actually be pretty difficult to shake off.
So "good guys" who operate under open source/free lienses should be reasonably well protected here, and at the same time the patents CAN be asserted against those producing proprietary software. Not bad at all, I would say.
In fact, it could be a net plus for free software.
It seems to me that Red Hat (and other OSS companies) have basically two choices-- A) Patent your technologies so that others may not or B) Don't patent them and be forced to license them from those that do.
There is no gray area here. For better or worse, companies are obtaining software patents. In some cases, some of them are for stuff they had nothing to do with. You can say what you want, but the fact remains that anything Red Hat and company produce outside the realm of the standard Linux kernel is subject to being patented by someone else.
Some companies have billions in the bank ready to fight off lawsuits, Red Hat isn't one of them.
You are correct. When you start to stoop to the level that your opponent is sitting upon, you are no different that your opponent. Politics is a good example of this, is there any real difference in the Democratic and Republican parties to someone from the outside? Very little. Don't get me wrong for those of you that are political zealots, I know that there are differences. In one case they claim that they will tax us to support people that aren't as well off as we are and to support public programs and in the other case they claim that they will tax us to improve the infrastructure so that business will increase to support us. Does this mean that RH is going to keep us from developing free software, to protect our free software?
I have started formatting my hard drives on my 4 RH boxes and am installing SuSE 8.0 on them. I had tried SuSE about 2 years ago and didn't feel that it was as polished as RH, but that seems to have changed. I don't buy the theory that we are worried about protecting you. If they were worried about protecting us, why not help provide lawyers to fight some of these bogus patents that could be defeated on prior art? Prior art has been a good defense in the past, and having prior art is almost as good as having a patent from that point of view, but isn't as crippling as a patent to the community.
I have no sig, does anyone have one to spare?
This is misinformation. Far from being an alternative to proprietary products, the Apache foundation is pushing proprietary solutions.
The Apache foundation has been pushing Sun's proprietary Java technology for several years, with packages like Cocoon; indeed, most of their XML work is based on non-free Java components. Even though the code Apache produces is free, most of it (other than the Apache httpd) is based on proprietary foundations which compete directly with truly free alternatives like PHP and DotGNU/Mono's ASP.NET implementations.
Apache has served its purpose, but I just don't see why they're now trying to base their tools on closed source platforms. History has shown again and again that, even when the upper layers of software are proprietary and commercial, the platform itself must remain relatively free and open. That's why I've come to abhor the Apache Foundation.
I also don't agree with their willingness to give away so much code under a non-copylefted license, handing over their 'crown jewels' to companies who then proprietarise them. It sickens me to see companies package up Apache pre-releases and sell it on without source code as "Apache 2" months before the release date, damaging the reputation of the Apache httpd and Open Source in general. But that's another can of worms.
Having policies for exactly what unethical acts you plan to commit does not excuse them, or even seem to prevent them. In the past few years:
- The number of 'privacy policies' on the web has gone from zero to what? Maybe millions?
- The number of cases where consumer privacy has been infringed on has gone from very few to common place.
Consumers can't be expected to read the "end user license agreement," "patent policy," and "privacy policy" from every company we ever buy a product from. That's like having to read the "spider eggs in burgers" policy before you eat at Wendy's.Enough with the 'policies' already.
-- Ken Kinder ken@_nospam_kenkinder.com http://kenkinder.com/