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Patents Role in US/AU Gov't Use of Open Source?

Posted by Cliff on from the mired-in-red-tape dept.

An anonymous reader asks: "How do governments (esp. US and Australia) deal with possibility of a patent lawsuit from some company against a specific OSS product, which might be deployed by a given government department? Is there any danger for various (government or not for that matter) agencies being told 'not to use this or that software from now on' because some commercial company might be winning the patent battles in court against this particular piece of software? I can see how a small business may take such a risk, but government agencies in the US and Australia could be put off by possibility, since the costs associated with migrating to open source and then back would be rather extreme (note that we are not talking about Europe which has different take on Software Patents and consequently Munich case is not really a strong example in the US/AU context). Personally I do not like software patents and think that they only inhibit software development processes, but how would Slashdot community reason for government-wide adoption of OSS in view of possible trouble with patents?"

1 of 212 comments (clear)

  1. Free Trade Agreement by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    As you may or may not know - Australia and the US have entered into bilateral (i.e. private) free trade agreement some time ago. Although there are many terms and conditions placed upen each country, readers here will be pleased to know that the Australian government has been encouraged to adopt US-style IP law in order to gain access to US markets. So while Australian IT companies (with slightly cheaper than US staff) are free to vy for any US IT contract -including government (and vice versa) we will gradually move under the US' corporate-law regime.
    It will be interesting to see what happens when China becomes as large an economic factor in the world as the US is. We will certainly see that if the US attempts to bully small nations out or its own enormous markets, the smaller nations will just trade with the other big guy.
    It doesn't matter which ideology (US or China) you agree with - the world is currently under a monoply superpower and I feel that it's out of balance. The US is not really a bad place (I've lived there) - I guess I just hoped that it would have taken this unique opportunity to lead the world - instead it is intimidating the world to be like the US.

    You know, in a way it would be nice to see more countries calling the US economic/political bluff - like France does.

    In a few decades there will be another power to rival the US and history will judge how well the US shaped the world when it had the chance.
    (Hint: spending more on the military than the entire rest of the world combined is not a good start)

    Aughhh - I need more coffee, it's still damn early.