Slashdot Mirror
OSDL Says Patent Threat to Linux is Receding
blacksilver writes "The chief executive of the Open Source Development Labs (ODSL) has said that the threat facing Linux from software patent-infringement claims has receded.
From the article: 'Lots of people who hold a lot of patents have looked at this issue, and nothing's come of it ... There's always been a suspicion that some of them [the alleged infringing patents] were held by Microsoft, so this could be an issue ... our customer advisor people speak to people, including major customers who run both Windows and Linux, and they say it's not an issue,'"
The entire boogeyman of some company destroying Linux via a patent suit never really threatened most of us in the first place.
Why, you might ask?
Because most of us don't really care. Patents count as a silly abstract nuissance for business-folk, not for hobbyist developers. Treble damages? 3 * $0 = $0. No doubt some lawyer will point out that other dangers exist, but really, I (and I doubt most of us) really lose sleep over the idea that our use, or even code contributions, of Linux may violate some obscure submarine patent waiting to spring out at us.
Or to look at it another way: If the USSC banned Linux tomorrow due to it infringing some patent - How many of you would run out and buy XP to "fix" all your now-illegal machines?