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On Software Patent Lawsuits Against OSS

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the bad-day-bad-day dept.

Bruce Perens writes "We've warned you for a decade. Now the monster has finally arrived: patent holders are filing suit against OSS developers." From the article: "We should not be confident that we will continue to have the right to use and develop Open Source software. A coordinated patent attack by a few companies, or even one large company, could completely destroy Open Source in the United States and cripple it in other nations. Funds and patent portfolios that have been established to help defend Open Source would not be sufficient to defend it. Only legislative changes to the patent system can fully protect Open Source and maintain it as a viable source of innovation for our future."

4 of 400 comments (clear)

  1. Re:That's ridiculous by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Good luck suing my new company, Anonymous Coward Software. Let me know how that goes for you, 'K?

  2. Re:That's ridiculous by harrkev · · Score: 4, Funny

    Any company who wants him to stop making a competing product.

    Price of hiring lawyers to take down developers: Several thousand dollars per developer
    Price of eliminating all of your competition: Priceless

    --
    "-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
  3. Re:That's ridiculous by budgenator · · Score: 2, Funny

    price of a good defense lawyer, $300-400 per hour,
    price to whack the complaintants legal team, $30-$50K per head,
    cost of making criminal activity cheaper than a legal defense, unestimatable!

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    Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
  4. Re:Revolt by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    You mean Michael Douglas getting beaten by jocks every 5 minutes? Not interesting.