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Blackboard's "Pledge" Not to Sue Open Source Software
Another anonymous reader writes with a link to the Inside Higher Education site. Those folks are reporting on Blackboard's 'pledge' not to sue open source projects used by universities and colleges. The Blackboard patent on educational groupware filed last year has come under a lot of fire, with many organizations simply seeking an open-source alternative. This newest peace offering to higher education groups has the Sakai open source consortium more than a little bit nervous. If Blackboard meant to set people at ease, all it has managed to do was confirm to onlookers that it 'wants to keep its legal options open.' Blackboard insists that this new pledge affords universities a number of legal privileges, and is designed to make educators 'sleep easy at night.' Somehow, very few people seem reassured. Update: 02/02 17:34 GMT by Z : Bad first link fixed.
The first link goes to a Scoble blog entry about completely different things...
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ZDNet has also covered the story.
Ben Hocking
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See an insecurity in their systems? They'll sue you to shut you up about it.
o rg/acidus/campuswide/index.html
http://web.archive.org/web/20050404014123/se2600.
Blackboard to try to keep some face. The Blackboard product heavily utilizes "building blocks" (assuming you have the enterprise version), many of which are open source. If Blackboard is benefiting from open source, attacking open source products may kill or slow down the inovation that comes from the building blocks...
Additionally, I think this is an attempt to try to placate those who are shouting prior art and want to go after the patent and invalidate it... The reasoning might go like, "If they aren't going after sakai or moodle, i don't really care if they have the patent." That is how I see the real purpose of this move... It seems fairly shrewd. Hopefuly higher ed will continue to go after them and educause will keep the pressure up. BTW, there is a joint statement from educause and sakai (PDF) on educause's website. (Here is the statement on sakai's page.)
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There's a third option, which is to create a non-revokable Class License applying to software licensed under open source licenses. That way, should the company be bought, anyone using the technology covered by the license under an open source environment will remain protected.
Personally though I'd rather just see the patent revoked. Supposedly there's another attempt brewing to get SCOTUS to look at software patents.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Unfortunately, every feature they currently offer can be coded internally rather easily (my school proves this quite well) :-) These systems have been around for a long time, and all the ideas have been in the air. The system I wrote was actually inspired by a demo I saw of an open-source system called lon-capa, developed at MSU; lon-capa has been around, in one form or another, since 1992, whereas Blackboard and WebCT only date back to about 1995. I'm sure the reason none of the academics who developed the OSS systems filed patents is that they realized how ridiculously trivial the ideas were. Blackboard has clearly realized that they can't compete on price or features, because systems like these are easy to implement for free. So instead they've decided to create an artificial monopoly for themselves by suing anyone who tries to compete. Gosh, isn't it generous of them to make a pledge (with strings attached) not to sue me. I'd also appreciate it if they'd make a pledge not to burn down my house.
I'm the author of an open-source course management package called Spotter, and I have to agree -- both the ideas behind and the implementation of one of these things are pretty trivial. My own software is more narrowly focused on science classes, and doesn't have some of the broader functionality in it that Blackboard has, but it still does enough that it seems to do every single thing listed in Blackboard's ridiculous patent. Really the only thing about mine, conceptually, that I would claim was non-obvious was a method for checking symbolic math answers using numerical sampling and continuation of analytic functions into the complex plane -- maybe I should patent that
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Blackboard got their patent and immediately sued Desire2learn, a small outfit in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada. They aren't big and can't afford much of a legal battle. IMHO, they would have been forced to settle and that would have created some kind of precedent. Eban Moglen and co. at the Software Freedom Law Center did two things. They submitted a brief to the judge in the Desire2learn case (which has Desire2learn's nose out of joint according to an article in the KW Record.) They also asked the Patent Office to review Blackboard's patent. The Patent Office has agreed to review the patents. If the patents are found to be bogus then the promise not to sue anyone is moot. Given the amount of prior art that people have turned up, it is likely that Blackboard's patent will be pitched out.
Anyway, what Blackboard's promise may do is remove the rationale for the SFLC to intervene in the Desire2learn case. In that case, Blackboard could win the case because they have deeper pockets and because even a bogus patent can get an injunction. RIM (makers of the Blackberry) had to settle with NTP even though NTP's patents are likely to be thrown out because, if they didn't settle, the judge was going to issue an injunction that would have prevented them from doing business in the US.
Bottom line: I think it's a legal trick to get Eban Moglen off their case. (Good luck dudes)
There are links to the prior art collections on the Desire2learn wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desire2Learn
From BB's FAQ:
My company would like to incorporate Open Source Software into our proprietary software (e.g., include the Sakai Course Management System as part of a commercially-licensed software package). We won't be charging for the portion that contains the Open Source Software but will be charging for our proprietary portion. Is my company covered by this pledge?
No. To the extent that any proprietary software is Bundled with the Open Source Software, this pledge would not apply. However, if your customers wish to supplement or enhance your proprietary product with Open Source Software which is not Bundled by you, that would be covered. Blackboard believes this pledge provides a strong incentive for developers to continue building extensions to proprietary solutions as well as to enhance standards such as those promulgated by IMS, while allowing schools to accomplish all of its information technology goals.
Compare that with:
Oracle and Unicon, Inc. Unveil Plans to Create Next-Generation Academic Enterprise Environment
Then http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=ORCL&d=t
vs.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=bbbb
Cage match!
When the country falls into chaos, politicians talk about 'patriotism'. Lao-Tzu
Clearly, they have only received one issued patent and the rest of the application cannot be asserted until the claims are set in stone. They have US Patent 6,988,138 which is currently under review as well. It is a great point that they've got more applications coming and this needs to also be considered.