Google Partners With OIN For Linux

lymeca writes "Groklaw reports that Google has become the Open Invention Network's first end-user licensee. The OIN was established by companies such as IBM, Red Hat, and somewhat ironically Novell to accumulate patents and license them royalty-free to any company promising not to leverage their own patent portfolio against key applications available on GNU/Linux, including many GNU projects as well as Linux itself. Google's support bolsters the OIN's effectiveness as a shield against patent attacks against GNU/Linux and many popular applications that run on it."

Comments

Re:So what happens when someone buys Google?

[HappySmileMan]

The OIN aquires patents, so if google is bought it can start to be an asshole with any new patents, but the patents it has already owned will be the property of the OIN as far as I know...

And if google drops out of the OIN does that not leave them open to be sued by the OIN for using those very patents or is that an exception?

I know nothing about patent law but that's my interpretation

Re:Please Stop Using "GNU/Linux"

[krgallagher]

"Hmm, nope. Linux is only a tiny little part of a typical system."

While it is true that GNU is the largest part of a typical distribution, technically the OS is the layer that runs between the hardware and the system software. I quote the Wikipedia article referenced above:

"Operating Systems themselves have no user interfaces; the user of an OS is an application, not a person. The operating system forms a platform for other system software and for application software. Windows, Linux, and Mac OS are some of the most popular OSes."

As such, the Linux OS is the kernel. The kernel has nothing to do with GNU. If you want to run a GNU OS, run the HURD kernel.