Google Partners With OIN For Linux

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday August 7, 2007 @04:20AM from the circling-the-wagons dept.

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."

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Re:"Spitting in the wind" Bruce Perens... by jkrise · 2007-08-07 05:00 · Score: 2, Insightful

On the other hand, his solution was to buy the expensive indemnification insurance he was promoting. I think large-scale products like the Linux kernel and Apache are better served by the GPL than by half-hearted smart-brained schemes that a few big names come up with once a while. Initiatives like the OIN actually take away from the good work accomplished by the GPL, IMO.

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If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....