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Open Source Business Model Using Software Patents

Posted by kdawson on from the say-it-ain't-so dept.

Joe Barr writes "Robin Miller has an exclusive video interview with Larry Rosen and Fred Popowich this morning on Linux.com about their new open source business model which includes software patents in its DNA. Their motto is 'Free for open source, everyone else pays.' Larry Rosen was once legal counsel for the OSI." Linux.com and Slashdot share a corporate parent.

6 of 117 comments (clear)

  1. Legal? by mrsteveman1 · · Score: 1, Interesting

    How is legal to freely license patents to one party while charging for those patents when licensed to another party?

  2. this has been tried before by nguy · · Score: 2, Interesting

    this sort of model has been tried before and it tends not to work all that well. Usually, you end up with a company that may nominally use some open source licenses, but they might as well be proprietary. In particular, companies like this tend to use their power to prevent forking, and without forking being realistic, a project isnt really open source.

    Patents for open source only really works if the patents are held by a separate non profit.

  3. Re:Stallman's tactics for a new generation by CRCulver · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The Apple Computers versus Apple Records battle shows how trademarks can stifle innovation. Apple Computers had to fight long and hard to expand its offerings.

  4. Which license? by CustomDesigned · · Score: 2, Interesting
    I wonder which set of licensing conditions / price a commercial open-source project would fall under?

    Whichever one they choose, like a dual-licensed GPL project. If you like zero-price and are fine with the open-source conditions, then choose that. If you have proprietary code you don't want to open source, then choose the commercial license.

    The problem I see is that it is much harder to tell whether a proprietary project is violating a specific patent. On that note, I've often wondered: since it is generally agreed that every software project, propietary and libre, violates software patents, can't we just call it a wash, and undo this unauthorized invention of the courts?

  5. Trademarks have been turned into property rights by Geof · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Trademark law was created to benefit consumers. That purpose has changed. From Yochai Benkler's The Wealth of Networks (p. 290):

    in 1995, the U.S. Congress enacted a new kind of trademark law, the Federal Antidilution Act, which for the first time disconnects trademark protection from protecting consumers from confusion by knockoffs. The Antidilution Act of 1995 gives the owner of any famous mark -- and only famous marks -- protection from any use that dilutes the meaning that the brand owner has attached to its own mark. It can be entirely clear to consumers that a particular use does not come from the owner of the brand, and still, the owner has a right to prevent this use. While there is some constitutional free-speech protection for criticism, there is also a basic change in the understanding of trademark law -- from a consumer protection law intended to assure that consumers can rely on the consistency of goods marked in a certain way, to a property right

    Trademarks are undergoing the same change as copyright and patent. These began as privileges intended to promote the public good. They have been transformed into property rights for private benefit, at the expense of the public they were originally intended to serve.

    Trademarks are often abused to achieve an effect similar to copyright. For example, trademarks can be registered on names from the public domain. IANAL, and I know courts have ruled that this is not the purpose of trademarks, but they are used this way regardless. Want to publish a Conan story in Canada (where Robert E. Howard's works are unambiguously in the public domain)? Go ahead - but don't call it Conan. Or look at the continued abuses of the Olympics to force already-existing businesses to change their names.

    Trademarks are used to create monopolies on whole categories of products. I have a young son and recently discovered how effective this is for toys. Toys have gone from being simple products to being cross-promoted product and entertainment lines. You no longer buy your child a toy train - you buy a Thomas the Tank Engine train. Sure, kids love Thomas, so there's some value there. But it pushes out competition and diversity, dominating the whole product category. How can you compete unless you too have a TV show, books, toy trains - the whole bit? One by one, the categories in toy stores are turning into brands. In a Toys R Us I found the "trains" section should simply have been labeled "Thomas and Friends" - because that's virtually all that was there (and boy was it overpriced). Now Disney seems to be trying to do the same thing with Cars.

    Kids learn brands at a very young age, and I don't think they're good for kids. Despite my efforts, my son knew about Thomas by age 2. Then he started asking about other products. I taught him the word "logo" because I didn't want him to think "Dairyland" was the word for yoghurt. I want him growing up in a world of trains and cars and music and so on, not of Thomas(TM), Cars(TM), and Apple(TM). I want a chance to teach him what a brand is (and what it is not) before he assimilates them into the kinds of objects that exist in the world. Brands were supposed to enable consumer choice, not narrow the kinds of things we can think about.

  6. Re:Stallman's tactics for a new generation by waveman · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Anyone wanting to inform themselves about he huge costs of IP laws would do worse than to read this book. http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/againstfinal.htm

    The story about how the patents on parts of the steam engine held back the industrial revolution by 30 years is one that needs to be told - often.

    Tim Josling