Red Hat Makes a GPL-Compatible Patent Deal

Bruce Perens writes "Red Hat has settled patent suits with Firestar Software, Inc., Amphion, and Datatern on a patent covering the Object-Relational Database Model, which those companies asserted was used in the jBoss Hibernate package — not in Red Hat Linux. The settlement is said to protect upstream developers and derivative works of the upstream software, thus protecting the overall Open Source community. Full terms of the settlement and patent licenses are not available at this time." Reader Koohoolinn adds a link to RedHat's own report of the settlement and adds that the deal "is GPLv2 and even GPLv3-compatible." Koohoolinn also points out commentary on Groklaw that this deal "means that those who claim the GPL isolates itself from standards bodies' IP pledges are wrong. It is possible to come up with language that satisfies the GPL and still acknowledges patents, and this is the proof. That means Microsoft could do it for OOXML if it wanted to. So who is isolating whom?"

Comments

Re:This is SO EXCITING !!

[lahvak]

Is the son going to be GPL'd? In other words, can I reuse half of his genetic information to produce my own version? Will you provide an access to the source?

Re:NeXT EOF?

[Miseph]

Didn't you get the memo, Apple are so nice and fair that they would always happily lend a hand to other large corporations with or without any kind of motive or incentive. They'd also never engage in vendor lock in, or support DRM to keep software from being used in unapproved ways or on unapproved hardware.

This is just common knowledge.

Re:This is SO EXCITING !!

[Bruce Perens]

Dear Son,

It's time you paid the royalties you owe on my DNA. After all, you're running half of it in each and every one of your cells, clearly an unlicensed derivative work. And don't you dare "make it available" without a license!

Dad

:-)

Re:This is SO EXCITING !!

[gstoddart]

Dear Son,
It's time you paid the royalties you owe on my DNA. After all, you're running half of it in each and every one of your cells, clearly an unlicensed derivative work. And don't you dare "make it available" without a license!

Dad :-)

Dear Dad,

As your 'property' was provided freely in collaboration with Mom with no stipulated conditions at time of release, my DNA can be considered to be the results of a legitimate collaborative effort and a voluntary submission. Therefore, it is presumptive that a co-licensing agreement was implicit at time of production.

While I will refrain from directly competing with you in this market place, I do reserve the right to produce a limited amount of derivative works, and long as I do not use it for commercial purposes.

Also, I will be making it available for limited distribution for experimental purposes to the first girl willing to have it. However, I will make efforts to ensure that no further copies are created.

Son.