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Red Hat's Secret Patent Deal

Bruce Perens writes "When patent troll Acacia sued Red Hat in 2007, it ended with a bang: Acacia's patents were invalidated by the court, and all software developers, open-source or not, had one less legal risk to cope with. So, why is the outcome of Red Hat's next tangle with Acacia being kept secret, and how is a Texas court helping to keep it that way? Could the outcome have placed Red Hat in violation of the open-source licenses on its own product?"

6 of 95 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Oops! Another Java "thing" by Monkeedude1212 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Black holes huh...

    And this whole Java thing started happening right about the time the LHC actually started working...

    I think you may be onto something... Let me get my crossbow...

  2. Re:Information wants to be free by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 4, Funny

    Post your Bank Account & PIN and find out ... ;-)

  3. Re:sealed case by PerfectionLost · · Score: 4, Funny

    this is the equivalent of the company having a ruling/ agreement but being bard from informing the developer staff.

    LMFTFY.

    this is the equivalent of the company having a ruling/agreement against bards informing the developer staff.

    We need more bards in our development staff.

  4. Re:sealed case by Byzantine · · Score: 3, Funny

    This might be more difficult than you think: can you think of a rhyme for "patent infringement"?

  5. Re:sealed case by sumdumass · · Score: 2, Funny

    Flattened impingement.

    There was an old lady that lived in a shoe,
    she used open source software but got sued.
    When she told the judge she couldn't afford the settlement for patent infringement,
    He said you have a house, your defense has a flattened impingement.
    She said take everything I own,
    it won't be enough,
    you can kiss my ass for the rest,
    if you don't like it, that's just tough.

  6. Re:Dear Slashdot, by CannonballHead · · Score: 2, Funny

    Not necessarily... the point of the first paragraph in an article seems to be to get you to read the rest of the article. The point of the slashdot summary seems to be so you don't have to read the article.