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Google Pledges Not To Sue Any Open Source Projects Using Their Patents
sfcrazy writes "Google has announced the Open Patent Non-Assertion (OPN) Pledge. In the pledge Google says that they will not sue any user, distributor, or developer of Open Source software on specified patents, unless first attacked. Under this pledge, Google is starting off with 10 patents relating to MapReduce, a computing model for processing large data sets first developed at Google. Google says that over time they intend to expand the set of Google's patents covered by the pledge to other technologies."
This is in addition to the Open Invention Network, and their general work toward reforming the patent system. The patents covered in the OPN will be free to use in Free/Open Source software for the life of the patent, even if Google should transfer ownership to another party. Read the text of the pledge. It appears that interaction with non-copyleft licenses (MIT/BSD/Apache) is a bit weird: if you create a non-free fork it appears you are no longer covered under the pledge.
Prepare for explanations as to why this is bad in 3, 2, 1...
It's clear what's going on here is that Google is once again trying to return to it's "Don't be Evil" roots -- even though its behavior is painting it less and less of the champion of the free internet, and more just-another-profit-centered-corporation. When you sue an open source software producer, you usually don't get much money or anything in return, so it's not a big deal monetarily. The gesture however gives them some PR points they've desperately been seeking lately, especially amongst the tech community they've alienated by cancelling Reader. Likely though, it's too little, too late.
" It appears that interaction with non-copyleft licenses (MIT/BSD/Apache) is a bit weird: if you create a non-free fork it appears you are no longer covered under the pledge."
That's not weird. That's exactly how it should be.
"if you create a non-free fork it appears you are no longer covered under the pledge."
And if i were to give code under a free fork that was from Microsoft divulged under NDA, it wouldn't be covered either.
If you use something you need a license for in ways not covered by the license and not in ways the license cannot control your use, then you are not allowed to use it that way.
Wny is this only a problem for some idiots when it's a GPL license, and absolutely unnoticed by them under any other license?
Oracle is using Map Reduce - wonder if they infringe?
Microsoft is using Map Reduce - wonder if they infringe?
Perhaps Apple is using it as well, somewhere.
Question: was Google ever going to sue F/OSS developers?
I don't know. Is Apple still developing certain low-level parts of Mac OS X under the APSL, or has Darwin gone completely proprietary? What I do know is that Motorola Mobility, a Google company, has sued Apple.
From the summary:
The patents covered in the OPN will be free to use in Free/Open Source software for the life of the patent, even if Google should transfer ownership to another party.
Or to translate from flamebait to English:
They'll share with anyone else who shares. Same concept as the GPL, though admittedly in a somewhat more vague and less legally-binding manner.
Note that IBM did the same thing with about 1000 of its patents, more than 10 years ago. And shortly
thereafter, followed up with another 1000 or so.
I believe Postgres and many other BSD projects refused to use the OIN and other "FREE"-pledged patents.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
This is something you will never see Microsoft do.
* Carthago Delenda Est *
Love the understated way Google's rattling the patent saber here: "If you stay open-source you're probably safe, but if we think you're a commercial entity with closed source we may unleash the software patent lawyers."
Ummm wasn't Reader built on open source or is Google just bull shitting you.
This isn't about "leaning on closed source". This is about supporting the end users that Google just abandoned.
If they don't want it anymore, then they should have no problem giving it away and letting the user community fend for itself.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Well...yeah. They get better code for their projects, we get to use that functionality in open source programs, and nobody gets sued. Sounds pretty win/win.
Promissory estoppel (you promised, so you have to stop) is enforceable at least in the US, AU, and UK. The consultations are a) a clear promise. ("We don't like to sue" is insufficient), b) reliance on the promise (we made this software knowing that Goog promised not to sue) and c) inequity (it would be unfair for Goog to sue when they promised not to).
In some countries, it can only be used as a defense, to have a lawsuit dismissed. You can't sue someone to make them live up to a unilateral promise. They say it's "a shield, not a sword". In AU, it can be used as a sword - you could sue Gopgle to force them to live up to the promise, or for damages if they don't. That means that an Aussie user could sue Google for damages if Google threatened to enforce the patent against some software on which they rely.
Aside from tbe legal terms, imagine you're on the jury. Google sues someone. The defendant points out that Google promised not to, essentially giving the defendant permission to use the patents. As a juror, how would YOU decide the case?
The defendant points out that Google promised not to, essentially giving the defendant permission to use the patents. As a juror, how would YOU decide the case?
I suppose that depends on how smart I am and how well each side presented their case. :)
Me, personally, knowing what I know about this right now, I'd find against Google.
If Google owns any patents that are obvious, (and if they don't, other companies certainly do) then giving a free pass to open source doesn't do much to ameliorate the problem. Many people like to earn money. Even people who contribute to open source are often partly motivated by getting paid jobs as a result of their efforts. Given this, it is still a problem that smaller companies who sell closed source software or hardware based on closed source software, are still under threat from obvious patents.
The only sensible solution is to get rid of obvious patents. One way to do this is to eliminate software patents (i.e. the de facto software patents that exist today). Sure it would mean that some truly original work was no longer protected, but I think on balance it's the right way to go.
In comparison, how fair would it be if a law let some lucky restaurants close down all nearby competition, but then those few remaining restaurants showed their magnanimity by permitting people to give away free food to the homeless if the felt like it.
Or to translate from English to Marketing:
Google will contribute its patented technology immediately to benefit the public good, and pledges to support open-source community projects into the future. Google will confine all its competitive legal actions to the commercial arena, encouraging the growth of non-Google technologies, pushing the state of the art ever forward.
...I feel dirty now... I think I got some marketing slime on me... ...Turing help me, I want multi-level enterprise synergy to embiggen the opportunity for realized potential!
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Yes, unless GOOGs very high priced, very well connected lawyers manage to convince a judge that the promise shouldn't be admissible in court.
Not saying this is evil or greedy, but it is more one-sided in Google's favor than I was expecting.
Really? You don't expect Google to defend themselves if they get attacked? People that don't fight back when attacked are an extraordinarily rare exception. I don't know why anyone would think Google would be any different.
Don't fuck with me and I won't fuck with you.
Too bad they didn't pledge to keep all their little services running, google code, wave, catalogs, notebook... I wonder if it would have mattered.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
It's really a matter of reputation. Google's business model turned out to be largely relying on their being Open Source friendly. With this pledge they reinforce this image. If they betray this image, the backdraft could be painful. Probably not fatal, but painful.
I'm really as defiant as the next guy about Google's behaviour, and I don't take at face value their motto of not doing evil, but on the matters of IP they seem to have been consistently opposed to maximalism, and have supported many open stuff. I watch them closely on data privacy matters, but in most other issues I find their position decent - so far.
There's nothing like $HOME
It was probably the way you brought the Bill of Rights into the discussion. Likely they wanted to argue with you but couldn't because it would undo all their moderation on the page.
http://soylentnews.org/~tibman
Isn't that the same as saying that if you bought a patent you could void all current licensed copies in existence? Each of those licenses was a contract of sorts, right?
http://soylentnews.org/~tibman
It is relevant because Google is doing this for a reason, and there are really only two possible ones. First, it is a free gift to the Open Source community. That would be very nice but that's not how this decision would be interpreted by most people. Second, it is Google's attempt to ameliorate the impact of some of the unfair aspects of patents system, on open source developers. In that case, my claim that this measure is irrelevant to the real issues, because it doesn't address the root cause, is correct. Perhaps "insufficient" would have been a better term than "irrelevant". Now you might still object that it's not on topic to post that a measure that is proposed is not a sufficient solution to the greater problem that it aims to solve, but I think that that is a rather petty objection.
As to eliminating obvious patents, the question is how specifically to do this. The law does indeed disallow obvious patents. However, obvious is an ambiguous term, and wherever there is any room for interpretation, there is room for gross error as is happening now. So until you or anyone else can get a sensible plan to get the patent office to "do their job", my proposal to eliminate software patents still stands as a reasonable alternative.
Or let me put it this way: what software patents can you name that really did deserve to be granted and were not obvious, and how valuable have they been (relative to the previous existing technologies). Now compare that with the damage done by the threat of being sued over obvious patents.
Or to translate from flamebait to English:
They'll share with anyone else who shares. Same concept as the GPL, though admittedly in a somewhat more vague and less legally-binding manner.
Correction:
They'll share with anyone else who shares, but as long as they're the only ones profiting from it.
It's better than some companies, but hardly the slam dunk or sea change it's made out to be.
Honestly, their lawyers probably already told them that it wasn't worth going after any open source projects because in a lot of cases there wasn't money in it.
It's very much possible to profit from open source software.
Excellent post, raymorris. Though one thing I wanted to bring up is that I believe there might be rare circumstances where you can sue to enforce a unilateral promise. An example might be someone publically pledging to donate a large sum of money to a charity. Say, if a corporation pledged to donate five million dollars to a hospital to build a build a new maternity ward. If that hospital reasonably believed the pledge and started engaging contractors to build it but the corporatin then withdrew the promise. As best as I understand, that hospital could sue to compel the corporation to deliver on its pledge or at the very least pay damages to the hospital amounting to the money the hospital spent when it reasonably believed the corporation's pledge. I believe that can happen in the US or am I mistaken?
As an interesting side note, I'm pretty sure that you can use the courts to enforce a unilateral pledge in some continental european countries, Germany I believe is an example.
That lines up with what I learned in my (US) business law course a decade ago, which explicitly covered the topic. Not a lawyer, not legal advice, YMMV, etc.
The code that results from this must be open. It looks like you can profit from it the same way you can profit from other open source software -- either using it (if Brother made their printer drivers open source; or an engineering firm released open source CAD software), or selling support for it. Same conditions as the GPL.
And yea, they're almost certainly doing it because it's not worth fighting, and they're making that position public. That's nice. It probably cost them something to make this statement, vs not costing a dime to just ignore anyone who does this. Maybe this gives them some legal benefits regarding trademark dilution type stuff, I don't really know if anything like that applies to patents. And it gives them PR benefits. And it probably benefits them because they can then take that code and know it will have efficient algorithms that they can use -- as long as they're the only ones doing it, then they make open source code better and they can freely take that better code and use it however they want. But it's good for us too, because we can use that same open source code, and we can use their patents when writing that code.
Is it 100% altrustic? No. Neither is what Torvalds or Stallman does. There's no such thing. Is it going to be good for the open source community as a whole though? Probably. It's not perfect, but it's still a step forward for the open source community.
I, for one, welcome our new google overlords if this in fact means other following the same example would be spared from patent claims (applies to the US mostly but still).
to all those saying this is meaningless, don't trust them, they could revoke this so don't rely on it. why not just request a license for $0 under these exact terms if you wish to use any of these patents in your project? then there will be no question of this being legally binding and u can use the contents of these patents freely.
i spent five minutes thinking and all i got was this crappy sig
-pedant- It's "Don't Be Evil" (aka Microsoft) -/pedant- We ALL do wrong occasionally, just because we're human and we screw up. For some companies, evil is what they ARE, nastiness is their core.
That's an intriguing distinction - kind of like you can do bad things without considering yourself one of the bad guys.
It would actually be pretty funny if Google had to use this line of reasoning.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
It did? I thought it turned out to be largely relying on advertising revenue.
What this has to do with either open source or patents is not at all clear.
Kid-proof tablet..
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Are you guys using some pro version of Google Translate? Coz Flaimbait and Zealot don't appear as supported languages in my browser...
Specifically, Google is saying they will share their patents with anyone else who shares their source code.
It's an unfair deal (unlike the GPL, where the contract is "I share code, you share code"). Until they actually open source their MapReduce (and other) code, this is pure PR spin.
Don't quote me on this.
Isn't that the same as saying that if you bought a patent you could void all current licensed copies in existence? Each of those licenses was a contract of sorts, right?
If you buy a patent, you can grant new licenses, but you can't do anything about prior grants. Google has just attempted to grant a license to everyone who uses a compatible source license. To me the question is, can you even do that without a legal document, e.g. the GPL?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Why don't you show us a promise that isn't worthless. Realistically any promise, or word of honor, pledge, etc. that does not have a legal signed contract is technically worthless. Doesn't make your word any less weighty.
That's a good point! I'd say no. But honestly i have no idea what a patent license looks like. We've all seen copyrights though. Could you bake a patent license into a copyright notice that allows it to create new license copies? That sounds really odd.
http://soylentnews.org/~tibman
Is it 100% altrustic?
if we get any action that is >0% altruistic from a corporation or isn't directly harming us, we are doing good.