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Google Pledges Not To Sue Any Open Source Projects Using Their Patents

Posted by Unknown on from the now-and-forever dept.

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.

6 of 153 comments (clear)

  1. A Bit Weird? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    " 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.

    1. Re:A Bit Weird? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Ethically, that makes this pledge worthless for anything other than GPLed software.

      So, still pretty darn useful then? Who said Google wanted to make its patents available to proprietary software that links against open-source software? They're trying to help open-source software, not proprietary software built on top of open-source software (see: Apple).

  2. Re:Darwin and Motorola by jedidiah · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
  3. Re:Google's a "me, too!" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  4. Re:Darwin and Motorola by h4rr4r · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  5. Re:it is in enforceable in at least US, UK, Austra by Schmorgluck · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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