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Google Announces Android Cross-Licensing Program 'PAX' -- But Why? (consortiuminfo.org)
"Linux and open-source software have had to contend with intellectual property legal challenges for years," writes ZDNet. "Now, Google has started a new effort to bring peace to potential Android IP sore points: PAX... a royalty-free, community-patent cross-license."
PAX is starting with nine members: Google, Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics, HTC, Foxconn Technology Group, Coolpad, BQ, HMD Global, and Allview. These companies own more than 230,000 global patents. PAX's purpose is to create a "community-driven [patent] clearinghouse, developed together with our Android partners, [that] ensures that innovation and consumer choice -- not patent threats -- will continue to be key drivers of our Android ecosystem. PAX is free to join and open to anyone."
Slashdot reader Andy Updegroved writes: The question is why? The announcement and the related website are extremely brief, and although everyone is invited to get a copy of the cross license, Google reserves the right to decide first whether your motives are pure and you can keep a secret. And so far, the only members of the "PAX Community" listed are existing Google business partners. Is Google aware of some new patent tempest brewing just over the horizon, about to burst into public view? And will any other company names and logos be added to the PAX Community Web page? We'll just have to stay tuned to find out.
Andy Updegrove tells ZDNet it does involve "formal cross-licenses between participants, and therefore enforceable rights, but not an infrastructure to do more (at least insofar as one can tell from the initial announcement)."
Slashdot reader Andy Updegroved writes: The question is why? The announcement and the related website are extremely brief, and although everyone is invited to get a copy of the cross license, Google reserves the right to decide first whether your motives are pure and you can keep a secret. And so far, the only members of the "PAX Community" listed are existing Google business partners. Is Google aware of some new patent tempest brewing just over the horizon, about to burst into public view? And will any other company names and logos be added to the PAX Community Web page? We'll just have to stay tuned to find out.
Andy Updegrove tells ZDNet it does involve "formal cross-licenses between participants, and therefore enforceable rights, but not an infrastructure to do more (at least insofar as one can tell from the initial announcement)."
Why don't they just lobby to get these things removed?
I thought Android used the Apache v2 License which already has a patent license in. So what's up?
M$ is making tons of cash from Android device manufacturers, with the help of a secret set of patents.
May be Google is trying to bring together a set as big as M$ one ?
Any whistleblower around to finally show us what M$ patents are ?
Totof
Link to a copy of the text of the license in 3, 2, ...
How can you talk about gaping holes without a goatse.cx link?
With the ruling still out on the Oracle v Google case, I think this may be a precursor to the licensing terms that will be derived from Oracle's winning of that case, and thus the need for a patent covenant that might cover some piece of Oracle's software platforms (for anyone who hasn't noticed, SPARC is dead, Fujitsu is migrating to ARM for their next gen supercomputer, and Oracle already cut their engineering resources towards it.) and thus convince Oracle to join PAX, thus cross licensing their own patents to all PAX members.
GPL v3 would have done the same, but better job of keeping patents in line. Just saying.
Gabe and Tycho could not be reached for comment
Uh, because it's expensive to lobby. You think a politician is cheap nowadays?
Trump loves Tic Tacs and sexually assaulting women. He thinks he's daughter is a hot piece of ass. I bet that makes his supporters proud.
It used to be you could pay a political like $100 and they would get you a law passed in your favor. Nowadays getting that same law could cost you thousands of dollars.
If GPLv3 included a patent license for anything your company contributes, that would work okay for many companies. I could recommend contributing to GPLv3 projects if that were the case.
However, as was pointed out when the the language of GPLv3 was being drafted, the actual text of the license is far broader than that, and arguably allows anyone to "steal" *any* patents owned by a company that contributes to a large project, including patents that have nothing to do with whatever the company contributed. Stallman is aware of this issue and decided not to address it. Therefore I and many others have to recommend that large companies especially be careful to *not* distribute any GPLv3 with contributions, via Github or any other method. The problem is that by simply doing a *pull* on Github, you're giving up patent rights to anything in the code you pulled, code which you've never seen, including patents from a different division of your company, which you aren't personally aware of.
Suppose
Btw one way to reduce the patent risk is to allow employees to post code on their personal Github, registered under their personal email address rather than their @company.com address. The risk applies only to companies who make code publicly available - if individual employees don't have patents, they don't risk losing their patents. I did that at my last job. I personally had GPLv3 code on my personal Github, and was careful to avoid any mention of my employer when distributing GPLv3 code (I don't personally have any patents to worry about). However that does transfer some other risks to them, if the code happens to violate copywrite or something.
Proprietary companies that only love open source as long as it's used to save money (servers) or make money (steal code). They're just trying to get people to sign up for "free" except I'm sure you're incredibly limited on what you can do and I bet most of the license is geared towards finding cloud developers. This will destroy open source on the desktop, making it impossible to have any real freedom.
A pull *on* (public) Github, as opposed to *from* Github.
Suppose you have a copy of the Linux kernel of your Github. You are distributing the kernel. When you pull from my Github to your Github, everyone else can then get the code from your Github - you're distributing whatever was pulled from mine - but you've never seen it. You're distributing code you've never seen.
Suppose you work at Bosch working on in-car entertainment systems. You make some contributions to Android auto, and you do so via Github. Bosch is now distributing Android auto. If Android Auto were GPLv3, that would mean Bosch would lose their patent rights to anything that *anyone* puts into Android Auto, because Bosch is distributing Android Auto.
Suppose some other group at Bosch 2000 miles away is doing work related to autonomous vehicles. That group has nothing to do with Android Auto. They have patented some cool invention related to autonomous vehicles. As a competitor, all I need to do to nullify that patent is submit some infringing code to Android Auto. As soon as you (working for Bosch) update your Github, you're distributing Android Auto, all of it, including the infringing code. Bosch distributing infringing code plus GPLv3 means Bosch loses their patent rights.