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Red Hat Pledges Patent Protection For 99 Percent of FOSS-ware (theregister.co.uk)

Posted by msmash on from the promise dept.

Red Hat says it has amassed over 2,000 patents and won't enforce them if the technologies they describe are used in properly-licensed open-source software. From a report: The company has made more or less the same offer since 2002, when it first made a "Patent Promise" in order to "discourage patent aggression in free and open source software." Back then the company didn't own many patents and claimed its non-enforcement promise covered 35 per cent of open-source software. The Promise was revised in order to reflect the company's growing patent trove and to spruce up the language it uses to make it more relevant. The revised promise "applies to all software meeting the free software or open source definitions of the Free Software Foundation (FSF) or the Open Source Initiative (OSI)." [...] It's not a blank cheque. Hardware isn't covered and Red Hat is at pains to point out that "Our Promise is not an assurance that Red Hat's patents are enforceable or that practicing Red Hat's patented inventions does not infringe others' patents or other intellectual property." But the company says 99 percent of FOSS software should be covered by the Promise.

1 of 65 comments (clear)

  1. Re:I like Redhat by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Things like systemd, GNOME 3, PulseAudio and NetworkManager ruined my Linux experience far, far, far more than anything Microsoft or SCO or any other anti-Linux force ever did.

    That software from Red Hat, and the way it was forced on the users of non-Fedora distros like Debian and Ubuntu, is the main reason why I had to ditch Linux completely and instead use FreeBSD.

    When I couldn't trust my Debian installation to boot properly because of systemd, I knew it was time to move on. Not to Devuan or Slackware or Gentoo, but away from Linux completely.

    When a community considers software like systemd, GNOME 3, PulseAudio and NetworkManager as being acceptable, I want nothing more to do with that community and their questionable judgment.

    Thankfully the FreeBSD developers have a far more sensible take on how an OS should be built.