Jim Moore’s blog: Innovation, Strategy, Public Policy

It is not that large companies care about Linux developers per se, what IBM and Dell and HP and others care about is being able to freely use the free software in their multi-billion-dollar global OEM and sytems integration businesses.

O’Reilly Network — U.S. Patent Reform Bill: An Interview with Mark Webbink
U.S. Patent Reform Bill: An Interview with Mark Webbink
by Richard Koman
09/16/2005

Open source software businesses and projects–like all software companies–have been living with a sword over their heads: the sword of patents. A year ago, the Open Source Risk Management (OSRM) firm reported the existence of 283 patents that the Linux source code may potentially infringe upon. (This is not to say Linux does infringe on all 283.)

While OSRM found that a third of those patents were held by Linux-friendly corporations like Cisco, HP, IBM, Intel, Novell, Oracle, Red Hat, and Sony, there were also at least 27 patents held by Microsoft, which has proven its willingness to patent other companies’ work and pursue license fees in the recent squabble over the iPod interface.

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Open source developers (and well-known companies like IBM and Novell that are involved in open source) have recently become quite worried that some troll or another will find an open source project or company infringing on a patent. It is time–commercial Linux developer Red Hat and Open Source Development Labs (OSDL), an industry consortium, have decided–to take corrective action.

At August’s LinuxWorld ‘05, the organizations announced their own versions of patent commons–safe havens where patents could be dedicated to open source projects. OSDL’s Patent Commons will be a place where companies and individuals can outright donate their patents to the community. Red Hat has agreed to fund the cost of registration for patents that will be donated to its Fedora Foundation. Those patents could then be used in projects using most open source licenses.

All of this is set against the background of a major patent reform bill that will be taken up by Congress this session.