[cc-community] Help w/ Defensive Patents Agreement
Fred Benenson
fred.benenson at gmail.com
Wed Feb 6 09:47:44 EST 2008
There's also the Microsoft version of this :
http://www.microsoft.com/interop/msnovellcollab/community.mspx
It's basically a pledge-not-to-sue, though the FSF was quick to point out
the promise is of little value:
http://www.softwarefreedom.org/perspectives/2006/ms-patent-promise/
"The patent covenant only applies to software that you develop at home and
keep for yourself; the promises don't extend to others when you distribute.
You cannot pass the rights to your downstream recipients, even to the
maintainers of larger projects on which your contribution is built. Further,
to qualify for the pledge, a developer must remain unpaid for her work. "
There's also the more substantial IBM Patent Covenant:
http://www-03.ibm.com/linux/opensource/isplist.shtml
There's a good analysis here:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070713-ibm-promotes-open-standards-with-far-reaching-patent-pledge.html
F
On Feb 6, 2008 10:12 AM, Terry Hancock <hancock at anansispaceworks.com> wrote:
> Mike Belshe wrote:
> > Like many others, I fundamentally believe software patents are broken.
> Due
> > to the current business climate, we can't get rid of them. Yet, the
> more we
> > make, the worse the problem gets. I'd like to mitigate this.
>
> I agree with the poster who said you'd probably have a pretty hard time
> selling your employer on this, unless you sell them on it wholesale.
>
> OTOH, there is an industry organization doing something about this, and
> that might be the thing for you to pursue:
>
> http://www.patentcommons.org/
>
> This initiative was started a couple of years ago. I haven't really been
> keeping up with it, but AFAIK, they're still very active.
>
> The idea here is to collect a large number of patents to be held in
> common and only used defensively. By participating in this project, your
> company might improve its corporate image, improve its trust
> relationship with its engineers (because of the issue you describe), and
> of course, augment the defensive value of patents by benefit from other
> patents in the commons.
>
> Which might be enough to sell them on it.
>
> Cheers,
> Terry
>
> --
> Terry Hancock (hancock at AnansiSpaceworks.com)
> Anansi Spaceworks http://www.AnansiSpaceworks.com
>
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>
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