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Open Source Business Model Using Software Patents 117

Posted by kdawson from the say-it-ain't-so dept.
Joe Barr writes "Robin Miller has an exclusive video interview with Larry Rosen and Fred Popowich this morning on Linux.com about their new open source business model which includes software patents in its DNA. Their motto is 'Free for open source, everyone else pays.' Larry Rosen was once legal counsel for the OSI." Linux.com and Slashdot share a corporate parent.
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Open Source Business Model Using Software Patents More

Open Source Business Model Using Software Patents

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  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday March 29, 2008 @12:24PM (#22905766)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Stallman's tactics for a new generation (Score:5, Insightful)

      by serviscope_minor ( 664417 ) on Saturday March 29, 2008 @12:55PM (#22905930) Journal
      but the system could be gamed to ensure freedom of access.

      Funny thing is that it's not really gaming the system at all:

      "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."


      It's hard to imagine how Free(TM) software doesn't promote the progress of science and useful arts. As such, it's using the system for the purpose it was originally intended for, albeit in an unusual way.
      • "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."

        So what does this statement actually imply? (1) A public service function, or (2) to make someone fantastically wealthy by a specially devised monopoly method?

        As someone deals with contracts and agreements every day, my take is that it is because of this ambiguity of interpretation that we have the problems/misunderstanding today.

        Stallm
        • So what does this statement actually imply? (1) A public service function, or (2) to make someone fantastically wealthy by a specially devised monopoly method?

          Neither. It doesn't imply what you may wish to do with your rights, it explicitly secures "for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries". What you do with that right is your decision, serving the public good and wealth accumulation are equally compatible with it. They do not require rei
          • This is a glib use of the term "rights"? It seems to assume automatic entitlement to them? Rights are something that are granted by the rest of the population, or not. They are definitely not automatic.

            Then there is POWER and those that have it can choose not to grant you any rights at all. As I understand the constitution, ORIGINALLY was about a balance of these two things, RIGHTS and POWER, and not the corruption and mockery that they are turning it into now. Blackmail, extortion and power brokering
            • This is a glib use of the term "rights"?

              My use of the term "rights" was a direct reply to your post in which you quoted the constitution. It is obvious from the context of my post that the rights I was talking about were those directly mentioned in the constitution and quoted by you. For my use of the term "rights" to be glib, your post and the constitution would also have to be glib.

              ... The Founding Fathers maybe should have considered this.

              From what I've seen so far, the founding fathers put a lo
              • Since I deal with legal documents and written agreements every day, I always find this to be a relevant question. What is the point of having a written document "agreement" if you will, if its exact meaning and intent is subject to wildly varying interpretations by the parties to it.

                Would you not be better off (1) without any document at all? (2) Rewriting it? or (3) as is in most of todays agreements putting exact interpretations on the key words.

                1.1 The term "Exclusive Rights" as used in this document sh

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by mpe ( 36238 )
          So inventions are not necessarily exclusive to an individual, but if someone wants to bring an invention to market, when nobody else has, they should be afforded some exclusivity over normal market competition to recover costs and make a profit.

          Being "first to market" can be an advantage in itself. In order to even be in a position to compete someone else would first have to buy your product, reverse engineer it, then produce it. They might also have to have a situation where you couldn't meet demand, but
          • Market dynamics notwithstanding, I was just trying to differentiate between the protection that should be afforded to those who actually spend R&D time and money, and manufacturing costs to bring a product to market. And thereby try to make an honest profit that way. And those who manipulate the patent and copyright systems themselves, in all of the various devious ways that they do this, to extort money without the risk of having to market an actual product. But are a financial threat (parasite if yo

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by pchan- ( 118053 )
        This is nothing but another way of locking down open code. Software patents taint open source code and restrict its distribution. This kind of patent-locked open-source is another thing that the GPL version 3 was designed to protect against. If your software is licensed as GPLv3, these jerks can't take it and say "this guy can run it, but this other guy can't unless he pays us". They must grant permission to use the software (and their patents therein) to every user of the software (which can redistribu
        • No, but they can write their own code that does exactly the same thing, and compete with you. If you have a patent on a concept, not only can they not take your code and produce proprietary products with those features, but they can't even write their own code implementing those features. However, I'm not sure that it will do much good. Big corps will just breach the patent anyway, and fight with their lawyers.

    • Re:Stallman's tactics for a new generation (Score:5, Insightful)

      by david_thornley ( 598059 ) on Saturday March 29, 2008 @01:17PM (#22906060)

      What's wrong with trademark law? Patents prevent me from writing my own frippin' code. Copyrights prevent me from modifying and sharing code. Trademarks are a way of saying who the code is from, and giving proper credit is pretty much mandatory in the free and open source software movements.

      • Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday March 29, 2008 @01:23PM (#22906104)
        Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • Re:Stallman's tactics for a new generation (Score:5, Insightful)

          by amorsen ( 7485 ) <benny+slashdot@amorsen.dk> on Saturday March 29, 2008 @01:49PM (#22906242)

          The Apple Computers versus Apple Records battle shows how trademarks can stifle innovation. Apple Computers had to fight long and hard to expand its offerings.
          They deserved to have to fight long and hard. It is really confusing that there are two Apple's in the music business.
          • Comment removed based on user account deletion
            • Apple Computers gets its name from Apple Records. If there had been some sort of cosmic convergence I'd side with the computer company, but in this case, they brought it on themselves. It was a nice bit of homage to the Beatles, but a foolish business choice.
              • Care to site your source on that one? I'm intrigued and I've never heard that the computer company got its name from the record company. I find it to be a rather ridiculous trademark battle considering that its a {common dictionary word} {industry} VS {common dictionary word} {different industry}.

                • Well, what I understand is that they were actually making a more highbrow reference, a scientific one. They were referencing Newton, and the apple that fell on his head.

                  If you do a search for "apple original logo" on Google, you'll see the reference. They are their own source.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by nguy ( 1207026 )
          The Apple Computers versus Apple Records battle shows how trademarks can stifle innovation. Apple Computers had to fight long and hard to expand its offerings.

          And how did that stifle innovation?
        • Wow, I've never heard of Apple Computers. I guess Apple Computer is a lot more well-known?
          • There's no company in existence called Apple Computer that I'm aware of. I think there might be oon called Apple, Inc.

        • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

          by jmv ( 93421 )
          I have a fruit company called "Apple Macintosh", but ever since I've been trying to diversify to computer hardware, I keep being threatened by another company called Apple. This is stifling my capacity to innovate.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by maxume ( 22995 )
          They could have walked away from the Apple name. They chose to fight it out.
        • When you hear Apple and music, whom do you think of now?
      • I'm willing to challenge software patent claims just to be among the first ones to pick the fight with the claimants. Can anyone think of any good software patent claims to challenge?

      • Trademarks have been turned into property rights (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Geof ( 153857 ) on Saturday March 29, 2008 @02:26PM (#22906464) Homepage

        Trademark law was created to benefit consumers. That purpose has changed. From Yochai Benkler's The Wealth of Networks (p. 290):

        in 1995, the U.S. Congress enacted a new kind of trademark law, the Federal Antidilution Act, which for the first time disconnects trademark protection from protecting consumers from confusion by knockoffs. The Antidilution Act of 1995 gives the owner of any famous mark -- and only famous marks -- protection from any use that dilutes the meaning that the brand owner has attached to its own mark. It can be entirely clear to consumers that a particular use does not come from the owner of the brand, and still, the owner has a right to prevent this use. While there is some constitutional free-speech protection for criticism, there is also a basic change in the understanding of trademark law -- from a consumer protection law intended to assure that consumers can rely on the consistency of goods marked in a certain way, to a property right

        Trademarks are undergoing the same change as copyright and patent. These began as privileges intended to promote the public good. They have been transformed into property rights for private benefit, at the expense of the public they were originally intended to serve.

        Trademarks are often abused to achieve an effect similar to copyright. For example, trademarks can be registered on names from the public domain. IANAL, and I know courts have ruled that this is not the purpose of trademarks, but they are used this way regardless. Want to publish a Conan story in Canada (where Robert E. Howard's works are unambiguously in the public domain)? Go ahead - but don't call it Conan. Or look at the continued abuses [olyblog.com] of the Olympics to force already-existing businesses to change their names.

        Trademarks are used to create monopolies on whole categories of products. I have a young son and recently discovered how effective this is for toys. Toys have gone from being simple products to being cross-promoted product and entertainment lines. You no longer buy your child a toy train - you buy a Thomas the Tank Engine train. Sure, kids love Thomas, so there's some value there. But it pushes out competition and diversity, dominating the whole product category. How can you compete unless you too have a TV show, books, toy trains - the whole bit? One by one, the categories in toy stores are turning into brands. In a Toys R Us I found the "trains" section should simply have been labeled "Thomas and Friends" - because that's virtually all that was there (and boy was it overpriced). Now Disney seems to be trying to do the same thing with Cars.

        Kids learn brands at a very young age, and I don't think they're good for kids. Despite my efforts, my son knew about Thomas by age 2. Then he started asking about other products. I taught him the word "logo" because I didn't want him to think "Dairyland" was the word for yoghurt. I want him growing up in a world of trains and cars and music and so on, not of Thomas(TM), Cars(TM), and Apple(TM). I want a chance to teach him what a brand is (and what it is not) before he assimilates them into the kinds of objects that exist in the world. Brands were supposed to enable consumer choice, not narrow the kinds of things we can think about.

        • Thing is, I remember Thomas the Tank Engine from when I was a kid. And I'm 27. It's not like it's some new thing to come along. As far as kids knowing what brands are, I really don't think they do. They know what characters they like. A regular train is boring. A talking train with a smiley face with a bunch of friend trains and a little conductor he talks to is actually interesting to the child. My oldest (other one is only 5 months, so she doesn't recognize much yet) knows who Dora is, all the Sesa

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Geof ( 153857 )
            I like the Thomas the Tank Engine TV show. I'm sure I would have enjoyed it if it had been around when I was a kid. We often borrow it from the library and watch a couple of episodes together before bed. But then when he sees the toys, he wants them too, and the clothes, and so on. If the TV show was just a show, I would be happy. If the toys were just toys, I would be happy too. But they're a big system designed to capture kids.

            Research has shown that children discriminate brands from a young age. L
            • Get rid of the TV. We do not have one and my five year old daughter is virtually immune to that kind of marketing. Her associations for the Disney brand seem to mildly negative.

              What she does no is play with Meccano and Lego, read, play board games, listen to CDs (sometimes reading along with it) and listen to stories on her computer (including podcasts).

              How much of that would she do if she had easy entertainment available? yes you can limit time spent on TV and its effects, but why set yourself up for a str

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by Geof ( 153857 )

                Get rid of the TV.

                This is excellent advice. We've done the next best thing. There's only one TV in the house, it's in our bedroom, and we only watch DVDs from the library. Our son's exposure to Disney etc. comes from daycare, hand-me-down clothes, and from gifts from friends (though I try to filter out the Disney), so it's not great, but it's more than I had hoped.

                Incidentally, we didn't get rid of cable for him - we did it for ourselves. We found we weren't watching it. We watch want we want to,

                • I don't think you have to get rid of the TV. Just get good at limiting it. There's no reason that you have to watch television news just because they broadcast it. I very rarely watch the news. And when I do, it's the morning news, which consists of weather, traffic (I don't drive so I ignore this), the stock market prices, and a couple advertisements in the form of stories for local businesses. My kids watch about 30 minutes of TV a day. Some days there's no TV at all, not because think they've had

                  • Re: (Score:2)

                    by TheLink ( 130905 )
                    I find very little reason to watch "news" on TV unless it's amusing for some reason, or I am getting something "live" and interesting.

                    Newsreaders read out news much slower than I can read a webpage. So even after all the scrolling text etc it's still not very efficient when it comes to getting news. And, the analysis is usually either nonexistent or crap.
    • Software should be handled by copyright, not patent. I won't respect anyone's patent claims for software. I will respond with a big "Fuck You" to anyone who tells me I can't write and distribute a sequence of characters because they patented it.
      • Exactly. Software moves way too fast to allow BS like patents in a way. Copyright works. Use of trade secrets works as well. But patents are BS wrt. software.

        See blackboard software and their patent trolling vs. others. See all the patent trolls vs. Microsoft (like that DirectX patent troll posted last year on slashdot). See RIM vs. patent trolls. Instead of innovation, patents breed FUD in the software world.

        If you can patent software bytes, why can't mathematicians patent their theorem? Why is an implemen
        • The OSI was never about freedom from their very inception as an organization. This guy Rosen either doesn't get it, or he knowingly serves large software patent claimants at the expense of the rest of us.

        • See blackboard software and their patent trolling vs. others. See all the patent trolls vs. Microsoft (like that DirectX patent troll posted last year on slashdot). See RIM vs. patent trolls. Instead of innovation, patents breed FUD in the software world

          Neither the Blackboard case nor the RIM case involved patent trolls. You probably should learn what terms mean before using them.

      • I patent the alphabet!
        • I'm not sure you can patent the alphabet. Patent are for methods and process, aren't they? for alphabet, you can have copyright or maybe trademark (thought for trademarking, you have to actually trade something, and it doesn't prevent the use of it for an other product, unless your well known.)

          I patent metaphors... I'm sure that fall in the patent box.
    • is "copyleft" trademarked? what if an organized group confused the public as to the meaning of "copyleft"?.. trademarks are about reputation, which may be less of a product and more of an ongoing process.. less of a noun and more of a verb.. trademarks currently are strongest when they modify nouns, ie this is a google(tm) version of search.. for example, the act of xeroxing (verb) dilutes the xerox(tm) copyright.. google lawyers fret about verbal use of "to google" this or that.. for example, google "barl

    • Free as in Freedom may also be found online [oreilly.com] for free (as in beer) ...in case anyone didn't know already.

      As for software patents, I personally object to the very concept of granting individuals exclusive rights to ideas. Software patents are an abomination and should be abolished all together. I fail to see why it should change anything that the applicant is an open source business.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by waveman ( 66141 )
      Anyone wanting to inform themselves about he huge costs of IP laws would do worse than to read this book. http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/againstfinal.htm [ucla.edu]

      The story about how the patents on parts of the steam engine held back the industrial revolution by 30 years is one that needs to be told - often.

      Tim Josling

      • Anyone wanting to inform themselves about he huge costs of IP laws would do worse than to read this book. http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/againstfinal.htm [ucla.edu]

        OK, checking out the book, and in the introduction, the author immediately shoots out facts which appear to me to be worded in a way that is slanted so far toward his thesis that they invalidate the credibility of the book in my mind. Here's the quote:

        During the period of Watt's patents the U.K. added about 750 horsepower of steam eng

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mpe ( 36238 )
      One of the things that I found interesting in reading Richard Stallman's account in Free as in Freedom of his early Free Software visions was that he was essentially using the copyright system against itself.

      Yet, ironically, in a way which may be closer to the intention of the people who wrote "To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;"

  • Legal? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by mrsteveman1 ( 1010381 )
    How is legal to freely license patents to one party while charging for those patents when licensed to another party?

    • Re:Legal? (Score:4, Informative)

      by serviscope_minor ( 664417 ) on Saturday March 29, 2008 @12:51PM (#22905904) Journal
      How is legal to freely license patents to one party while charging for those patents when licensed to another party?

      Different licensing conditions == different price.

      That's perfectly fair, and legal.
      • The video was too laggy to watch (guess it got busy), but their draft patent policy made interesting reading. It has one set of rules for open-source usage, and one set of rules for commercial usage. Are they assuming that these two sets of users are disjoint?

        I wonder which set of licensing conditions / price a commercial open-source project would fall under?
        • If this is pro opensource, I'm guessing free.
          • Ahh but then you've got a split between "Open source" and "Free software", something many people get all pissy about.
            • Considering this is coming from OSI guys, I'm taking it that they don't particularly care in this case. It's the FSF & RMS followers who get pissy about this.
              • Good point, I hope the software world can get away from the idea that all software should be free of all cost and free to pass out like friendship bread. Open source is good enough for me, transparency is more important than freedom to me.
          • Yeah, that would be my guess as well. I'm sure that it's deliberate that they've left it vague though. Looking at who is behind it I'm sure it's not something that would have escaped them.

        • Which license? (Score:3, Interesting)

          by CustomDesigned ( 250089 )
          I wonder which set of licensing conditions / price a commercial open-source project would fall under?

          Whichever one they choose, like a dual-licensed GPL project. If you like zero-price and are fine with the open-source conditions, then choose that. If you have proprietary code you don't want to open source, then choose the commercial license.

          The problem I see is that it is much harder to tell whether a proprietary project is violating a specific patent. On that note, I've often wondered: since it is

    • Re:Legal? (Score:4, Informative)

      by seeker_1us ( 1203072 ) on Saturday March 29, 2008 @12:52PM (#22905908)
      It's your patent.

      If you want to issue a blanket license to anyone using GPL for $0.00, you can. Someone doesn't want to meet those terms for automatic license? Fine, they just have to pay you something else.

      From a legal perspective its fine (IANAL).

      Software patents are still broken though.

      • I have to agree. If you have exclusive rights to "distribute" based on your patents, then I would think that you could do so as you please.

      • That's the rub with what seems to me to be the most outspoken and represented opinion here on /. If you believe that the second amendment to the US constitution is just as meritorious as the first, then I claim that you should be supporting title 35 of the US code. Before you flame or moderate this post, read the rest of it for an explanation as to why I make this claim.

        Everyone here seems to bash patents. IMHO it is precisely the legal notion of intellectual property (including patents) that allows OSS

    • You can choose the license every time you give the product to someone. You don't have to distribute to the whole world, you also don't have to distribute at all.

      When you charge the second party, you give them more rights to your product (i.e., they do not have to open-source products based on it).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by aitikin ( 909209 )
      Because the patent holder says so. If you hold a patent (or a copyright for that matter) you have the right to charge whatever you want for it's usage. If I write a story and get it filed with the copyright office, I can then turn around and charge $60 for it, but because I know you, give it away. It's the same basic principle, just expanded.

      Segregation laws are racially based, not OS choice based.
    • It's no really "gratis". There just exists a quid pro quo different from money, namely: you must open source your project. So you're not discriminating against any party since it's up to them to choose what kind of remuneration the prefer to deal with.
    • In that it is something that is done constantly, you either have two versions of the license or two versions of the product.

      This is nothing new, think of all the proprietary software out there where there are "free to use" versions where the only difference is a license agreement that you will not be using the software for commercial applications.

    • Simple. You just give permission on the criteria that works that implement the patent will be licensed under the GPLv3 or another similar license.
    • Large companies frequently use patent pools and cross-licensing agreements working this way. "We agree to let you use our patents, and you agree to let us use yours". Compensation for a patent license doesn't have to involve money alone, or even at all. If money is all you're willing to offer for a patent license, your contract will naturally have a higher dollar cost than one that includes cross licensing. Cross licensing makes sense when your motivation is primarily defensive (avoid the expense of defendi
    • That's the thing about ownership.... if you own something, you get to name the price for it. The last thing we want is government stepping in and telling us how to set prices on things we own. If it were illegal (as in against the law enforced by the government) to set your own prices for things which are yours, you wouldn't really own it.
  • Summary please :-)

    Is this different from MySQL and the such models?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by CSMatt ( 1175471 )
      MySQL's model involves copyright, while this model involves patents.

      Even so, it reminds me of promises by several other companies not to sue FOSS that use their patented technology. How can we be sure that they won't revoke their promise later?

      • If they use and redistribute GPLed code, they are providing downstream licenses that they cannot revoke. The language in GPLv3 is much clearer than in GPLv2, but I think GPLv2 is sufficiently clear in this case.

        Of course, they could perhaps revoke the license for stuff with BSD and related licenses, but those have always been more vulnerable to exploitation.

  • this has been tried before (Score:3, Interesting)

    by nguy ( 1207026 ) on Saturday March 29, 2008 @12:59PM (#22905962)
    this sort of model has been tried before and it tends not to work all that well. Usually, you end up with a company that may nominally use some open source licenses, but they might as well be proprietary. In particular, companies like this tend to use their power to prevent forking, and without forking being realistic, a project isnt really open source.

    Patents for open source only really works if the patents are held by a separate non profit.
    • If by "open" you really mean "Free as in freedom" then yes you are right.

      But something can be open without being free of all cost or restriction.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by superwiz ( 655733 )
        If by "freedom" you mean the abstract concept for which it is Ok to kill people (and, naturally, do other lesser harmful things to them), then we have a problem. People distinguish between "free"-as-in-speech and free-as-in-"beer" for a reason. The reason is that ambiguity of context allows for mischaracterization of opponents' remarks (generally for the purpose of inflaming passions and curtailing reasonable discourse).

    • this sort of model has been tried before and it tends not to work all that well.
      Cool, you're not bound to repeat history. Could you share the knowledge with me?

  • something like that.. (Score:2, Informative)

    by wixi ( 1065094 )
    http://twext.com/patent [license.read.fm] is trying this strategy.. i'm not sure it's a "software" patent, the claims are more about A.) a way to format text for language learners and B.) a method to array text so software can easily format the text..
    • http://olpcnews.com/content/localization/learning_language.html
    • http://wiki.laptop.org/go/WiXi

    the patent makes me feel slightly safer to share the idea.. the open license gives me B.) hope to develop the software [sourceforge.net] (IANAL nor programmer) and A.) a free way to promote "free" us

  • for a Business Model Patent as well. A 2 for one deal.

  • In their DNA, eh? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by NewbieProgrammerMan ( 558327 ) on Saturday March 29, 2008 @01:36PM (#22906180)

    ....business model which includes software patents in its DNA.

    Wow, they went to the trouble of getting gene therapy in order to have the text of their patents encoded in their DNA? That's some hard-core entrepeneurship!

    Oh, wait, sorry; that's just some dumbass, buzzword-bingo-bound expression that's not yet considered as cliché as "paradigm shift" or "think outside the box." Sorry to spoil the moment.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dbIII ( 701233 )
      It's widespread. Today I got an email entitled "Eliminate Slows to get maximum System Performance", and some people here often talk about "smarts" because intelligence is too long a word I suspect. Poor education is having at impact at all levels of even technical industries. It is paticularly painful and time consuming talking to salesfolk and having to dumb down the vocabulary to well below high school level.

  • The wrong approach (Score:3, Insightful)

    by rudy_wayne ( 414635 ) on Saturday March 29, 2008 @01:38PM (#22906190)
    "Their motto is 'Free for open source, everyone else pays.'"

    Sorry, but this is just plain wrong.

    What if Microsoft did this? They hold many thousands of patents -- what if they said "You can use our patents for free in closed proprietary applications, but open source must pay." People would be screaming bloody murder. Software patents are wrong and should be abolished. The fact that a patent is held by a "good" or "less evil" company doesn't make software patents any less wrong.

    .

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by pembo13 ( 770295 )
      I am pretty sure they already do this

    • What if Microsoft did this? They hold many thousands of patents -- what if they said "You can use our patents for free in closed proprietary applications, but open source must pay." People would be screaming bloody murder. Software patents are wrong and should be abolished. The fact that a patent is held by a "good" or "less evil" company doesn't make software patents any less wrong.

      Software patents are broken.

      However, I don't remember anyone criticizing IBM when they said they would let Open Source us

    • If they said that people would be screaming bloody murder in opposition to this article's idea. Mostly because they are radically opposite things to do. With one you can keep your freedom, or you can lose it with a cost if you want, while in the other, nobody gets the freedom.

    • I thought this was where Microsoft was heading with the Novell deal etc. By allowing Open Source to use their patents they infect it and find a new and possibly more secure way of getting money out of large companies. Remember Microsoft is promising not to sue independent open source developers (although people running their code are not so lucky.) http://www.microsoft.com/interop/osp/default.mspx [microsoft.com]

      I cannot condone this kind of "open source" as it involves patents which make me not free to write my own co

  • This seems to be a pretty natural outgrowth of the dual-license model but applied to patents as well.


    The problem is we should be working towards community-developed open source projects, rather than proprietary and commercial products which happen to be available under open source licenses. In many ways, this represents a step back rather than forward.

  • I would actually really enjoy seeing open source go this route. Years ago when I was first introduced to open source this was actually exactly how I thought it was operating until I was educated more on the matter later on. If used for profit, then the profit should be distributed to help continue the growth of the community. If for free, then any progress made on that code (to the best of my knowledge) is typically distributed, again, to help continue the growth of the community. It seems entirely foolish
  • Personally I think projects using FOSS licenses such as the GPL should offer to non-exclusively license their open-source software for closed-source commercial uses -- for a hefty fee, of course. In other words, they would, for a hefty sum, allow the project to fork; the FOSS version would remain as such; a company paying the fee would have a starting point for a closed-source product. I believe that at least a few companies wish to produce systems using FOSS in conjunction with their own proprietary work,
  • In the video Rosen draws a parallel between using copyright law against itself and using patent law against itself. That seems to be the crux of his argument for using patents in open source software. But for me, the genius of open source licenses like the GPL is that I don't need to involve an intellectual property attorney every time I release new code. Once you include patents in the mix, writing software starts involving the legal leeches. Say, for example, I improve or tweak an OSL licensed softwar

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by 1 a bee ( 817783 )
      I'm late to the party, so I'm reduced to replying to myself.. :-)

      One thing that struck is that neither of these fellows, Popowich or Rosen, actually do much coding nowadays. So it's easy for big-picture guys like these to forget the details that make open source work. One of those details is that coding open source is *easy*. At least in so far as the licensing of it goes. Once you understand the basics of, say, the GPL you don't think about its use any more. When you have patents in the mix, it starts
  • This is a dangerous course for software development. The only thing this type of business model favors is the pocketbook of the original patent holder.

    I guess I'll patent "Hello World" (nobody has patented that yet, have they?) and license it out to everyone who ever has or will use it.

    We've seen how much grief existing software patents have caused the technology industry, simply because one company's idea comes too close to another that has been patented. Case in point the whole Blackberry/RIM vs. NTP fi

  • They ARE evil. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Jane Q. Public ( 1010737 ) on Saturday March 29, 2008 @02:44PM (#22906552)
    I don't care what Rosen says. Protection for software belongs in the copyright arena, NOT the patent arena.

    I have tried to keep an open mind for years now, and I have heard all the arguments before. And by now I have also seen the real results. And based on that, my opinion has not changed: software should not be patentable. Period.
  • I wonder if someone already patented the business process of 'Free for open source, everyone else pays.'
  • Aside from working for OSI for a while, Rosen is also better known for creating some licenses that weren't exactly free and trying to pass them off as being the real thing (failure; nobody uses them), and generally supporting companies who try to exploit the "open source" label for publicity without actually releasing any free software.

    Don't be fooled. He may not be actively opposed to free software, but he's not working for it either. He's just a hanger-on that's trying to profit from it. It's unclear whet
  • If he has to use video to explain why patents don't suck, I'll give it a miss. Transcript, anyone?

  • The only way to guarantee convergence towards freedom, as well as allow unlimited incremental innovation, is to provide an instrument that causes you, like for GPL, keep the source free, to avoid stealing (as is done with GPL violations [wikipedia.org]). In our case [neurologic.se] we are implementing a general business model Wish-IT® [wish-it.com]which will converge towards patent free products, that can be built upon by using incremental innovation for all future. To allow patents on products keeps the dystopia status quo, efficiently counte

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