Open Source and the US Patent System
The open source community has gotten together, with some leadership by RedHat, to make an attempt at preparing a war-chest of patents for defense against potential suits in the future. In this way I see the community taking on some of the most complex facets of commercial software entities which is the management of IP. It makes sense, this is where the open source movement has shined. If it wasn’t for the tools such as cvs and an interconnected network of computers, this movement would not be able to act in defensive ways such as this. It is truly a precedent setting endeavor, I think some of the folks at the Open Source Business Conference in San Francisco were inspired by Lawrence Lessig’s speech.
The potential use of patent litigation in an offensive way against open source projects is something that has concerned me for a long time, and it has been getting more and more “buzz” lately, because it is seen as an area where Open Source is weak. I’m hoping efforts such as this will mitigate the risk the community has in this area. It certainly sounds like a good start.
