Software patents and free software
Encyclopedia
Opposition to software patents is widespread in the free software community
Free software community
The free-software community is an informal term that refers to the users and developers of free software as well as supporters of the free-software movement. The movement is sometimes referred to as the open-source software community or a subset thereof...

. In response, various mechanisms have been tried to defuse the perceived problem.

Positions from the community

Community leaders such as Richard Stallman
Richard Stallman
Richard Matthew Stallman , often shortened to rms,"'Richard Stallman' is just my mundane name; you can call me 'rms'"|last= Stallman|first= Richard|date= N.D.|work=Richard Stallman's homepage...

, Alan Cox
Alan Cox
Alan Cox is a British computer programmer who formerly maintained the 2.2 branch of the Linux kernel and continues to be heavily involved in the development of the Linux kernel, an association that dates back to 1991...

, Bruce Perens
Bruce Perens
Bruce Perens is a computer programmer and advocate in the open source community. He created the Open Source Definition and published the first formal announcement and manifesto of open source. He co-founded the Open Source Initiative with Eric S...

, and Linus Torvalds
Linus Torvalds
Linus Benedict Torvalds is a Finnish software engineer and hacker, best known for having initiated the development of the open source Linux kernel. He later became the chief architect of the Linux kernel, and now acts as the project's coordinator...

 and companies such as Red Hat, and MySQL
MySQL
MySQL officially, but also commonly "My Sequel") is a relational database management system that runs as a server providing multi-user access to a number of databases. It is named after developer Michael Widenius' daughter, My...

, and community groups such as FSFE
Free Software Foundation Europe
The Free Software Foundation Europe was founded in 2001 as an official European sister organization of the U.S.-based Free Software Foundation to take care of all aspects of free software in Europe. FSF and FSFE are financially and legally separate entities.FSFE believes that access to and...

, IFSO
Irish Free Software Organisation
The Irish Free Software Organisation is a member organisation based in the Republic of Ireland which works to promote the use of free software in Ireland, and oppose legal or political developments which would interfere with the use or development of Free Software.It is an associate organization...

, all believe that patents cause problems for free software.

Patent licensing

Leading open-source figures and companies have complained software patents are overly broad and the USPTO should reject most of them. Even Bill Gates has said "If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today’s ideas were invented, and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today".

Benefits of free software

US patent attorney
Patent attorney
A patent attorney is an attorney who has the specialized qualifications necessary for representing clients in obtaining patents and acting in all matters and procedures relating to patent law and practice, such as filing an opposition...

 Dan Ravicher argues that free software's distributed development model which leads to fewer concentrations of wealth, plus free software's public benefit create economic and legal protections.

Problems for free software

Free software projects cannot agree to patent licences that include any kind of per-copy fee. No matter how low the fee is, there is no way for a free software distributor to know how many copies are being made. Also, adding any requirements to pay or to notify someone each time a copy is made would make the software no longer free software.

A patent licence that is royalty-free, or provides a one-time worldwide payment is acceptable. Version 2 of the GNU General Public License
GNU General Public License
The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....

 does not allow software to be distributed if that software requires a patent licence that does not "permit royalty-free redistribution of the Program by all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you".

The 2004 OSRM study

In 2004, Open Source Risk Management commissioned a patent study, carried out by Dan Ravicher. For this study, Ravicher performed patent searches to estimate the patent-risk of the Linux kernel
Linux kernel
The Linux kernel is an operating system kernel used by the Linux family of Unix-like operating systems. It is one of the most prominent examples of free and open source software....

:


In conclusion, he found that no court-validated software patent is
infringed by the Linux kernel. However, Ravicher also found 283 issued but
not yet court-validated software patents that, if upheld as valid by the
courts, could potentially be used to support patent claims against Linux.

Patent retaliation

"Patent retaliation" clauses are included in several free software licences. The goal of these clauses is to create a penalty so as to discourage the licensee (the user/recipient of the software) from suing the licensor (the provider/author of the software) for patent infringement
Patent infringement
Patent infringement is the commission of a prohibited act with respect to a patented invention without permission from the patent holder. Permission may typically be granted in the form of a license. The definition of patent infringement may vary by jurisdiction, but it typically includes using or...

 by terminating the licence upon the initiation of such a lawsuit.

The Free Software Foundation
Free Software Foundation
The Free Software Foundation is a non-profit corporation founded by Richard Stallman on 4 October 1985 to support the free software movement, a copyleft-based movement which aims to promote the universal freedom to create, distribute and modify computer software...

 included a narrow patent retaliation clause in drafts 1 and 2 of version 3 of the GPL, however, this clause was removed in draft 3 as its enforceability and effectiveness was decided to be too dubious to be worth the added complexity.

Examples of broader clauses are those of the Apache License
Apache License
The Apache License is a copyfree free software license authored by the Apache Software Foundation . The Apache License requires preservation of the copyright notice and disclaimer....

 and the Mozilla Public License
Mozilla Public License
The Mozilla Public License is a free and open source software license. Version 1.0 was developed by Mitchell Baker when she worked as a lawyer at Netscape Communications Corporation and version 1.1 at the Mozilla Foundation...

.

Patent pools

In 2005, IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...

, Novell
Novell
Novell, Inc. is a multinational software and services company. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of The Attachmate Group. It specializes in network operating systems, such as Novell NetWare; systems management solutions, such as Novell ZENworks; and collaboration solutions, such as Novell Groupwise...

, Philips
Philips
Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. , more commonly known as Philips, is a multinational Dutch electronics company....

, Red Hat
Red Hat
Red Hat, Inc. is an S&P 500 company in the free and open source software sector, and a major Linux distribution vendor. Founded in 1993, Red Hat has its corporate headquarters in Raleigh, North Carolina with satellite offices worldwide....

, and Sony
Sony
, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate measured by revenues....

 founded the Open Invention Network
Open Invention Network
The Open Invention Network is a company that acquires patents and licenses them royalty free to entities which, in turn, agree not to assert their own patents against Linux and Linux-related systems and applications.-History:...

 (OIN). OIN is a company that acquires patents and offers them royalty free "to any company, institution or individual that agrees not to assert its patents against the Linux operating system or certain Linux-related applications".

Novell donated the valuable Commerce One
Commerce One
Commerce One was a pioneering e-commerce company founded in 1994 as DistriVision in Pleasanton, California. The company was renamed Commerce One in 1997, and went public in 1999. They were one of the darlings in the hot B2B sector, and saw their stock soar from 20 to over 600 in early 2000,...

 web services patents to OIN. These potentially threaten anyone who uses web services. OIN's founders intend for these patents to encourage others to join, and to discourage legal threats against Linux and Linux-related applications. Along with several other projects, Mono
Mono (software)
Mono, pronounced , is a free and open source project led by Xamarin to create an Ecma standard compliant .NET-compatible set of tools including, among others, a C# compiler and a Common Language Runtime....

 is listed as a covered project.

Lobbying for legislative change

Movements have formed to lobby against the existence and enforceability of software patents. The earliest was the League for Programming Freedom
League for Programming Freedom
League for Programming Freedom was founded in 1989 by Richard Stallman to unite free software developers as well as developers of proprietary software to fight against software patents and the extension of the scope of copyright...

 in the USA. Probably the most successful was the anti-software-patent campaign in Europe that resulted in the rejection by the European Parliament
European Parliament
The European Parliament is the directly elected parliamentary institution of the European Union . Together with the Council of the European Union and the Commission, it exercises the legislative function of the EU and it has been described as one of the most powerful legislatures in the world...

 of the Proposed directive on the patentability of computer-implemented inventions which, the free software community argues, would have made software patents enforceable in the European Union
European Union
The European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...

. A fledgling movement also exists in South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...

.

Promises from patent holders

Some software companies who hold significant patent portfolios have made non-aggression pledges to the free software community. These have varied in scope and have received a variety of responses. IBM, Sun, and Nokia are three examples. These have been described by Richard Stallman as "significant", "not really anything", and "next to nothing", respectively.

Microsoft has pledged not to assert any claims against open source developers which CEO Steve Ballmer
Steve Ballmer
Steven Anthony "Steve" Ballmer is an American business magnate. He is the chief executive officer of Microsoft, having held that post since January 2000. , his personal wealth is estimated at US$13.9 billion, ranking number 19 on the Forbes 400.-Early life:Ballmer was born in Detroit, Michigan to...

 called "an important step and significant change in how we share information about our products and technologies." This pledge has been accepted with some skepticism.

Infringement claims

Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...

 has claimed that free software
Free software
Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...

 such as OpenOffice.org
OpenOffice.org
OpenOffice.org, commonly known as OOo or OpenOffice, is an open-source application suite whose main components are for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, and databases. OpenOffice is available for a number of different computer operating systems, is distributed as free software...

 and the Linux kernel
Linux kernel
The Linux kernel is an operating system kernel used by the Linux family of Unix-like operating systems. It is one of the most prominent examples of free and open source software....

 violate 235 Microsoft patents and said that it will seek licence fees, but has so far failed to disclose which patents they violate. However, the 2009 lawsuit
Microsoft v. TomTom
Microsoft v. TomTom, Inc. was a court case brought by Microsoft against TomTom in 2009. According to Microsoft, TomTom was violating Microsoft's software patents on the FAT32 file system....

 against TomTom involved the use of Microsoft's patents for long filenames on FAT filesystems, the code for which is in the Linux kernel, not in any TomTom-developed software.

In January 2008, Trend Micro
Trend Micro
Trend Micro Inc. is a computer security company. It is headquartered in Tokyo, Japan and markets Trend Micro Internet Security, Trend Micro Worry-Free Business Security, OfficeScan, and other related security products and services...

 accused Barracuda Networks
Barracuda Networks
Barracuda Networks, Inc. is a privately held company providing security, networking and storage solutions based on appliances and cloud services. The company’s security products include solutions for protection against email, web surfing, web hackers and instant messaging threats such as spam,...

 of patent infringement for distribution of the ClamAV anti-virus software.

Microsoft's patent deals

In November 2006, a highly controversial agreement was made between Novell and Microsoft that included patent licensing. This led to much criticism of Novell by the free software community
Free software community
The free-software community is an informal term that refers to the users and developers of free software as well as supporters of the free-software movement. The movement is sometimes referred to as the open-source software community or a subset thereof...

.

In June 2007, Xandros
Xandros
Xandros is the name of both a line of operating systems and Xandros Corporation, the company which creates them. Xandros Desktop was a Linux distribution. The name Xandros is derived from the X Window System and the Greek island of Andros....

 announced a similar deal.

On June 13, 2007, a deal was reached between Microsoft and Linspire
Linspire
Linspire, previously known as LindowsOS, was a commercial operating system based on Debian GNU/Linux and later Ubuntu. Linspire was published by Linspire, Inc. and focused on ease-of-use, targeting home PC users...

. In return, Linspire would change its default search engine from Google to Live search.

Ubuntu
Ubuntu (operating system)
Ubuntu is a computer operating system based on the Debian Linux distribution and distributed as free and open source software. It is named after the Southern African philosophy of Ubuntu...

 founder and director Mark Shuttleworth
Mark Shuttleworth
Mark Richard Shuttleworth is a South African entrepreneur who was the second self-funded space tourist. Shuttleworth founded Canonical Ltd. and as of 2010, provides leadership for the Ubuntu operating system...

 has said that Ubuntu will not be making any such deal, as have Red Hat
Red Hat
Red Hat, Inc. is an S&P 500 company in the free and open source software sector, and a major Linux distribution vendor. Founded in 1993, Red Hat has its corporate headquarters in Raleigh, North Carolina with satellite offices worldwide....

. These have been joined by a weaker statement from Mandriva
Mandriva
Mandriva S.A. is a publicly traded Linux and open source software company with its headquarters in Paris, France and development center in Curitiba, Brazil. Mandriva, S.A...

 that "we don’t believe it is necessary for us to get protection from Microsoft".

On October 2007, IP Innovation LLC, a company specialized in patent-protection, filed a suit for patent infringement against Red Hat
Red Hat
Red Hat, Inc. is an S&P 500 company in the free and open source software sector, and a major Linux distribution vendor. Founded in 1993, Red Hat has its corporate headquarters in Raleigh, North Carolina with satellite offices worldwide....

 and Novell. However, IP Innovation LLC is a subsidiary of a company classified by some as a patent troll
Patent troll
Patent troll is a pejorative but questioned term used for a person or company who is a non-practicing inventor, and buys and enforces patents against one or more alleged infringers in a manner considered by the target or observers as unduly aggressive or opportunistic, often with no intention to...

, and commentators suspect a strong connection between this company and Microsoft.

In December 2007, Microsoft granted the Samba project
Samba (software)
Samba is a free software re-implementation, originally developed by Andrew Tridgell, of the SMB/CIFS networking protocol. As of version 3, Samba provides file and print services for various Microsoft Windows clients and can integrate with a Windows Server domain, either as a Primary Domain...

access to certain proprietary documents and must maintain a list of related patents for a one-time fee of 10,000 Euros.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK