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I mean, to the author, thank you. Can't believe it cost $150,000+ for the open source community to go through that litigation... Dorsey, and all the SV billion

I mean, to the author, thank you. Can't believe it cost $150,000+ for the open source community to go through that litigation... Dorsey, and all the SV billionaires who made money off open source, perhaps it's time you "contribute back" by financing the fight against patent trolls...

tebruno99 5y ago
I understood that it cost Gnome $150k for Gnome to settle and obtain their own exclusive right of usage instead of doing the right thing and fight the patent.
- throw_m239339 5y ago
  > I understood that it cost Gnome $150k for Gnome to settle and obtain their own exclusive right of usage instead of doing the right thing and fight the patent. That's what I meant by "going through", they obviously couldn't fight it in court, would have cost a lot more...
- tedivm 5y ago
  They got that for free. What the $150k was spent on seems to be anyone's guess. > https://foundation.gnome.org/2020/05/20/patent-case-against-gnome-resolved/ https://foundation.gnome.org/2020/05/20/patent-case-against-... https://foundation.gnome.org/2020/05/20/patent-case-against-gnome-resolved/ https://foundation.gnome.org/2020/05/20/patent-case-against-...
smoldesu 5y ago
I doubt any of them made any significant money off of the GNOME stack, defending it would be pretty... odd. If someone litigated the OpenSearch, Yarn or Homebrew devs, then yeah, I think it would be reasonable to expect Big Tech to step in. But why GNOME? They've long gone their own way, even making a big deal of their "my way or the highway" development stance. If I was $(MULTIMILLIONAIRE_CORP) I would probably just be laughing, so long as my name wasn't Red Hat. Come to think of it, why didn't Red Hat step in here? Afaik, their entire raison d'être is keeping lawyers on retainer for these express purposes. Have the GNOME maintainers really burned that many bridges?
noizejoy 5y ago
Not sure why you’re advocating private, rather than company funding (by companies who have benefited greatly from open source). Also don’t understand, how naming one specific individual adds to the quality of the suggestion.
nullc 5y ago
> I mean, to the author, thank you. Can't believe it cost $150,000+ for the open source community to go through that litigation... 150k isn't much. Probably doesn't get you through initial motions against a well funded adversary. > Dorsey, and all the SV billionaires who made money off open source, I wouldn't know about his actions in other open source areas, but Dorsey specifically has directly funded defense against patent and vexatious litigation around Bitcoin and against open source developers. https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2022-January/019741.html https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2022... In particular, a billionaire funded party filed a lawsuit against a dozen current and former developers (including myself!) alleging that we owned him some $6 billion dollars in damages for failing to grant him bitcoins that he claims he lost due to a 'hack' (which sounded like something out of a bad movie plot). The plaintiff alleged that the software's MIT license was irrelevant and that the people wrote the software owe a fiduciary duty to make whole users who lost funds through no fault of the developers. ... a conclusion that would probably mark the end of volunteer contributions in open source generally since no sane person would voluntarily subject themselves to unlimited liability due to publishing some free code. Fortunately, at considerable cost we were able to convince the court that they failed to establish that their action had more than a fanciful potential for success and got it dismissed in initial motions (though presumably they'll appeal). It also sounds like the same party intends to launch a multitude of additional lawsuits on other basis including patent infringement (which they've been filing 3-4 patents per week in furtherance of, in an apparent attack via sheer volume), and has already filed defamation lawsuits against several journalists and community members ( https://cswarchive.info/ https://cswarchive.info/ ). Direct defense costs across all parties and actions is in the millions now, without counting the man hours and stress of the defendants, and continuing to grow without a clear end in sight. And all this is just trouble created by a single entity. Support from those who benefit from open source systems is crucial but because of the astronomical cost of defending even laughable lawsuits attackers will continue to have an upper hand without public policy changes. We benefit substantially already from the 2010 SPEECH act, which protects US persons from the UK's abusive libel regime. The EU is apparently considering similar legislation with respect to the UK that if in place would likely have protected at least one of the people currently being sued. But the abuse of lawsuits for coercion and extortion aren't limited to libel or the UK-- rather, attackers will use the easiest path and with that one closed they'll use others.

tebruno99 5y ago

I understood that it cost Gnome $150k for Gnome to settle and obtain their own exclusive right of usage instead of doing the right thing and fight the patent.

throw_m239339 5y ago
> I understood that it cost Gnome $150k for Gnome to settle and obtain their own exclusive right of usage instead of doing the right thing and fight the patent. That's what I meant by "going through", they obviously couldn't fight it in court, would have cost a lot more...
tedivm 5y ago
They got that for free. What the $150k was spent on seems to be anyone's guess. > https://foundation.gnome.org/2020/05/20/patent-case-against-gnome-resolved/ https://foundation.gnome.org/2020/05/20/patent-case-against-... https://foundation.gnome.org/2020/05/20/patent-case-against-gnome-resolved/ https://foundation.gnome.org/2020/05/20/patent-case-against-...

smoldesu 5y ago

I doubt any of them made any significant money off of the GNOME stack, defending it would be pretty... odd. If someone litigated the OpenSearch, Yarn or Homebrew devs, then yeah, I think it would be reasonable to expect Big Tech to step in. But why GNOME? They've long gone their own way, even making a big deal of their "my way or the highway" development stance. If I was $(MULTIMILLIONAIRE_CORP) I would probably just be laughing, so long as my name wasn't Red Hat. Come to think of it, why didn't Red Hat step in here? Afaik, their entire raison d'être is keeping lawyers on retainer for these express purposes. Have the GNOME maintainers really burned that many bridges?

noizejoy 5y ago

Not sure why you’re advocating private, rather than company funding (by companies who have benefited greatly from open source). Also don’t understand, how naming one specific individual adds to the quality of the suggestion.

nullc 5y ago

> I mean, to the author, thank you. Can't believe it cost $150,000+ for the open source community to go through that litigation... 150k isn't much. Probably doesn't get you through initial motions against a well funded adversary. > Dorsey, and all the SV billionaires who made money off open source, I wouldn't know about his actions in other open source areas, but Dorsey specifically has directly funded defense against patent and vexatious litigation around Bitcoin and against open source developers. https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2022-January/019741.html https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2022... In particular, a billionaire funded party filed a lawsuit against a dozen current and former developers (including myself!) alleging that we owned him some $6 billion dollars in damages for failing to grant him bitcoins that he claims he lost due to a 'hack' (which sounded like something out of a bad movie plot). The plaintiff alleged that the software's MIT license was irrelevant and that the people wrote the software owe a fiduciary duty to make whole users who lost funds through no fault of the developers. ... a conclusion that would probably mark the end of volunteer contributions in open source generally since no sane person would voluntarily subject themselves to unlimited liability due to publishing some free code. Fortunately, at considerable cost we were able to convince the court that they failed to establish that their action had more than a fanciful potential for success and got it dismissed in initial motions (though presumably they'll appeal). It also sounds like the same party intends to launch a multitude of additional lawsuits on other basis including patent infringement (which they've been filing 3-4 patents per week in furtherance of, in an apparent attack via sheer volume), and has already filed defamation lawsuits against several journalists and community members ( https://cswarchive.info/ https://cswarchive.info/ ). Direct defense costs across all parties and actions is in the millions now, without counting the man hours and stress of the defendants, and continuing to grow without a clear end in sight. And all this is just trouble created by a single entity. Support from those who benefit from open source systems is crucial but because of the astronomical cost of defending even laughable lawsuits attackers will continue to have an upper hand without public policy changes. We benefit substantially already from the 2010 SPEECH act, which protects US persons from the UK's abusive libel regime. The EU is apparently considering similar legislation with respect to the UK that if in place would likely have protected at least one of the people currently being sued. But the abuse of lawsuits for coercion and extortion aren't limited to libel or the UK-- rather, attackers will use the easiest path and with that one closed they'll use others.