9 ms·

Taking a stand on open source and patents

129 points by yanw 14y ago

mindcrime 14y ago
Great move by Google. And a good bit of timing, considering the PR beating they've been taking the past couple of weeks. One wonders if that's simply chance, or if they pushed this out when they did because of all the other stuff. I'm guessing it's the former, since it typically takes big companies a long time to pull something like this together and fully execute it. In any case, it's a good step for Google to suggest that they DO still take openness seriously and are, more or less, still the "don't be evil" company we all came to know.
- purephase 14y ago
  Could you elaborate on the PR beating comment? I feel like I've been under a rock lately.
  - psbp 14y ago
    They announced that Google Reader would be shut down in June, but that you can export all your content and settings to other services. Bloggers, journalists, and internet commenters started crying like 5-year-old children.
  - darxius 14y ago
    Google retired their very popular Google Reader app. They took a lot of bad press.
  - dangoldin 14y ago
    I suspect the parent is talking about the Google Reader shutdown and the flack they've been taking from the tech press.
    - mindcrime 14y ago
      Yes, but it wasn't just about Google Reader. A number of things happened (or hit the news) in a short period of time, all of which damaged Google's standing as the "Don't Be Evil Company" and hurt their credibility with hackers and people who care about things like the Open Web and Open Standards. I'm not necessarily saying the backlash was (or wasn't) justified, but it was what it was, and I think this step by Google is a good thing in terms of earning them a bit more trust with that crowd. Whether that's something that actively care about, is anybody's guess.
      - yanw 14y ago
        As PR beatings go that one was pretty contained (mainly to the HN frontpage).
        darxius 14y ago
        Agreed, but we're a different audience. As technical people, it is in Google's best interest to look "good" to us so we continue to use and develop things for their platforms. At least that's how I see it.
        indubitably 14y ago
        I didn't get that impression, at least for me it seemed to be all over Facebook and (oh, rich) Google News.
      - purephase 14y ago
        What are the "number of things"? As much as people are complaining about Reader, I don't see that as bad PR. I assumed it was something other than the Reader fallout.
- ajross 14y ago
  This is (hopefully) related to the VP8/MPEG-LA patent licensing issue from a few days back. Remember that part of that announcement was that Google would be "soon" releasing the set of terms under which the licensed patents would be used. If these are those terms (and they aren't yet -- only MapReduce patents are mentioned), then this is fantastic news.
- ZeroGravitas 14y ago
  They published this website (linked, via another blog post, from this announcement) a couple of weeks ago: http://www.google.com/patents/licensing/index.html http://www.google.com/patents/licensing/index.html And that in itself is just part of ongoing stuff coming from Google, so as you suggest this is not the kind of thing you throw together in a moment. Having said that, once you've put in the months/years to get to this stage, you do get to choose the timing of your announcements.
- eliben 14y ago
  With all due respect to Reader, IMHO this announcement, viewed in the context of the legal battle that rages over software patents these days, is in a wholly different league.
- DannyBee 14y ago
  This is simply chance. It has been in the works for a while. As you correctly surmised, things like this take a while. (I am directly involved in this :P)
askimto 14y ago
So they've pledged to do what they've already been doing?
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- codeulike 14y ago
  It provides a guarantee that they will continue doing what they've been doing
- ajross 14y ago
  In the legal world, that's not meaningless. Simply because one hasn't (yet!) attempted to aggressively assert patents doesn't constitute a defense if one decides to in the future. This might (though it's still not a contract, and I didn't click through to read the terms).
  - mindcrime 14y ago
    Exactly. IANAL, but from what I've heard from people who are, the basic premise behind these kind of pledges is Estoppel[1]. The basic gist of it, as I understand it, is that you can't go around screaming something in public and treating it as the truth ("anybody can use this patent and we won't sue you") and then later come back and contradict that ("you are violating our patent, pay up"). IOW, promises, made publicly like this, do count for something, even if there's no explicit contract. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estoppel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estoppel
- DannyBee 14y ago
  One is "behavior so far" The other is a legally binding promise
RyanMcGreal 14y ago
Reciprocal altruism (i.e. tit-for-tat in game theory) tends to lead toward equilibrium and reduced conflict and aggression over time. Google's decision to publicize and promote this stance is an encouraging development.
RobAley 14y ago
Read differently: "Apart from a few patents listed, we hold a large arsenal of patents that we won't rule out using offensively against both developers AND users of open OR closed source software." As a software developer and user, I'm not entirely comforted....
- mindcrime 14y ago
  No, but to be fair to Google they do say: "Over time, we intend to expand the set of Google’s patents covered by the pledge to other technologies." Now that's not a specific promise, so you can argue how much it should count for. But if you take it at face value, it seems reasonable to expect that they will be adding to the list.
  - JoshTriplett 14y ago
    By comparison to other companies that have offered a blanket promise to not sue Open Source software over any patents, a promise that only covers a vanishingly small subset of a company's patents seems woefully inadequate.
    - ZeroGravitas 14y ago
      Is that common? I thought most of those things were limited to specific "fields", (which usually translates into a specific list of specific versions of specific packages).
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- yanw 14y ago
  Unless you are engaged in the multinational legal goings on concerning smartphone patents you'd have to be delusional to think that this announcement has anything to do with you personally.
darxius 14y ago
I definitely think this is a step in the right direction. Its more true to spirit of patents anyways and hopefully will draw more attention to patent trolls in the future. Good move by Google.
darkchasma 14y ago
If you want to really draw a line in the sand google, open all your patents, and I will forever support you and your products. Until then, this just feels like lip service.
- indubitably 14y ago
  But there are TEN patents! What do you people want?
eslaught 14y ago
I don't understand this point: "The Pledge remains in force for the life of the patents, even if we transfer them." I realize Google can claim whatever they want, but I don't see how they enforce this pledge for other entities which inherit their patents. How does the pledge actually bind (at a legal level) entities which inherit the patents?
- RyanMcGreal 14y ago
  They could make upholding the pledge a condition of transfer.
  - unavoidable 14y ago
    Yep. Contract law.
- skybrian 14y ago
  "It is Google’s intent that the Pledge be legally binding, irrevocable (except as otherwise provided under “Defensive Termination” below) and enforceable against Google and entities controlled by Google, and their successors and assigns. Thus, Google will require any person or entity to whom it sells or transfers any of the Pledged Patents to agree, in writing, to abide by the Pledge and to place a similar requirement on any subsequent transferees to do the same." http://www.google.com/patents/opnpledge/pledge/ http://www.google.com/patents/opnpledge/pledge/
outside1234 14y ago
This is a great move. They are simultaneously acting open while also reserving the right to shut down iCloud with a patent suit if Apple sues them in the future. :)
salmonellaeater 14y ago
What happens when a smaller company makes such a promise, then later they are acquired or sold? If the acquirer is a big amoral company, I wouldn't count on them upholding the promise. And as more and more companies take advantage of a 'safe' technology they think they can't get sued over, the patent gets juicier and juicier as an acquisition target.
- mcintyre1994 14y ago
  I'm not completely sure how it works, but I'd have thought an acquisition of a company with patents involves transferring them patents to the new owner? In that case, they're protected according to Google.
- martinced 14y ago
  "What happens when a smaller company makes such a promise..." Who cares? We're talking about Google here: they're worth so much that nobody is going to buy them and, anyway, the structure of the company make it so that as long as Brin+Page do not want to sell their special shares, you simply cannot buy it. Not even with 12 zeros after the 1.
andreyf 14y ago
> Don't read on unless you are free to read patents, as usual. What does this mean? Why wouldn't someone be free to read patents?
- kefka 14y ago
  Those who knowingly violate a known patent makes them responsible for treble damages. This applies much more in the realm of software, because of the idiocy of things like the XOR mouse patent, Amazon 1-Click, and many other obvious 'inventions' that aren't, but were provided patent protection.
  - iand 14y ago
    You need to prefix your statement with "In the USA" to give the right context.
- nuclear_eclipse 14y ago
  Reading patents even remotely related to what you work on has the possibility of increasing the chances any patent infringement suit can be considered willful infringement, which carries a much stiffer range of penalties.
recoiledsnake 14y ago
>At Google we believe that open systems win. Open-source software has been at the root of many innovations in cloud computing, the mobile web, and the Internet generally Except for Google Maps, GMail, Google Search, Google Apps, AdSense, AdWords, Reader, Code Search, News, or pretty much any of their web apps or which make them money. In those cases, proprietary closed source wins.
- cromwellian 14y ago
  Many of those are so closely tied to the specifics of Google's data centers or the masses of data collected, that the source would be mostly useless anyway. What differentiates many of these services is not the front-end (it's not like OpenMaps can't do a decent frontend), but the scale. Anyone can write and run a gmail-like service, just look at MailBox.app or Sparrow and the hundreds of webmails that used to exist. Not everyone can do it and serve 500 million users with low latency and high uptime.
- magicalist 14y ago
  There's a link in the very line that you're quoting that goes to an article that discusses "open systems" and "open-source software" as distinct things, and addresses the benefits of open systems and an open-source stack, even when building closed-sourced software. You may disagree completely with the arguments in the article, but at least it's trying to engage in the subject, which is more than can be said for your sound-bite answer to the first two sentences of the linked blog post. At no point does your quote say that open-source always wins, or that all things should be open-source, so it's like you didn't read even those two sentences. It always seems a bit artificial when people trot out "middlebrow dismissal", but geez...
  - cooldeal 14y ago
    >There's a link in the very line that you're quoting that goes to an article that discusses "open systems" and "open-source software" as distinct things This is what it says about open systems. >Another way to look at the difference between open and closed systems is that open systems allow innovation at all levels — from the operating system to the application layer — not just at the top. This means that one company doesn't have to depend on another's benevolence to ship a product. If the GNU C compiler that I'm using has a bug, I can fix it since the compiler is open source. I don't have to file a bug report and hope for a timely response. From that it appears that they're conflating "open systems" and "open source software", not drawing a distinction like you're claiming. >At no point does your quote say that open-source always wins, or that all things should be open-source, so it's like you didn't read even those two sentences. From the same link that you site, Google says this: >We believe that open is the only way for this to have the broadest impact for the most people. We are technology optimists who trust that the chaos of open benefits everyone. We will fight to promote it every chance we get. >Open will win. It will win on the Internet and will then cascade across many walks of life: The future of government is transparency. The future of commerce is information symmetry. The future of culture is freedom. The future of science and medicine is collaboration.
nailer 14y ago
Google's promise is almost an exact copy of what Red Hat did in 2004 - see 'Our Promise' from http://www.redhat.com/legal/patent_policy.html http://www.redhat.com/legal/patent_policy.html
- magicalist 14y ago
  Just FYI, they linked to that very page (and [1] [2]) in the post when talking about precedent to this move. [1] http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/7473.wss http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/7473.wss [2] http://openinventionnetwork.com/ http://openinventionnetwork.com/
callenish 14y ago
I think this is an impressive first step, and I love the flow-through that future owners will be equally bound by the terms. Essentially, it gives a permanent free license to use the patents in any open source projects, which can only be an incentive for businesses to make their code open if they can. I've often wondered, though, why there isn't a consortium to which all the companies with "defensive" software patents can assign them, on condition that if the company get sued for ANY software patent, the consortium will terminate the license to the plaintiff for ALL the patents it holds. The consortium could make that explicit in the license for software patents they offer (for free) to everyone. Sue someone for a software patent and you lose all rights to these others. That would kill software patents dead in their tracks, I think. There are many elements of that solution in this one announced by Google, but it would be far more effective if every company who hated software patents but held them anyway collaborated.
DanWaterworth 14y ago
If Google or a future holder did sue an open-source project for the infringement of one of these patents, how would this pledge hold up in court?
tiedemann 14y ago
If Apple, MS, Samsung, Sony and other large patent-holding companies dare go along I for one welcome our new Google overlords.
pessimizer 14y ago
If Google wanted to sue open source mapreduce, it would have to sue the entire internet. Very easy patents to give up.
iand 14y ago
What reasons could there be for not assigning all Google's patents to this policy from day one? I hope Google aren't going to pick and choose the areas they will allow FOSS innovation to happen in.
- zmmmmm 14y ago
  Yes. Just 10 patents?! This seems like a joke. It just makes it seem like they cherry picked 10 patents that are probably bogus, valueless or would generate too much bad PR if they ever used them anyway and instead of throwing them away, thought they could make a little PR exercise out of it. If Google believes in the principle of this move then it should be putting in a very large number of patents, at least every single patent that they have acquired primarily for defensive measures (we hope, most of them). If it doesn't believe in the principle of it then it should not be doing it at all.
- abraham 14y ago
  Every single patent has to be reviewed and get the creators to agree. Some patents will have special agreements that might create conflicts with such an agreement.
- zacharypinter 14y ago
  I suspect they're just being cautious with the legal side this early on. One reason to be cautious about the patents under the pledge: there might be some grey area in the language where say, a competitor could make hostile moves against Google while still falling under the protection of the pledge via shell companies. Side note: isn't this already their internal policy? When has Google ever gone after open source projects with any of their patents?
  - iand 14y ago
    They never have gone after FOSS projects, which makes it all the more strange that they haven't been willing put all their patents under this. Presumably they have no outstanding suits that would be affected.

129 points by yanw 14y ago

Great move by Google. And a good bit of timing, considering the PR beating they've been taking the past couple of weeks. One wonders if that's simply chance, or if they pushed this out when they did because of all the other stuff. I'm guessing it's the former, since it typically takes big companies a long time to pull something like this together and fully execute it. In any case, it's a good step for Google to suggest that they DO still take openness seriously and are, more or less, still the "don't be evil" company we all came to know.

purephase 14y ago
Could you elaborate on the PR beating comment? I feel like I've been under a rock lately.
- psbp 14y ago
  They announced that Google Reader would be shut down in June, but that you can export all your content and settings to other services. Bloggers, journalists, and internet commenters started crying like 5-year-old children.
- darxius 14y ago
  Google retired their very popular Google Reader app. They took a lot of bad press.
- dangoldin 14y ago
  I suspect the parent is talking about the Google Reader shutdown and the flack they've been taking from the tech press.
  - mindcrime 14y ago
    Yes, but it wasn't just about Google Reader. A number of things happened (or hit the news) in a short period of time, all of which damaged Google's standing as the "Don't Be Evil Company" and hurt their credibility with hackers and people who care about things like the Open Web and Open Standards. I'm not necessarily saying the backlash was (or wasn't) justified, but it was what it was, and I think this step by Google is a good thing in terms of earning them a bit more trust with that crowd. Whether that's something that actively care about, is anybody's guess.
    - yanw 14y ago
      As PR beatings go that one was pretty contained (mainly to the HN frontpage).
      - darxius 14y ago
        Agreed, but we're a different audience. As technical people, it is in Google's best interest to look "good" to us so we continue to use and develop things for their platforms. At least that's how I see it.
      - indubitably 14y ago
        I didn't get that impression, at least for me it seemed to be all over Facebook and (oh, rich) Google News.
    - purephase 14y ago
      What are the "number of things"? As much as people are complaining about Reader, I don't see that as bad PR. I assumed it was something other than the Reader fallout.
ajross 14y ago
This is (hopefully) related to the VP8/MPEG-LA patent licensing issue from a few days back. Remember that part of that announcement was that Google would be "soon" releasing the set of terms under which the licensed patents would be used. If these are those terms (and they aren't yet -- only MapReduce patents are mentioned), then this is fantastic news.
ZeroGravitas 14y ago
They published this website (linked, via another blog post, from this announcement) a couple of weeks ago: http://www.google.com/patents/licensing/index.html http://www.google.com/patents/licensing/index.html And that in itself is just part of ongoing stuff coming from Google, so as you suggest this is not the kind of thing you throw together in a moment. Having said that, once you've put in the months/years to get to this stage, you do get to choose the timing of your announcements.
eliben 14y ago
With all due respect to Reader, IMHO this announcement, viewed in the context of the legal battle that rages over software patents these days, is in a wholly different league.
DannyBee 14y ago
This is simply chance. It has been in the works for a while. As you correctly surmised, things like this take a while. (I am directly involved in this :P)

askimto 14y ago

So they've pledged to do what they've already been doing?

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
codeulike 14y ago
It provides a guarantee that they will continue doing what they've been doing
ajross 14y ago
In the legal world, that's not meaningless. Simply because one hasn't (yet!) attempted to aggressively assert patents doesn't constitute a defense if one decides to in the future. This might (though it's still not a contract, and I didn't click through to read the terms).
- mindcrime 14y ago
  Exactly. IANAL, but from what I've heard from people who are, the basic premise behind these kind of pledges is Estoppel[1]. The basic gist of it, as I understand it, is that you can't go around screaming something in public and treating it as the truth ("anybody can use this patent and we won't sue you") and then later come back and contradict that ("you are violating our patent, pay up"). IOW, promises, made publicly like this, do count for something, even if there's no explicit contract. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estoppel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estoppel
DannyBee 14y ago
One is "behavior so far" The other is a legally binding promise

RyanMcGreal 14y ago

Reciprocal altruism (i.e. tit-for-tat in game theory) tends to lead toward equilibrium and reduced conflict and aggression over time. Google's decision to publicize and promote this stance is an encouraging development.

RobAley 14y ago

Read differently: "Apart from a few patents listed, we hold a large arsenal of patents that we won't rule out using offensively against both developers AND users of open OR closed source software." As a software developer and user, I'm not entirely comforted....

mindcrime 14y ago
No, but to be fair to Google they do say: "Over time, we intend to expand the set of Google’s patents covered by the pledge to other technologies." Now that's not a specific promise, so you can argue how much it should count for. But if you take it at face value, it seems reasonable to expect that they will be adding to the list.
- JoshTriplett 14y ago
  By comparison to other companies that have offered a blanket promise to not sue Open Source software over any patents, a promise that only covers a vanishingly small subset of a company's patents seems woefully inadequate.
  - ZeroGravitas 14y ago
    Is that common? I thought most of those things were limited to specific "fields", (which usually translates into a specific list of specific versions of specific packages).
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
yanw 14y ago
Unless you are engaged in the multinational legal goings on concerning smartphone patents you'd have to be delusional to think that this announcement has anything to do with you personally.

darxius 14y ago

I definitely think this is a step in the right direction. Its more true to spirit of patents anyways and hopefully will draw more attention to patent trolls in the future. Good move by Google.

darkchasma 14y ago

If you want to really draw a line in the sand google, open all your patents, and I will forever support you and your products. Until then, this just feels like lip service.

indubitably 14y ago
But there are TEN patents! What do you people want?

eslaught 14y ago

I don't understand this point: "The Pledge remains in force for the life of the patents, even if we transfer them." I realize Google can claim whatever they want, but I don't see how they enforce this pledge for other entities which inherit their patents. How does the pledge actually bind (at a legal level) entities which inherit the patents?

RyanMcGreal 14y ago
They could make upholding the pledge a condition of transfer.
- unavoidable 14y ago
  Yep. Contract law.
skybrian 14y ago
"It is Google’s intent that the Pledge be legally binding, irrevocable (except as otherwise provided under “Defensive Termination” below) and enforceable against Google and entities controlled by Google, and their successors and assigns. Thus, Google will require any person or entity to whom it sells or transfers any of the Pledged Patents to agree, in writing, to abide by the Pledge and to place a similar requirement on any subsequent transferees to do the same." http://www.google.com/patents/opnpledge/pledge/ http://www.google.com/patents/opnpledge/pledge/

outside1234 14y ago

This is a great move. They are simultaneously acting open while also reserving the right to shut down iCloud with a patent suit if Apple sues them in the future. :)

salmonellaeater 14y ago

What happens when a smaller company makes such a promise, then later they are acquired or sold? If the acquirer is a big amoral company, I wouldn't count on them upholding the promise. And as more and more companies take advantage of a 'safe' technology they think they can't get sued over, the patent gets juicier and juicier as an acquisition target.

mcintyre1994 14y ago
I'm not completely sure how it works, but I'd have thought an acquisition of a company with patents involves transferring them patents to the new owner? In that case, they're protected according to Google.
martinced 14y ago
"What happens when a smaller company makes such a promise..." Who cares? We're talking about Google here: they're worth so much that nobody is going to buy them and, anyway, the structure of the company make it so that as long as Brin+Page do not want to sell their special shares, you simply cannot buy it. Not even with 12 zeros after the 1.

andreyf 14y ago

> Don't read on unless you are free to read patents, as usual. What does this mean? Why wouldn't someone be free to read patents?

kefka 14y ago
Those who knowingly violate a known patent makes them responsible for treble damages. This applies much more in the realm of software, because of the idiocy of things like the XOR mouse patent, Amazon 1-Click, and many other obvious 'inventions' that aren't, but were provided patent protection.
- iand 14y ago
  You need to prefix your statement with "In the USA" to give the right context.
nuclear_eclipse 14y ago
Reading patents even remotely related to what you work on has the possibility of increasing the chances any patent infringement suit can be considered willful infringement, which carries a much stiffer range of penalties.

recoiledsnake 14y ago

>At Google we believe that open systems win. Open-source software has been at the root of many innovations in cloud computing, the mobile web, and the Internet generally Except for Google Maps, GMail, Google Search, Google Apps, AdSense, AdWords, Reader, Code Search, News, or pretty much any of their web apps or which make them money. In those cases, proprietary closed source wins.

cromwellian 14y ago
Many of those are so closely tied to the specifics of Google's data centers or the masses of data collected, that the source would be mostly useless anyway. What differentiates many of these services is not the front-end (it's not like OpenMaps can't do a decent frontend), but the scale. Anyone can write and run a gmail-like service, just look at MailBox.app or Sparrow and the hundreds of webmails that used to exist. Not everyone can do it and serve 500 million users with low latency and high uptime.
magicalist 14y ago
There's a link in the very line that you're quoting that goes to an article that discusses "open systems" and "open-source software" as distinct things, and addresses the benefits of open systems and an open-source stack, even when building closed-sourced software. You may disagree completely with the arguments in the article, but at least it's trying to engage in the subject, which is more than can be said for your sound-bite answer to the first two sentences of the linked blog post. At no point does your quote say that open-source always wins, or that all things should be open-source, so it's like you didn't read even those two sentences. It always seems a bit artificial when people trot out "middlebrow dismissal", but geez...
- cooldeal 14y ago
  >There's a link in the very line that you're quoting that goes to an article that discusses "open systems" and "open-source software" as distinct things This is what it says about open systems. >Another way to look at the difference between open and closed systems is that open systems allow innovation at all levels — from the operating system to the application layer — not just at the top. This means that one company doesn't have to depend on another's benevolence to ship a product. If the GNU C compiler that I'm using has a bug, I can fix it since the compiler is open source. I don't have to file a bug report and hope for a timely response. From that it appears that they're conflating "open systems" and "open source software", not drawing a distinction like you're claiming. >At no point does your quote say that open-source always wins, or that all things should be open-source, so it's like you didn't read even those two sentences. From the same link that you site, Google says this: >We believe that open is the only way for this to have the broadest impact for the most people. We are technology optimists who trust that the chaos of open benefits everyone. We will fight to promote it every chance we get. >Open will win. It will win on the Internet and will then cascade across many walks of life: The future of government is transparency. The future of commerce is information symmetry. The future of culture is freedom. The future of science and medicine is collaboration.

nailer 14y ago

Google's promise is almost an exact copy of what Red Hat did in 2004 - see 'Our Promise' from http://www.redhat.com/legal/patent_policy.html http://www.redhat.com/legal/patent_policy.html

magicalist 14y ago
Just FYI, they linked to that very page (and [1] [2]) in the post when talking about precedent to this move. [1] http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/7473.wss http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/7473.wss [2] http://openinventionnetwork.com/ http://openinventionnetwork.com/

callenish 14y ago

I think this is an impressive first step, and I love the flow-through that future owners will be equally bound by the terms. Essentially, it gives a permanent free license to use the patents in any open source projects, which can only be an incentive for businesses to make their code open if they can. I've often wondered, though, why there isn't a consortium to which all the companies with "defensive" software patents can assign them, on condition that if the company get sued for ANY software patent, the consortium will terminate the license to the plaintiff for ALL the patents it holds. The consortium could make that explicit in the license for software patents they offer (for free) to everyone. Sue someone for a software patent and you lose all rights to these others. That would kill software patents dead in their tracks, I think. There are many elements of that solution in this one announced by Google, but it would be far more effective if every company who hated software patents but held them anyway collaborated.

DanWaterworth 14y ago

If Google or a future holder did sue an open-source project for the infringement of one of these patents, how would this pledge hold up in court?

tiedemann 14y ago

If Apple, MS, Samsung, Sony and other large patent-holding companies dare go along I for one welcome our new Google overlords.

pessimizer 14y ago

If Google wanted to sue open source mapreduce, it would have to sue the entire internet. Very easy patents to give up.

iand 14y ago

What reasons could there be for not assigning all Google's patents to this policy from day one? I hope Google aren't going to pick and choose the areas they will allow FOSS innovation to happen in.

zmmmmm 14y ago
Yes. Just 10 patents?! This seems like a joke. It just makes it seem like they cherry picked 10 patents that are probably bogus, valueless or would generate too much bad PR if they ever used them anyway and instead of throwing them away, thought they could make a little PR exercise out of it. If Google believes in the principle of this move then it should be putting in a very large number of patents, at least every single patent that they have acquired primarily for defensive measures (we hope, most of them). If it doesn't believe in the principle of it then it should not be doing it at all.
abraham 14y ago
Every single patent has to be reviewed and get the creators to agree. Some patents will have special agreements that might create conflicts with such an agreement.
zacharypinter 14y ago
I suspect they're just being cautious with the legal side this early on. One reason to be cautious about the patents under the pledge: there might be some grey area in the language where say, a competitor could make hostile moves against Google while still falling under the protection of the pledge via shell companies. Side note: isn't this already their internal policy? When has Google ever gone after open source projects with any of their patents?
- iand 14y ago
  They never have gone after FOSS projects, which makes it all the more strange that they haven't been willing put all their patents under this. Presumably they have no outstanding suits that would be affected.