The open-source patent conundrum (News.com)

Posted Feb 1, 2005 3:21 UTC (Tue) by a_hippie (guest, #34) [Link]

"According to the American Intellectual Property Law Association, software patent lawsuits come with a defense cost of about $3 million. Even before the case could be fully heard, a single patent suit would bankrupt a typical small or medium-size applications developer, let alone an open-source developer."

Thanks for this link LWN.

Posted Feb 1, 2005 4:01 UTC (Tue) by a_hippie (guest, #34) [Link]

RMS also has something useful to share:
http://trends.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=05/01/31/13102...

Posted Feb 1, 2005 15:09 UTC (Tue) by ncm (subscriber, #165) [Link]

An announcement of "no intention" to do something must be taken as a threat to do it if circumstances change slightly, e.g. time passes. In other words, it's a reminder that although they haven't done it yet, they could any time.

The only difference from a direct threat is the headlines.

Of course things are a little different if they commit on paper. However, as with IBM, opening a smattering of patents doesn't reduce at all the threat from the bulk of patents that remain. In that sense, IBM's pledge is as much a threat, simply more veiled. If IBM and Apple came into competition, for example, and if Apple had used the RCU lock-free thread interaction in the (Free Software) Darwin kernel that underpins Macosix, IBM could still force Apple immediately to stop distributing Macosix -- in effect, to stop selling Macs.