Red Hat has a point

Red Hat has a point

I like the idea of having a patent pool which enforces sharing. "If you want to use our patents, allow us to use your patents". A lot of corporate patents are exactly done for that reason, and many companies have patent cross-licensing agreements with competitors. That is, with software and hardware patents, patent cross-licensing rarely happens in businesses like "life science" or pharmaceuticals. There, a single patent is sufficient to produce a medicament, whereas thousands of patents can (or could) cover processors and integrated operating systems. Patent litigations often end up in the two companies signing a cross-licensing agreement, because they really both violated each other's patents.

To formalize this patent pool, a few things have to be clairified. First, is it really important which license the software is written in that uses a patent? I don't think so, because the business here is just to effectively eliminate software patents on the long run. IMHO it is sufficient if the licensee of the patent just puts their own patents into the pool. If *BSD implements a patented technology, no problem. If Microsoft wants to take the *BSD code and put it into the Windows kernel, they can do as long as they put their thousands of more or less bogus software patents into the pool. They can still use their patents in a defensive way, and counter-sue third parties, which are not members of the pool. Also, members of the pool still have the right to sell their patents to outsiders.