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A conference on software patents and free softwareA conference on software patents and free softwarePosted May 1, 2010 15:38 UTC (Sat) by dmarti (subscriber, #11625)In reply to: A conference on software patents and free software by error27 Parent article: A conference on software patents and free software
What we need is a company that would be GPL patent pool by day, patent troll by night. Projects could get a GPL-compatible patent license letter, modeled on the FSMLabs license for RTLinux. Anyone else would have to pay up, with the revenue going to buy out GPL-compatible licenses to other trolls companies' patent portfolios. The real risk of software patents isn't trolls, it's cartels.
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A conference on software patents and free software Posted May 1, 2010 17:06 UTC (Sat) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]
Great comment.
It really seems like patents are a problem the free software community can not solve by ignoring them. That just gives the trolls and cartels the room to corner the market, and so become an even bigger threat.
Just as the GPL used copyright against the proprietary software vendors, it seems the free software community needs to consider using the patent system to carve out breathing room for free software. As you say, it could eventually fund itself...
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