Don't be afraid: Linux is good for you (Globe and Mail)

Posted Aug 1, 2003 21:16 UTC (Fri) by Peter (guest, #1127) [Link]

I wonder if patents could be used to reinforce software freedom in a similar way to the way in which copyrights are used in the GPL.

Yeah, that's more or less what people mean by "patent pools". The idea is that anyone who wants to participate must license all of his own patents to the whole pool for free - a massive blanket cross-licensing agreement with anyone who cares to sign up.

That plan does cause certain philosophical difficulties, such as what happens if a free software package uses a pool-licensed patent - it is no longer really free for companies not in the pool. So an extension to the patent pool idea would be that patents in the pool would also be automatically freely licensed for use in any properly-licensed body of code (where "properly-licensed" might mean "OSI-approved-license" or "OSL-compatible" or whatever). Which seems to be what you're driving at.

The pool thing probably won't catch on because it is by nature even more viral than the GPL, in that it affects all of a company's art. But what can I say, I like the notion.