How Mono got into Fedora [LWN.net]

Back in January, Red Hat reversed a longstanding policy and allowed the Mono .NET implementation into the Fedora distribution. A set of Mono applications (Tomboy, Banshee, F-spot) also went in at that time. The move was generally welcomed, but a number of observers wondered what had changed to make the addition of Mono possible. The sticking point had been a set of patents on .NET held by Microsoft; presumably those patents were no longer seen as a threat. But no information on why that might be was released at that time.

We missed it at the time, but Fedora hacker Greg DeKoenigsberg posted an explanation in late March. The answer, as it turns out, may offer some clues of how the software patent battle might play out.

Back in November, the Open Invention Network (OIN) announced its existence. OIN is a corporation which has been set up for one express purpose: to acquire patents and use them to promote and defend free software. The OIN patent policy is this:

Patents owned by Open Invention Network will be available on a royalty-free basis to any company, institution or individual that agrees not to assert its patents against the Linux operating system or certain Linux-related applications.

The list of "certain Linux-related applications" is said to exist, though it has not, yet, been posted publicly. But Mono is apparently on that list. So anybody who files patent infringement suits against Mono users, and who is, in turn, making use of technology covered by OIN's patents is setting himself up for a countersuit. Depending on the value of the patents held by OIN, that threat could raise the risk of attacking Mono considerably.

That last sentence is important: a potential OIN countersuit will only have a deterring effect if OIN's patents cover an important technology and look like they would stand up in court. As it happens, OIN holds a set of patents covering a number of fundamental aspects of XML-based web services. These patents (originally assigned to a failing company called Commerce One) created a fair amount of concern when they went up for auction at the end of 2004; many companies feared that they could be used to shake down companies all over the e-commerce field. What actually happened is rather different: they were bought by Novell for $15.5 million and eventually contributed to the OIN pool. These patents, it seems, are considered strong enough to keep Mono safe.

Novell did the community (and perhaps the technology industry as a whole) a big favor by buying those patents; in the process, it beat out bids from a couple of "intellectual property" firms associated with Nathan Myhrvold. Donating them to OIN multiplied the favor by putting these patents directly into the service of free software. We may all be a little safer as a result of this action.

Some observers in the community have criticized the patent pool idea in the past. Playing the software patent game in any way is a little distasteful, and it is not clear to everybody that the owner of the pool would have the standing or interest to defend the target of a patent attack. The true success of OIN can only be judged in the long term, and, in the best case scenario (no software patent suits are ever brought against free software users), its contribution will never be entirely clear. What is clear, however, is that OIN has already brought some peace of mind to some of the people who were most worried about the software patent threat. That seems like a step in the right direction.

to post comments

How Mono got into Fedora

Posted Apr 13, 2006 4:37 UTC (Thu) by mhw (guest, #13931) [Link] (4 responses)

Increased peace of mind is not necessarily a step in the right direction; not if it lures us into a patent trap.

How Mono got into Fedora

Posted Apr 13, 2006 17:51 UTC (Thu) by jzbiciak (guest, #5246) [Link] (3 responses)

It's the "Mutually Assured Destruction" approach. As long as the other guy isn't disarming, it's best we arm ourselves.

This shouldn't be our ONLY approach. I honestly think we should pursue software patents ourselves in the free software world (and licensing those patents freely for use in free software), AND pursue disallowing most kinds of software patents.

Getting patents

Posted Apr 14, 2006 14:57 UTC (Fri) by dwheeler (guest, #1216) [Link]

Actually, that's already being done. Red Hat in particular gets patents and releases them for use in Free Software.

But most people who write Free Software are either in companies that are not exclusively Free Software companies or they are students. Companies practically always own patents of any of their employees. Shockingly, universities have managed a land grab and can often claim ownership of their student's ideas, at least in the U.S. (Yes, that's reprehensible.) What's worse, patent applications are expensive. That means that very few in the Free Software world can actually get patents exclusively for Free Software.

How Mono got into Fedora

Posted Apr 18, 2006 7:00 UTC (Tue) by ekj (guest, #1524) [Link] (1 responses)

Sadly this approach has no effect whatsoever on patent-trolls which I'm thinking are going to be the main actors in suing over claimed patents.

If you make nothing, produce zero, has no products, infact consist as a company of nothing more whatsoever except a bunch of lawyers and a few patents, then even the biggest portofolio in the world of patents from which to "counter-sue" will help precisely not at all.

How Mono got into Fedora

Posted Apr 18, 2006 14:35 UTC (Tue) by liljencrantz (guest, #28458) [Link]

Absolutely true, which is why it is _critical_ that OIN is not the _only_ line of defence against patents.

One shopuld also keep in mind that if Company A wishes to destroy open source product B, which is protectedby OIN, all company A has to do is spin of a new company C, which can then buy a patent related to B, and use this to crush B.

Even so, an organization like OIN is still a very powerful defence against most patent abuse.

How Mono got into Fedora

Posted Apr 13, 2006 5:50 UTC (Thu) by k8to (guest, #15413) [Link] (3 responses)

This is the first time I properly understood the Open Invention Netowrk, or .. maybe I still don't.

My immediate reaction to the quoted text is that open source operating systems and applications which are not on the list aren't covered. So this doesn't seem like it has even the potential to solve the problem properly.

How Mono got into Fedora

Posted Apr 13, 2006 7:39 UTC (Thu) by kleptog (subscriber, #1183) [Link] (1 responses)

Maybe they want to do some due diligence on projects to make sure they're not defending something undefendable. They may not want to put their reputations on the line for some project nobody actually uses (though they're probably safe by definition).

Would they want to get involved in defending the next DeCSS in their first year of operation? An advantage of this approach is that they can expand coverage as they feel nevessary.

How Mono got into Fedora

Posted Apr 13, 2006 21:27 UTC (Thu) by k8to (guest, #15413) [Link]

Yeah my point though is that it has the disadvantage that the list may not get expanded as is necessary/important/useful. I suspect we are already in agreement.

How Mono got into Fedora

Posted Apr 13, 2006 9:02 UTC (Thu) by smitty_one_each (subscriber, #28989) [Link]

I hope that OIN has a catalytic effect in driving home the point that, on the road of human creativity, patent holders can frequently be the highwaymen.

Linux?

Posted Apr 13, 2006 11:55 UTC (Thu) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link] (1 responses)

It's a real pity the didn't use "free software" as a criteria, instead of "Linux". For one thing, I hope they mean the operating system made by adding Linux to GNU+Linux when they say "Linux", but I still don't see the reason to leave FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, and ReactOS out. Whether it helps Hurd-based GNU systems might be unclear.

They've done a good thing, but there's room for improvement and it should have been obvious.

(I'll be happy if someone points out that the article was simply incomplete and they have actually done the smart thing.)

Linux?

Posted Apr 13, 2006 14:10 UTC (Thu) by cventers (guest, #31465) [Link]

True, but I think it's probably a calculated territory kind of thing. You
don't try to defend huge lands with a small number of troops. If you don't
have a lot of troops, you pick your battles.

OIN chose Linux (my guess, GNU/Linux).

List of OIN-protected products has been published

Posted Apr 13, 2006 14:43 UTC (Thu) by dwheeler (guest, #1216) [Link] (1 responses)

I believe the list of OIN-protected products has been published, but it may only exist on paper at this time. I got a list in one of the magazines I picked up at LinuxWorld, in an article about OIN. I'll see if I can find that list later on and post it here. OIN is certainly not a perfect solution, in fact, there are ways its enemies can probably work around it. But it's a start, and until the laws are changes, half-measures are probably much better than waiting to be attacked.

List of OIN-protected products has been published

Posted Apr 13, 2006 16:14 UTC (Thu) by dwheeler (guest, #1216) [Link]

This blog reports that the list of covered apps includes not just the Linux kernel bug also: "Apache, Eclipse, Evolution, Fedora Directory Server, Firefox, Gimp, GNOME, KDE, Mono, Mozilla, MySQL, Nautilus, OpenLDAP, OpenOffice, Perl, Postgresql, Python, Samba, SELinux, Sendmail, and Thunderbird, just to name a few." This blog talks about OIN too.

It appears that "Linux Magazine" published the list.

How Mono got into Fedora

Posted Apr 14, 2006 0:58 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (guest, #1954) [Link]

I guess for OIN to have any effect in the US, we'd better hope that Ebay loses the case now before the US Supreme Court to decide whether a patent infringement remedy can be reduced to money damages or the infringer can be made to stop infringing. Because if the remedy for infringement is just that the infringer has to pay you fair royalties (like most civil law works), then OIN is not much different from Novell setting up a $15M cash fund for use in buying patent licenses for Linux.