Google: Taking a stand on open source and patents

[Posted March 28, 2013 by corbet]

Google has announced an initiative to help protect open source software from patent claims. "Today, we’re taking another step towards that goal by announcing the Open Patent Non-Assertion (OPN) Pledge: we pledge not to sue any user, distributor or developer of open-source software on specified patents, unless first attacked. We’ve begun by identifying 10 patents relating to MapReduce, a computing model for processing large data sets first developed at Google—open-source versions of which are now widely used. Over time, we intend to expand the set of Google’s patents covered by the pledge to other technologies."

Google: Taking a stand on open source and patents

Posted Mar 28, 2013 15:20 UTC (Thu) by skvidal (guest, #3094) [Link] (10 responses)

lwn needs a general +1 :)

I'm glad google is taking a similar patent pledge to red hat.

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Posted Mar 28, 2013 15:25 UTC (Thu) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link] (9 responses)

Red Hat's promise is general, covering all their patents.

Google's covers 10 patents. It's better than nothing, but I'd be cautious before even calling it a good start.

(I criticised Red Hat's "promise" in the past because they should have been clearer and given a "licence", but a January ruling at the CAFC has decided that promises have the same value as licences: http://en.swpat.org/wiki/The_value_of_promises_and_estopp... )

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Posted Mar 28, 2013 16:50 UTC (Thu) by rahvin (guest, #16953) [Link] (5 responses)

I agree it would be nice if it was as broad as RedHat but my guess is they want to reserve the right with respect to a few critical technologies like their Page Rank patents and such which forms the backbone of their revenue. Google does a lot of good things and a few very evil ones but they aren't an open-source company, they are an advertising company and to remain competitive (particularly with something like Bing ready to eat their lunch) they need to protect their main revenue generators.

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Posted Mar 28, 2013 17:02 UTC (Thu) by tkreagan (subscriber, #4548) [Link] (4 responses)

This really means "we would like some more good press but are not willing to actually do anything meaningful".

Google is not a friend of open-source, Linux, or anyone else. They are a parasite in sheep's clothing.

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Posted Mar 28, 2013 22:48 UTC (Thu) by clump (subscriber, #27801) [Link]

I'm not sure such strong language is accurate. Google could do more, certainly, but Android's available source code, the Summer of Code project, and other efforts make Google a decent open source citizen.

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Posted Mar 29, 2013 1:20 UTC (Fri) by robert_s (subscriber, #42402) [Link]

> Google is not a friend of open-source, Linux, or anyone else. They are a parasite in sheep's clothing.

A great display of trying to abstain from any form of subtlety in your understanding of a situation.

Google, like any large organization has its bad sides. But, as I always say, Google is a many-tentacled beast. And to say none of those tentacles have been good to open source would be a lie.

For one, the Summer of Code programme has over the years put a huge amount of money into open source and helped to garner a lot of new contributors for projects.

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Posted Mar 29, 2013 2:04 UTC (Fri) by geofft (subscriber, #59789) [Link] (1 responses)

Google is a large company. They're neither a friend of anyone nor an enemy of anyone; that's something that only a single conscious mind can do. Google is a company with thousands upon thousands of people each individually seeking the most profit for the company, and no ability to decide to collectively like or dislike something.

In a lot of cases, a lot of these individual people believe that ensuring a healthy free software ecosystem brings the company profit. It's our job to prove them correct.

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Posted Mar 29, 2013 14:31 UTC (Fri) by fjf33 (guest, #5768) [Link]

A large enough complex structure can show emergent behaviours. Large companies do develop a certain way of doing things. Call it corporate culture, personality, doesn't matter but it isn't far off to do the comparison the OP did.

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Posted Mar 28, 2013 18:03 UTC (Thu) by lxoliva (guest, #40702) [Link] (2 responses)

same value as in, even if Red Hat were to transfer on of its patents to a third party, and that party decided to sue others about patent infringement, courts (in any jurisdictions where Red Hat holds or might hold patents) would find that whoever meets the terms of the promise is effectively a licensee? that's my main concern about contributing to Red Hat's defensive patent pool.

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Posted Mar 29, 2013 15:05 UTC (Fri) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link] (1 responses)

yes. my reading of it is that even when the patent is transferred to another entity (in that case it was because the company went bankrupt and their assets were transferred to a trust), the promise still exists, the same as a licence would.

But you're right that it's important to be sure about the details. I'll do a write up of the case tomorrow morning and put it here:

http://en.swpat.org/wiki/In_re_Spansion_by_US_Third_Circu...

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Posted Mar 30, 2013 5:39 UTC (Sat) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]

Now I'm not so sure. I read the court ruling a few times but I don't see where it discusses a patent being transferred to another entity.

Dennis Crouch's Patently-O is quite authoritative, and his summary is "Apple retains its license regardless of who buys the patent rights" - but it's not clear to me where he gets that from.

Maybe his summary is obvious when you know US bankruptcy law. But I don't.

Or maybe it's clear if you read the court cases referenced by that recent court case. I'll do that if I find time.

Google: Taking a stand on open source and patents

Posted Mar 28, 2013 18:16 UTC (Thu) by boog (subscriber, #30882) [Link]

Whatever the caveats, it is clearly a step in the right direction.