Patent exhaustion and open source

Posted Apr 2, 2019 0:18 UTC (Tue) by TruePath (guest, #127261)
Parent article: Patent exhaustion and open source

Moreover, even if this works in a limited way I worry it's a bad thing. We want open source to succeed and that means we want companies to be able to use and contribute to it on the facial terms of the license without great risk.

If anytime a company considers contributing to an open source product (especially one that requires they make their modified source available) they have to get a giant review by patent lawyers then they just often won't contribute and will make their own closed source alternative.

Patent exhaustion and open source

Posted Apr 25, 2019 22:06 UTC (Thu) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link] (2 responses)

I don't know. That ends up running around chasing big corporate demands. I personally don't sign CLAs that assign copyright, but I do so for $DAYJOB because it's their copyright anyways. For example, I have patches in protobuf, but if I weren't being paid to do it, I wouldn't be able to bring myself to donate code (even trivial fixes) to Google because the CLA basically says "we're more important, thanks". I don't see these projects clamoring to tear down CLAs that prevent individuals with principles about them from contributing.

If a company doesn't want to contribute because some community project has policies or whatever they don't like, they can go make their own sandbox and play in it. Nothing has stopped them before. Sure, it'd be great to have them contribute, but I'd have no trouble saying "no, this project cannot afford to be hindered by patents, go away" if patents were a) important to the project and b) blocking some corporate contribution because, IMO, it's not worth it.

Patent exhaustion and open source

Posted Apr 25, 2019 22:49 UTC (Thu) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link] (1 responses)

I don't think the Google individual CLA includes a copyright assignment?

Patent exhaustion and open source

Posted Apr 25, 2019 23:01 UTC (Thu) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]

Ah, that one indeed might not (cursory reading of it seems to confirm that). However it still has the "Google is special and can use as they wish" part which makes them "special" and is not something I like agreeing to. Fedora's PCA is fine because, AIUI, it is basically "FOSS is OK, but if it isn't licensed, we're going to treat it as MIT". I don't remember if I ever signed the old ICLA, but I probably did and was before I learned/started caring so much.