GNOME resolves Rothschild patent suit

That's not what the settlement said.

A real win that the settlement covers all OSI-approved licenses, and NOT just one Open Source project. The Pro-Bono legal team accomplished a stretch goal.

> Now Rpi can continue to troll and parasites other companies with their patent.

But only to the extent those companies are releasing proprietary software.

It's a 100% victory for all FOSS software and that's what I care about. It's not the FOSS community's responsibility to defend "freedom" for the entire world.

If proprietary software companies want to fight that fight, they are more than welcome to do so and spend their money on it. If they don't want to fight and would rather pay royalties, that's fine with me too: it's their money.

But I'm very happy to see that FOSS becomes that much easier a choice to make (fewer patent troll issues) and that my investments in FOSS are not being used on legal battles that only benefit proprietary software instead of on making FOSS software stronger.

If there was no way to help FOSS without also helping proprietary companies (i.e., we had to go to court and invalidate the patents) then that's fine. And if the cost/effort/resources was the same to do both that's fine too. But if it costs the FOSS community much more to defend all software than it does to just defend FOSS software, then with our limited resources there's no question that the latter is the right choice to make.

BTW, I say this as someone who does develop proprietary software for $DAYJOB, and whose company is small and definitely not rich enough to take a big company to court (or defend against same)!

Yes. I can't comment why.

It also depends very much who has had to pay the costs: if Rothschild have been constrained to share all current and future patents, abandon claims against any other covered open source AND pay the defendant's legal costs in full, they might want to be quiet about the amount of time effort, money and lost status this will have cost them. It might be a slam-dunk for GNOME and enough to deter (or bankrupt) Rothschild patents. GNOME have probably also undertaken not to publicise this overtly - but to extend that protection to anyone who can show their FLOSS contributions might be covered. The fact that Rothschild offered a low payment at first to settle and that the case was fought in full may mean that they haven't the wherewithal to continue to sue others: absent meaningful contributions that we can prove to covered FLOSS, the rest of us will never know for sure :)