LWN: Comments on "GNOME resolves Rothschild patent suit"

GNOME resolves Rothschild patent suit

nybble41 — Tue, 02 Jun 2020 14:44:25 +0000

> 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.

If proprietary software companies *lose* that fight, and thus create precedent in *favor* of software patents (de facto, if not de jure) that hurts everyone. Including FOSS projects. If you ignore the cases you're not personally sympathetic to there won't be anyone left to help when your turn comes.

GNOME resolves Rothschild patent suit

madscientist — Thu, 28 May 2020 21:09:01 +0000

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)!

GNOME resolves Rothschild patent suit

mpr22 — Thu, 28 May 2020 19:15:42 +0000

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

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

GNOME resolves Rothschild patent suit

zoobab — Thu, 28 May 2020 19:01:39 +0000

A missed opportunity to create caselaw against software patents in the US, using Alice.

Also, GNOME smells OIN and IBM, the first lobby that wants to restore software patents in the US via the STRONGER patent act.

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

So much for 'victory' for freedom.

GNOME resolves Rothschild patent suit

amacater — Mon, 25 May 2020 21:24:37 +0000

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 :)

GNOME resolves Rothschild patent suit

atai — Mon, 25 May 2020 20:11:08 +0000

probably the patent trolls realize they cannot squeeze money out of non profits

GNOME resolves Rothschild patent suit

pabs — Sat, 23 May 2020 12:29:20 +0000

Interview with Neil McGovern:

https://openuk.uk/gnome-settles-patent-litigation-amanda-...

Comments from another thread on HN:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23255853

GNOME resolves Rothschild patent suit

eru — Fri, 22 May 2020 16:38:30 +0000

Nice to hear good new for a change! They have been scarce in the world lately...

GNOME resolves Rothschild patent suit

flussence — Thu, 21 May 2020 21:57:52 +0000

They may have tried to word this as neutrally as they could, but the patent troll's still very clearly sweating bullets. As they should be.

GNOME resolves Rothschild patent suit

mdolan — Thu, 21 May 2020 21:15:31 +0000

Congrats Neil, that was such a mess you had to deal with and yet you found a good outcome.

GNOME resolves Rothschild patent suit

jake — Thu, 21 May 2020 21:02:58 +0000

> Yes. I can't comment why.

sounds like some sort of weird non-disparagement clause?

jake

GNOME resolves Rothschild patent suit

neilm — Thu, 21 May 2020 20:02:19 +0000

Yes. I can't comment why.

GNOME resolves Rothschild patent suit

rahulsundaram — Thu, 21 May 2020 19:09:30 +0000

Is there a reason you wouldn't just publish it openly?

GNOME resolves Rothschild patent suit

neilm — Thu, 21 May 2020 18:01:40 +0000

Highly unusually, the settlement is not subject to a non-disclosure agreement as I wanted to make sure that those protected by it could read it. If you are an upstream author, you can email me (via director@gnome.org please!) and receive a copy of the full agreement so you can study it yourself and see what we had to give grounds on. I can confirm that we have not paid RPI or Leigh Rothschild for this settlement.

GNOME resolves Rothschild patent suit

obrakmann — Thu, 21 May 2020 17:35:53 +0000

> There is no mention of what the foundation had to give — if anything — for this settlement

According to Neil McGovern on Reddit, "not a penny": https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/gnseuh/patent_cas...

GNOME resolves Rothschild patent suit

Wol — Thu, 21 May 2020 17:27:30 +0000

Sounds like they attacked with bows and arrows, and suddenly realised that Gnome had a Gatling Gun.

Cheers,
Wol

GNOME resolves Rothschild patent suit

hannada — Thu, 21 May 2020 17:02:26 +0000

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.

GNOME resolves Rothschild patent suit

pkern — Thu, 21 May 2020 17:00:02 +0000

That's not what the settlement said.

GNOME resolves Rothschild patent suit

higuita — Thu, 21 May 2020 15:49:49 +0000

All software patents are bad and stupid, even if one open source project isn't affected by it

GNOME resolves Rothschild patent suit

littlesandra88 — Thu, 21 May 2020 14:44:55 +0000

All good for OSS. The patent lives on, and can now only hurt closed source software. Win for all.