Re: patent on O_ATOMICLOOKUP [Re: [PATCH] loopable tmpfs (2.4.17)]

peter
2002-05-28T06:29:50Z

"Adam J. Richter" <adam@yggdrasil.com> wrote:
> If Red Hat is able to leave the licensing issues for their
> Linux patents unresolved and they still manage to be regarded as being
> in good standing with most contributors and would-be customers, then,
> in the coming months, many other Linux companies will take this is a
> green light to file for many patents and remain silent when asked to
> explictly grant permission to the public to practice the patents in
> free software. There is little or no business reason to publicly
> grant such permission if one can get away with not doing so.
>
> Although other companies today already have many patents that
> they could argue are infringed by certain free software components.
> The Linux patents are different as a practical matter, however, in
> that the chance of prevailing in that argument will be greater when
> if alleged infringer is using the code for which the patent was
> originally submitted.
>
> Eventually, as some companies are bought or go out of
> business, it is a statistical certainty that some of these patents
> will pass into the control of parties that do not care about the GPL's
> penalties for enforcing a software patent (after all, that would allow
> litigation only against copiers of the software, and a copyright owner
> would have to sue, which is approximately already the level of danger
> one has with an unlicensed software patent).

Forgive me for not trimming this, but it's so well said that it deserves
to be read again.

Whatever Red Hat does, it will be setting a precedent that will guide
later followers. It can expect to be on the other end of the deal
later, so "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" is
very relevant here.

Just in case someone thinks this isn't a critical issue, remember that
at least one hostile power, in the form of Microsoft:
- Has repeatedly described Linux as a number-one threat
- Has lots of lawyers, guns and money. Well, if not guns, experience
at software patent litigation.
- Is in the habit of buying companies for bits of intellectual property
that interest them
- Is famous for gutting those companies in gruesome ways
- Has already identified (Hallowe'en documents) software patents as
the most promising tool to attack free software
- Is watching very carefully.

If it's difficult to face the possibility of Red Hat at a bankruptcy
auction, consider threeguysinagarage.com. And remember what the Church
of Scientology did to the Cult Awareness Network.

I don't mean to accuse Red Hat of anything in advance of the evidence, but
the legal obligations of a publicly traded company to its stockholders are
commonly interpreted as a requirement for purely selfish and utterly venal
(and generally very short-sighted) behaviour. That makes me nervous.