Stuart Cohen, CEO of OSDL, said: "The OSDL patent commons
project is designed to increase the utility and value of the
growing number of patent pledges and promises in the past year by
providing a central repository where intellectual property can be
held for the benefit of all of us."
In the past year a number of big industry players such as IBM,
Novell and Sun Microsystems have pledged some of their intellectual
property for the benefit of the open source community, joining the
growing number of individual patent licences granted to the
community.
"Our goal is to make it easier for developers and industry to
take advantage of the good works of vendors, individuals and
organisations who may wish to pledge patents and intellectual
property in support of the community," added Cohen.
OSDL is a global consortium dedicated to accelerating the
adoption of Linux. Its idea for a central location to accommodate
patents and pledges is in response to problems faced by developers
in keeping track of what rights have been granted, and for what
particular software.
By contributing patents to the OSDL patent commons project, OSDL
says that patent holders can be assured that the right to enforce
the patents is administered by an organisation dedicated to
accelerating the development and use of open source software.
Developers can be assured that those patents will not be enforced
against them on open source software.
"Software patents are a huge potential threat to the ability of
people to work together on open source," said Linus Torvalds, the
creator of Linux. "Making it easier for companies and communities
that have patents to make those patents available in a common pool
for people to use is one way to try to help developers deal with
the threat."
While still in the planning stages, the OSDL patent commons
project will initially involve:
- A library and database that aggregates patent pledges made by
companies. The library will also aggregate other legal solutions,
such as indemnification programs offered by vendors of open source
software; and
- A collection of software patent licenses and software patents
(issued and pending) held for the benefit of the open source
community.
More details on the OSDL patent commons project will be
announced in the coming months.
Anti-patent campaigner Florian Mueller cautiously welcomed the
announcement.
"It will only be a true protective shield if they gather patents
that they can use to countersue the enemies of open source,” he
said. “The software patent game is like the Cold War: The only
thing that protects you is the concept of mutually assured
destruction. The patent pledges that IBM and Sun made added
absolutely nothing to the retaliatory potential of open source.
Those were just PR plays, but what the OSDL has announced could be
much more meaningful."
Next version of GPL
Elsewhere, Eben Moglen has revealed that the first draft of the
next version of the GPL (General Public License) is likely to be
released early next year.
The GPL is a licence commonly used for many free software
projects, including the Linux operating system kernel. The GPL
licenses software free of cost but requires any re-distributor to
provide the full source code and a copy of the full licence
text.
Speaking to CNET News, Moglen said, “I think GPL 3 is a process
which begins with discussions of a first tentative draft in the
first weeks of 2006."
"I hope it will end with a license that maybe not everybody
likes but that everybody is prepared to accept about a year later,"
he explained.
