On Sun, Nov 07, 2010 at 05:17:19PM +0000, Matthew Seaman wrote: > On 06/11/2010 16:10, Chad Perrin wrote: > > Will Oracle lawyers > > find some patent related to the creation of that software the company > > "owns" and use that to sue you if you fork the project to ensure the > > survival of your own development projects? It seems somewhat likely, > > somehow. > > Oracle couldn't sue for patent violations on software that they (or > their predecessors) had released and that people were using as-is. > That's legitimate use under license from the software's originators.
How long are you planning to use it as-is, without making any changes, if Oracle ceases support for an open source version? > > Nor could they sue successfully over some completely novel > implementation that avoided patented areas. 1. That's kind of irrelevant to my point. 2. That is prone to being a lot of work to end up with something suboptimal -- unless you're talking about using something other than Oracle software, in which case you're just agreeing with me at this point. > > An interesting question is: could they sue over use of patented feature > 'foo' in a forked copy of the software, where the code implementing > 'foo' was still identical to the original version and where any > substantial novel work was on other, unpatented, areas? This flies in > the face of the original intent of granting patents; that innovators > should be able to claim the benefits of their own work in order that > innovation be encouraged. The original intent of granting patents: 1. has not been in evidence in the patent system for a century or so 2. has largely been proven bogus, to anyone willing to consider the evidence > > I doubt that any free software project would have sufficient funds to > pursue such a case through the courts. This is the problem. > > I take comfort from the example of OpenBSD and CARP vs. Cisco and HSRP. > Open source projects have been here before, and survived by doing what > open source projects do best: writing code. Some have. Others have folded under the pressure. That latter case is why people worry about it -- and why they tend to prefer to use stuff that is not in danger of unpleasant lawsuits in the first place. -- Chad Perrin [ original content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ]
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