If the companies in OIN really wanted to help stop misuse of software patents why not just donate the patents to the public domain? The OIN itself seems to be either a patent cartel or a distraction.
> “Microsoft’s participation in OIN adds to our strong community, which through its breadth and depth has reduced patent risk in core technologies, and unequivocally signals for all companies who are using OSS but have yet to join OIN that the litmus test for authentic behavior in the OSS community includes OIN participation.”
Companies are the ones creating patent risk by using the patent system to attack others. If you want to keep your secret sauce secret, then use trade secrets. They've basically signed non-agression pacts with themselves. Open Source has nothing to do with this outside of projects that dual license (which basically means that the code is not F/OSS).
> “Microsoft sees open source as a key innovation engine, and for the past several years we have increased our involvement in, and contributions to, the open source community,” said Erich Andersen, Corporate Vice President and Chief IP Counsel
Yeah, that sounds like "microsoft sees the value in leveraging the free time of thousands of developers as we can rope them in, now that many other companies have forged the way while directly trying not to be crushed by us".
> Funded by Google, IBM, NEC, Philips, Red Hat, Sony, SUSE, and Toyota, OIN has more than 2,650 community members and owns more than 1,300 global patents and applications.
Yeah, somehow none of those companies strike as companies that want patent wars to actually end.
More optimistically, maybe this is a step in the right direction, a few steps before software patents are abolished all together.
> “Microsoft’s participation in OIN adds to our strong community, which through its breadth and depth has reduced patent risk in core technologies, and unequivocally signals for all companies who are using OSS but have yet to join OIN that the litmus test for authentic behavior in the OSS community includes OIN participation.”
Companies are the ones creating patent risk by using the patent system to attack others. If you want to keep your secret sauce secret, then use trade secrets. They've basically signed non-agression pacts with themselves. Open Source has nothing to do with this outside of projects that dual license (which basically means that the code is not F/OSS).
> “Microsoft sees open source as a key innovation engine, and for the past several years we have increased our involvement in, and contributions to, the open source community,” said Erich Andersen, Corporate Vice President and Chief IP Counsel
Yeah, that sounds like "microsoft sees the value in leveraging the free time of thousands of developers as we can rope them in, now that many other companies have forged the way while directly trying not to be crushed by us".
> Funded by Google, IBM, NEC, Philips, Red Hat, Sony, SUSE, and Toyota, OIN has more than 2,650 community members and owns more than 1,300 global patents and applications.
Yeah, somehow none of those companies strike as companies that want patent wars to actually end.
More optimistically, maybe this is a step in the right direction, a few steps before software patents are abolished all together.