The Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) recently announced the creation of a Patent Commons Project described as a one-stop location for the developer community by OSDL CEO Stuart Cohen. Developers who need to avoid patent infringement in their open source work will find this project a great benefit. In his report for VNUNet.com, Tom Sanders also identified the value of the project to patent holders who wish to make their patents available to the open source community.

The Patent Commons Project will consist of a library of patents whose holders have pledged them to support open source, Sanders reports. For the moment, OSDL will not accept transfer of ownership of these patents, though CEO Cohen indicated this position could change in the future.

In addition to refusing ownership of these patents, OSDL, unlike Sun, also refuses to use its portfolio to defend open source projects. Sun has pledged to use its own portfolio aggressively, should the need arise.

What Cohen hopes to do is attract owners of older patents willing to free up their work for use by open source developers. OSDL has even approached such vendors as Novell, Red Hat, IBM and Sun for additional information on the patents they have already pledged to the database.

The Patent Commons Project will allow developers in the open source community to mix patents with open source, Sanders notes, citing the opinion of Eben Moglen, president of the Software Freedom Law Center, which provides legal services to protect free and open source software. "The 21st century is proving that sharing is the best for IT, but patent law inhibits sharing," Moglen said. "This is an attempt to retrofit patent law to allow sharing."

Moglen told Sanders that such patching is the only option the software industry has until it can force true patent reform. [...read more...]

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