Red Hat's "Cowardice" against Software Patents
Eric S. Raymond
esr at thyrsus.com
Tue Apr 4 15:05:59 UTC 2006
Warren Togami <wtogami at redhat.com>:
> Eric, you are completely divorced from reality if you truly think this
> is safe and prudent. You are essentially asking Red Hat to become a
> martyr and destroy itself. Would that really be good for the community?
Negotiating an MP3 license with Fraunhofer (to give just one possible
example) would not constitute self-destruction.
> What you advocate will not win this war in the long-run. These are not
> technical or community growth problems, but tough political and legal
> issues that we cannot simply ignore because it would be convenient.
Funny you should say that. "Ignore this issue" is exactly the response
I seem to be seeing from most of the Fedora list.
> The actions and resources Red Hat uses to fight software patents and
> protect the future of FOSS is "corporate cowardice"?
No, but refusing to carry MP3 decoders when there is no patent block
on them is.
Whether there is such a patent block or not has been disputed. I
originally believed not, persons on this list have claimed there is,
the person who made the "corporate cowardice" accusation says they're
full of crap and suggests that I challenge them to produce a patent
number. I think he's making an unrealistic demand -- but it is a fact
that SUSe carries encoders. If SUSe can do it, why not Red Hat or
Fedora?
> Red Hat engages in substantive actions to fight software patents.
>
> Do you?
Yes, as a matter of fact. I invented the basic logic of the
reciprocal patent-termination clauses now used in several open-source
licenses. And it's partly because of my jawboning that IBM opened up
a patent pool.
--
<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>
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