Re: Red Hat pays $800,000 + costs for a patent deal

[Ezekiel]

"Alexander Terekhov" <terekhov@web.de> wrote in message 
485239CC.83D4889C@web.de">news:485239CC.83D4889C@web.de...
> http://sanantonio.bizjournals.com/triangle/stories/2008/06/09/daily18.html
>
> ------
> Essentially, Red Hat has licensed the patents in question, which deal
> with computer databases, from DataTern. DataTern had claimed that one of
> Red Hat's business-software products, a database program known as JBoss
> Hibernate, violated the patents.
>
> Under terms of the settlement, customers have a royalty-free, worldwide
> license to use any and all Red Hat products, Red Hat says in a
> statement. DataTern and its parent company, British venture capital firm
> Amphion Innovations, also have promised not to file suits related to
> claims on Red Hat products.
>
> In a statement, Amphion Innovations said it would take in $800,000 from
> the settlement after costs. An Amphion spokesperson wasn't immediately
> available for comment. Red Hat isn't commenting on terms of the
> settlement, a spokesperson says.
>
> "Our distributors, customers, and anyone else who uses Red Hat products
> are protected with respect to Red Hat products," the company said in a
> statement posted to its Web site. "This broad coverage is a significant
> benefit to the open source community."
> ------
>
> Reactions from the freetards universe:
>
> http://technocrat.net/d/2008/6/11/43190
>
> ------
> Full terms of the settlement and patent licenses are not yet available.
>
> Richard Fontana, patent attorney for Red Hat and formerly of the
> Software Freedom Law Center, said
>
>   Red Hat's settlement satisfies the most stringent patent
>   provisions in open source licenses, is consistent with the
>   letter and spirit of all versions of the GPL and provides
>   patent safety for developers, distributors and users of
>   open source software.
>
> Richard Stallman, executive director of the Free Software Foundation,
> said
>
>   If we can judge from Red Hat's statement, the deal is good
>   for the free software community. I would not want to treat
>   that as certain; they might have chosen not to mention some
>   negative side. Be that as it may, it was an unfortunate
>   mistake to refer to patents as "intellectual property"; see
>   http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html. Red Hat should
>   know better than to do that.
>
> Eben Moglen of the Software Freedom Law Center, and general counsel of
> the Free Software Foundation, said
>
>   "Red Hat's settlement of outstanding patent litigation on
>   terms that provide additional protection to other members of
>   the community upstream and downstream from Red Hat is a
>   positive contribution to the resources for community patent
>   defense. We would hope to see more settlements of this
>   kind--in which parties secure more than their own particular
>   legal advantage in relation to the third-party patent risk
>   of the whole FOSS community--when commercial redistributors
>   of FOSS choose to settle patent litigation. SFLC welcomes
>   Red Hat's efforts on the community's behalf."
> ------
>
> PJ of Groklaw also claims that the deal is "Compatible with GPLv3"
> and "harmonious with GPLv2".
>
> http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080611191302741
> (Red Hat Makes History With Patent Settlement - Compatible with GPLv3)
>
> ------
> You've probably been wondering why I've been quiet, when there is news
> about a patent settlement between Red Hat and Firestar and DataTern in
> the JBoss litigation. It's because I wanted to be positive I was correct
> that this is the first known settlement involving patents that is
> harmonious with GPLv3. It is.
>
> It's also harmonious with GPLv2, of course, but this is history in the
> making, friends. They settled a lawsuit brought against them in a way
> that licenses patents without violating the GPL. I'll show you how, but
> first, so you know I'm not just dreaming, here's the answer I got from
> Richard Fontana, Open Source Licensing and Patent Counsel, Red Hat, to
> my question about whether this is the first known GPLv3 patent agreement
> that works:
>
>   Most patent settlements and similar agreements are
>   confidential, but to my knowledge this is the first patent
>   settlement that satisfies the requirements of GPL version 3.
>   Indeed, it really goes further than GPLv3 in the degree to
>   which upstream and downstream parties receive safety from
>   the patents at issue here. (And this is not a case of
>   trying to find a loophole in the GPL, but rather a desire
>   on our part to reach an agreement that provided broad
>   patent protection for developers, distributors and users,
>   while complying fully with the conditions of the licenses
>   of the software we and our community distribute.)
> ------
>
> ROFL
>
> regards,
> alexander.
>
> --
> http://gng.z505.com/index.htm
> (GNG is a derecursive recursive derecursion which pwns GNU since it can
> be infinitely looped as GNGNGNGNG...NGNGNG... and can be said backwards
> too, whereas GNU cannot.)
>


I love the comment on this page:

<quote>
So Red Hat got protection for their commercial offering and for upstream
developers as long as their work shows up in a Red Hat product but not other
commercial products? Isn't this what Novell and Microsoft did? Didn't Red
Hat spend extraordinary effort to paint Novell as the most evil thing ever
to happen to Open Source for having done so? Am I missing something or,
despite carefully crafted words to create the illusion otherwise, has Red
Hat just become a giant hypocrite?
</quote>

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