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

[Moshe Goldfarb.]

On Fri, 13 Jun 2008 09:40:48 -0400, Ezekiel wrote:

> "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>
> 
> http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9965682-7.html

That's how I read it.
Get ready for the Linux loons to rationalize and explain away the entire
thing.

So when is the Boycott Redhat site going up Spamowitz?



-- 
Moshe Goldfarb
Collector of soaps from around the globe.
Please visit The Hall of Linux Idiots:
http://linuxidiots.blogspot.com/