Project created to ease open source patent availability

Aug 11, 2005: The Open Source Development Labs (OSDL), a global consortium dedicated to accelerating the adoption of Linux, has announced a new initiative called the OSDL patent commons project, which is designed to provide a central location where software patents and patent pledges will be housed for the benefit of the open source development community and industry.

''The OSDL patent commons project is designed to increase the utility and value of the growing number of patent pledges and promises in the past year by providing a central repository where intellectual property can be held for the benefit of all of us," said Stuart Cohen, CEO of OSDL. "Our goal is to make it easier for developers and industry to take advantage of the good works of vendors, individuals and organisations who may wish to pledge patents and intellectual property in support of the community.''

The OSDL said that for many, the administrative and logistical challenges posed by granting individual licenses to the growing open source community can be a barrier to the formal licensing of patents. In addition, as more vendors such as IBM, Nokia, Novell, Red Hat and Sun Microsystems pledge their intellectual property to the benefit of the open source community, it claims that to date there has not been a single, reliable place where developers and industry are able to advantage of these offerings.

By contributing patents to the OSDL patent commons project, the OSDL siad that patent holders can be assured that the right to enforce the patents is administered by an organisation dedicating to accelerating the development and use of open source software, while developers can be assured that those patents will not be enforced against them on open source software.

''Software patents are a huge potential threat to the ability of people to work together on open source,'' said Linus Torvalds. ''Making it easier for companies and communities that have patents to make those patents available in a common pool for people to use is one way to try to help developers deal with the threat.''

The OSDL patent commons project is still in the planning stages at present, but it will initially involve a library and database that aggregates patent pledges made by companies. The library will also aggregate other legal solutions, such as indemnification programs offered by vendors of open source software. It will also house a collection of software patent licenses and software patents (issued and pending) held for the benefit of the open source community.

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