ONLamp: Patent Pools Offer Open Source A New Incentive–And a New Source of Power

“It’s been talked about for years, and now there are
well-endowed and well-researched organizations claiming to offer
open source software some protection from patent lawsuits. The very
announcement of these efforts–even before they have a chance to
prove successful–are an historical watershed for open source and
free software. For the first time you get back something tangible
for open-sourcing. And this leads to another key change in the
terrain: it now becomes critical how “open source” is defined, and
who has the power to define it.

“The two patent pool projects concerned here–open source’s
shining knights in armor–are the Patent Commons Project and the
Open Invention Network…”

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