Red Hat says it has amassed over 2,000 patents and won’t enforce them if the technologies they describe are used in properly-licensed open-source software.
The company has made more or less the same offer since 2002, when it first made a “Patent Promise” in order to “discourage patent aggression in free and open source software”. Back then the company didn’t own many patents and claimed its non-enforcement promise covered 35 per cent of open-source software.