[ Thanks to Jon Brodkin for this link. ]
With Red Hat on the verge of becoming the first billion-dollar
company focused exclusively on open source software, it has
attracted quite a bit of attention — from lawyers waving patents.
And although Red Hat fights lawsuits when it deems it necessary,
CEO Jim Whitehurst says it’s often just better to pay the trolls to
make them go away.“When it’s so little money, at some point, bluntly, it’s better
to settle than fight these things out,” Whitehurst said. Red Hat
has been forced to pay out claims to the likes of FireStar Software
and Acacia. “