Google gets serious about software patents-Network World

If nothing else, you need to have Google give props for his up-front about its strategy. The company announced that it would try to snap up Nortel patent porfolio at a bankruptcy auction. This Is a good thing?

Google is obviously the patent heat with Oracle to Dalvik complain about patents in Android related, and with its partners complain about patents to Android related Microsoft feeling. Not to mention the CPTN threat hanging over his head. The company is not exhibited a real interest in pursuing patent suits against competitors, and in favor of "patent reform" regarding software patents. Further, the company claims that it not only wants to protect themselves from patent suits but also "the open source community."

So, this is a good thing, right? Perhaps.

First, I'm not a huge fan of "patent reform" when it comes to patents on software. Patent "reform" usually means "Let's stack the deck in favor of us instead of someone else," instead of "software patents need to go, period. Maybe I'm just a crazy idealist, but I think that rather enjoys sufficient protection software thanks to trademark and copyright protections. It is true that the patent system is horribly broken, even if you think pure software should be patentable. But if you're going to push for something, Google should push to abolish software patents — not for "reform" that simply turn on a sandwich garnish some crap.

But if reform is the best thing we can do is, making a horrible system only less bad it is disheartening that Google seems to throw in the towel by the pursuit of the Nortel patents.

Google has one of the largest audience in the world. Imagine if Google some of his immense weight behind educating the public to vote on the ills of software patents. Google may cause severe pressure on congresscritters to enact reform (or withdrawn) of software patents.

In short, I believe that Google has decided that there was to be more serious about the patent arms race.

I can't love that decision, if it means a step back from to abolish software patents, but it is hard to argue against the logic of it.

The next question is: can the open source community trust Google here? Probably.

About the worst thing that you're about Google in relation to the open source Community can say is that the company does not do as much as it could. Google can do much more to cooperate with the Community when it comes to building game chrome, Chrome OS, Android, etc. Google Gets a lot of heat for "forking" the Linux kernel with its changes to Android, although this tends to be quite a bit exaggerated.

One of the worst crimes of Google is probably least noted: projects licensed under the Affero GPL on Google Code Hosting, it is not. The excuse here is that Google doesn't want to help license proliferation. The AGPL is the only licence to which Google to contribute changes to code that is used if this code in the traditional sense do not distribute. Do the math.

Generally though, is Google's open source track record is very good. It has a history of support of open source within and outside the company. The sponsors hundreds of students working on various projects of FOSS every summer with Summer of Code. Apart from its AGPL discrimination, Google Code Hosting is generally considered a good thing for FOSS projects.

So I doubt that Google are patent portfolio by the larger open source community would enable. However, without Google is more forthcoming about its intentions with the Nortel patents, it is difficult to say how useful will be, either.

One thing that Google could do to help the patent portfolio to the Open invention network (OIN). The Nortel portfolio, however, goes beyond the scope of the OIN. There's really not a body that is open source in General, just around Linux protects.

If Google knows to keep the Nortel patents from the hands of a company that is aggressively about patent suits, or away from a patent troll, then it will be a good thing. But it would be better if Google that casting were $ 900 million in lobbying to get rid of software patents altogether.

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