Red Hat has been slapped with a patent lawsuit for an alleged infringement of a Firestar Software patent in one of the JBoss open source applications.

After a year of talking about putting up patent shields, the time has come to put them to the test. But most cynics will argue that the defence mechanisms will do little to avert disaster.

29 Jun 2006

The OSDL's Patent Commons project is purely informational. It won't deter any patent claims.

Patent pledges from IBM, Novell, Sun Microsystems, Nokia and others are about as comforting as the Sweden promising not to invade Canada. They come with the best intentions, but from the wrong people.

They certainly won't help Red Hat in its fight against Firestar Software.

While there's been a lot of talk about protecting open source applications from patent claims, very little has been done. It's starting to look like the technology industry mostly interested in comforting their customers and taking away their concerns in an effort to secure their revenues.

The large patent holders and filers meanwhile have too much to loose from the current system to warrant any real changes.

Photo credit: Ken Duncan

Tags: red hat, patent, firestar, OSDL, ibm, open source